So, Donald Trump has cancelled his planned meeting with Anthony Albanese – along with the chats he was to have had with other like India’s Narendra Modi because his priority right now is what’s happening in the war between Israel and Iran. 

Fair enough from Mr Trump’s perspective.

But where does that leave Australia and our prime minister?  This was meant to be the first face to face meeting between our two leaders since Donald Trump returned to office in January this year and since Mr Albanese’s re-election in May.

We’re almost halfway through 2025 and Mr Albanese hasn’t met with the leader of our most important security partner, at a time in world and regional security when that alliance matters and is pretty turbulent. India’s Narendra Modi might also be missing his G7 meeting with President Trump, but the two of them met in February.

Mr Albanese has told us many times how important direct leader to leader discussions are when it comes to his relationship with China’s Xi Jinping, and he’s made it a priority to get those meetings with Xi whenever and wherever he can – including in Beijing and at G-20 gatherings.

With the Trump Administration, though, he has been far less keen.  During the election campaign, Mr Albanese talked down the need for an early meeting with Donald Trump, treating it as something that would happen in due course at some time, perhaps later this year.  And there has been no apparent effort to organise an early meeting at the White House or invite President Trump to Australia.  The G7 meeting was the lonely chance and now that looks like it’s gone.

So, what are we missing?  Well, it’s a risky business having a one on one meeting with President Trump, as we know from his infamous meeting with Ukraine’s President Zelensky and with South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa.  Avoiding a meeting because of that risk is just not in Australia’s interests, though.

Australia has a trading relationship with the US and our security depends on our alliance with America.  In both areas Mr Trump’s decisions are vital to Australia and our interests.  It might be a low probability thing to get the 25% steel and aluminium tariffs lifted from Australian producers, but the prime minister should at least try.

But the big thing Mr Albanese told us he was going to do in his meeting with Donald Trump was get the President’s backing of our multi-billion dollar AUKUS submarine partnership, which is clouded by the Pentagon review that’s looking at it right now.  He’s lost that opportunity.

And the big thing Mr Albanese was afraid of by even raising AUKUS with Trump was that Mr Trump would know that under Mr Albanese, Australia’s defence effort makes many of the NATO ‘underachievers’ look heroic.

At 2 per cent of GDP, our defence budget looks like a bad joke, particularly when we hear it’s meant to buy an expensive conventional military and also pay for us to get 8 nuclear submarines.  Nuclear submarines are powerful things, but they are also eyewateringly expensive, even in the military realm where billions of dollars seems to buy very little.

Mr Albanese has avoided having to try to justify America giving us some nuclear submarines out of its own Navy’s fleet – weakening itself – to strengthen us, when we are obviously not spending or doing enough to look after our own defence.

Being a free rider on American security while demanding submarines they don’t have enough of themselves is a tricky thing to do.

So, Mr Albanese will be quietly delighted that world events have conspired and his meeting with President Trump has been cancelled.  Mr Albanese has avoided a risky encounter where he was on shaky ground and can say how sorry he was this ‘opportunity’ hasn’t happened.

The only losers from this turn of events are Australia and our security relationship with our key security partner.  Oh, and Australian steel and aluminium producers.

Let’s hope Mr Albanese thinks building a personal leader to leader relationship with America’s president is as important as his relationship with China’s Xi Jinping.  And that means an early trip to Washington with some actual time to get into the serious issues Australia and America must manage together.

This article was first published by Sky Digital.