Australia’s alliance with the United States is no longer reliable, and clinging to it now risks Australia’s interests and values. The case for a deliberate, staged Plan B begins with strategic autonomy – and an overdue reckoning with extended nuclear deterrence.
Beyond the ruptured alliance: an outline for Plan B
One hundred years ago – in The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway wrote that some things proceed “at first slowly, and then very fast.” This is an accurate description of the decomposition of the Western Alliance in general and Australia’s alliance relationship with the United States in particular.