Many people are saying many things about what a second Donald Trump term in the White House might look like. It’s a mug’s game to speculate in areas where we can’t know much. However, on defence budgets and Trump’s expectations for even the closest of US allies, Trump has remarkably consistent before his first term of office, when President between 2016 and 2020, and during his last 4 years of campaigning to get the job back. So there are some things we know – and these have messages for US partners whether in Europe or our part of the world.
Trump hates free riders on US military spending and US military power. When he says “America First” this applies even more to America’s friends than it does to American enemies. At a rally back in February this year, Mr Trump referred to a conversation with a leader of an unspecified NATO country, who he claims asked him: “If we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?”. Mr Trump recalled that he responded by saying “Absolutely not”. And here he is talking about South Korea, a country closer to us here in Australia: “We spend billions and billions of dollars to protect them from North Korea. They are not giving us anything.”
Europe’s 31 non-US NATO members – including the Canadians, whose defence spending has been bumping along at 1.33 per cent of GDP – know that spending under 2 per cent was unacceptable to Trump in his first term. They also know that 2 per cent won’t be enough now, because there is a real war in Europe and Trump thinks – reasonably – that this should be dealt with primarily by the Europeans themselves. Having effective militaries that can operate with or without the Americans along will cost more than that old 2 per cent target figure. And it’s not just money. Effective European militaries will only be produced if there is much deeper, faster change to European defence institutions than we see even after almost 3 years of the war in Ukraine.
The same is true for us here in Australia. Our security is being provided by a growing number of US troops, planes, ships and submarines operating out of Australia under the Gillard-era Force Posture Initiative. And, under AUKUS, we’re asking America to sell us Virginia class nuclear submarines right at the time the US Navy can’t get enough of these built to meet its own needs. Meanwhile, our own plans to equip and grow our own military are on the go slow, stuck in a world where we have at least ten years warning before anything dangerous happens.
On top of this increasing dependence on US forces, our current defence budget plans have us spending 1.99 per cent of GDP on Defence, with this rising to 2.4 per cent over ten years to meet the early bills for the nuclear subs. Meanwhile, recruiting into our already small military is in crisis, and skilled people needed to crew our ships, fly and maintain our aircraft are leaving the services, with our force failing to grow despite repeated assurances from military chiefs that 8 years of failure on the workforce was being resolved.
Look at this from Donald Trump’s perspective. The AUKUS plan boils down to a very slow exercise with real risks to America’s own military power, all to deliver 8 conventionally-armed nuclear powered submarines to Australia over the 30 years between now and 2054. In 2054 Trump will be 108 years old.
Worse, from the Trump perspective, Australia is a US ally living in the region where Chinese military power and aggression is increasing, but when he looks at what we are doing given the threats we face, it’s hard not to put us in the same bucket of free riders as those Europeans he showed such contempt for in his first term.
Even as we call for him to push America’s defence industry and the US Navy to sell us nuclear subs and technology and put more US troops into Australia, we’re still barely moving the dial on our own spending. Seeing this picture, his national security advisers are likely to add that Australia simply can’t do what we’re saying we’ll do for the amount of money we plan to spend on defence: you can’t have a capable conventional military of the size we plan and get 8 nuclear submarines all for 2.4 per cent of GDP.
The options for the Albanese government out of this are crystal clear. They can keep doing what they are doing making grand statements about their historic achievements in Defence while failing to back their claims with actions or funding as they preside over a slow motion trainwreck in our military. Or they can get ahead of the curve and change course on Defence policy and spending before the Trump team notices that Australia’s defence force and defence policies have no clothes.
There’s nowhere to hide on Defence policy and spending in the looming Federal election. Speeches portraying funding that doesn’t keep up with inflation as ‘historic’, and pretending that procurement programs that will take 20 and 30 years to deliver are answers to urgent times are fooling less of the people, less of the time. Serving military personnel and people in defence industry are more than aware of the gap between the words of government and senior officials and what they are seeing in the real world.
Both Mr Albanese and Mr Dutton will need to have defence policies to take to voters whenever our election is between now and May 2025. A commitment to spend 3 per cent of GDP on Defence in this next 3 year term of government, whoever wins, is almost the necessary bottom line to engage sensibly with the incoming Trump Administration in Washington. It’s also what our security requires.
And that budget increase will need to be backed with much more practical work to equip Australia’s military in this next 3 years, in ways that match the urgency of our strategic environment and don’t indulge in the orgy of magical thinking and self-congratulations we’ve see from Mr Albanese, his ministers and senior Defence officials in the last two years. If Pentagon officials are worried about their job security because of the US election outcome and the spectre of sackings, with Elon Musk stomping the corridors, our Russell Hill bureaucrats perhaps need to feel an echo of that sentiment too.
It’s time for the nude emperor that is Australian defence policy to get some clothes – fast.
A version of this article was first published on Sky Digital.