HUGH WHITE Hard New World: Our post-American future. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck

Can Australia pursue a defence strategy independent of the United States? Hugh White presents a compelling case to do so. 

In this Quarterly Essay, Hugh White is hoping to influence the politicians and advisors who make strategic decisions concerning Australia’s defence and foreign policy. He wants them to do something they are too scared to do: to adopt an independent policy stance, independent from that of America.

Hard New World repeats the same basic points again and again: that America will make decisions to serve its own interests; that it will not come to the defence of another nation unless it fits its own strategic needs; that the world is such that no one power can dominate Europe or Asia to threaten America; that China has become the leading power in East Asia, resulting in a downgrade in American influence; that America will not become involved in a nuclear war to defend Ukraine against Russia, or Taiwan against China; and that given America’s stance on China and Taiwan, Australia should stop trying to curry favour with America and inform it that Australia will not ‘go to war over Taiwan’.

Why does White make these same key points over and over? Because he is trying to convince his audience of the need to alter their thinking. In much the same way repetition helped us as children to learn the times tables, he is hoping repetition will help Australia’s defence and strategic policy makers revise their thinking. 

Ever since Federation, Australia’s defence and strategic policy has been based on the proposition that we need to rely on a strong foreign power. Initially that power was Britain. This strategy collapsed in 1942 with the fall of Singapore to Japan during World War II. In the war against Japan, Britain abandoned Australia and focused on defending its colonies in India and Burma. And so Australia turned to America for support against Japan. Forming an alliance with Australia was consistent with America’s realpolitik view of having allies that served its strategic needs. America was more involved in the war with Japan than Australia at that time, seeking revenge for the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Australia provided it with a base and additional resources to do so.

In 1951, Australia, New Zealand and the United States entered into the ANZUS treaty, which was concerned with security in the Pacific. New Zealand’s later stance on maintaining a nuclear-free zone has since seen it suspended from ANZUS.

America is regularly involved in military operations across the globe. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it has been involved in approximately 100 such ventures. China’s most recent armed conflicts occurred against India, in 1962, and Vietnam, in 1979.

Australia has been attacked only once by another nation, and that was by Japan during World War II with the bombing of Darwin and two-man submarines in Sydney Habour. Since ANZUS, Australia has been involved in American military actions in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War of 1991, and more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. Such involvement has been expensive in terms of blood and gold, social disruption (especially Vietnam), the mental health and well-being of returning soldiers – with suicides a particular problem – and war crimes inquiries and trials, as in the long-running saga of Ben Roberts-Smith. 

White’s basic position is that the assumptions Australia believed underpinned ANZUS no longer apply.

It is not Australia but America that is walking away from the commitments it made in the ANZUS Treaty … This is the lesson we must draw from Washington’s failure to defend Ukraine, from its crumbling position in Asia and from the American voters’ decisive rejection of the old idea of US global leadership to which we still cling … We should accept and acknowledge the reality that America will not be keeping Asia safe for us, nor providing an ultimate security guarantee. And we should free ourselves of the debilitating assumption that we cannot look after ourselves … We should start by recognising that Asia’s future, and Australia’s, will not be decided in Washington. It will be decided in Asia. 

White goes on to argue that our armed forces ‘must be designed primarily to defend Australia independently rather than to support America’ in a potential confrontation with China. For this reason, he rejects the proposition that Australia needs nuclear-powered submarines. He would prefer a bigger fleet of cheaper, more conventionally powered submarines, plus investment in more aircraft, missiles and drones.

White criticises both political parties for abdicating their responsibility to explain changes in American policy to the Australian public. 

I think our political leaders, and their advisors, are frightened of the hard new world we face. They have made their careers in the comfortable world we used to know. 

He could have added that defence ministers, on both sides of politics, regularly pick up consultancies or obtain employment with American defense industry companies when they retire from politics. 

This is why they have taken refuge in complacent assumptions that the old US-led order will emerge triumphant, leaving the world just as comfortable for us as it seemed to be twenty-five years ago.

We live in an Australia where it is seemingly un-Australian to think that our nation can adopt a defence and strategic policy that is independent of the United States. We must avoid upsetting the Americans. White points to a number of problems with the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal as a defence strategy, even if Australia were to support America in a war with China. 

First, it is too slow. Even if the submarines are delivered on time they will not add to a ‘combined Pacific fleet’ for another two decades. Second, it is too small; it will be unable to take on the Chinese. Third, there is vagueness about whether these submarines would become involved in such a struggle; America says they would, Australia says they wouldn’t. This ‘confusion’, says White, weakens their deterrent effect on China. Finally, and this returns to a point that White continually makes about America, ‘it is futile for Australia to frame its defence around US deterrence of China when America itself is not so serious about it’. 

Assuming that White’s analysis, and those of other critics concerning the folly of AUKUS, is correct – that it is a high-cost policy (estimated to be in the region of $368 billion) and will not enhance Australia’s defence and strategic needs – the question arises why Australia has embraced AUKUS. It might be useful here to conduct a basic test of economics, comparing the costs of agreeing and disagreeing with America; what might be called the real cost to Australia of AUKUS. 

One presumably agrees to do something because the cost of agreeing is lower than the cost of disagreeing. Why, otherwise, would you agree? What would have been the cost of Australia disagreeing? In 1975, the Whitlam Labor government indicated that it would not renew America’s lease of a communications centre at Pine Gap. The Whitlam Government was subsequently dismissed by Governor General Sir John Kerr on Remembrance Day 1975. In his book Nuked, Andrew Fowler criticises AUKUS, saying: 

The fear of what happened to the Whitlam Government still haunts Australian Labor … Labor was aware that antagonising the United States could have painful repercussions, which is one of the reasons the leadership embraced AUKUS and the increasing US military presence in Australia. 

If this is correct, the policy makers Hugh White is attempting to persuade will have a good read of this Quarterly Essay, think about it for a while, make some noises about Australia always pursuing its own interests, and continue to stress the need to maintain defence and strategic relationships with America. 

Who knows. Maybe in the not too distant future Hugh White’s call for Australia to forge an independent defence and strategic path will be realised. Who knows.

Hugh White Hard New World: Our post-American future, Quarterly Essay, Black Inc. 2025 PB 128pp $29.99.

Braham Dabscheck is a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne who writes on industrial relations, sport and other things.

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Tags: ANZUS, AUKUS, Australian defence policy, Australian history, Australian-US relations, China, defence strategy, geopolitics, Hugh | White, international relations, Taiwan, Ukraine, United States foreign policy