Australia’s foreign policy is being distorted by AUKUS, militarised thinking and a misplaced faith in US power, when the country should be rebuilding its diplomatic strength as an independent middle power.

By all accounts Defence Minister Richard Marles is a personable fellow. One of his passions is his vast collection of snow globes. The fascination with snow globes has been described as a yearning for nostalgia, childhood innocence and the desire to preserve a moment in time. They represent a magical escape from reality.

Kym Davey

Marles is also known for this love of all things American. Years ago he was delighted to be ‘commissioned’ as a Kentucky Colonel by that US state’s Governor. His office is littered with assorted American memorabilia and he is well known for his hard-line views on China. Like his mate, US Secretary for War Pete Hegseth, he believes in the slogan ‘peace through strength’. 

Speaking at the Singapore Shangri-La Dialogue last month, Marles told his audience that our region faces the most complex and threatening strategic landscape since World War Two. After condemning the alleged sabotage of undersea cables in the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland, he switched to the Asia-Pacific with a vague tale of undersea cables severed recently in the Taiwan Strait. Dog-whistling our favourite ‘peek-a-boo’ enemy, China, Marles told his audience that “this matters in Australia because we are threatened by this threat…the cutting of cables with an anchor in the middle of the night”.  These cables, he says, “are the arteries of modern civilisation, they are strategic targets”.

Marles went on to string together a list of fuzzy assertions, namely the ‘plunder’ of illegal fish catches and water-canon skirmishes at sea presented as evidence of emerging ‘new vectors of coercion’. Linking all these new threats with his favourite theme, maintenance of the Rules Based Order, Marles then outlined Australia’s ‘hard power transformation’ with a substantial naval buildup of submarines, frigates and air-warfare destroyers.  

Before Marles gave his speech, the Shangri-La delegates were absorbing the earlier messages from the US Secretary of War. Abandoning last year’s repeated references to the security of Taiwan, Hegseth shifted focus to a new Trump policy of ‘constructive strategic stability’ with China. Telling his audience that the US had jettisoned the strategic rhetoric of the past, he asserted that the US was ‘the power working to sustain equilibrium, not to disrupt it’. On the Rules Based Order, he said he wasn’t interested in ‘empty globalist rhetoric’. He wanted ‘less Shangri-La and more ships, more subs’. Hard power, he insisted, is what matters. 

In answer to a question from a New Zealand delegate, Hegseth argued her country was ‘free-riding’ on US military power. During that exchange he revealed his ‘blunt talk’ with Richard Marles about “what our capabilities are and where allies need to be to ensure that we are locking arms and shields considering the threats of the world”. He added a warning that long-standing friendship wasn’t enough. Unless Australia develops the capabilities expected by the US, he said, “the alliance is meaningless”. 

Just days earlier, Foreign Minister Penny Wong met with her Quad counterparts from India, Japan and the US in New Delhi for their one-day summit. Despite years of attempts by Australia to elevate the Quad into something more than a talk shop, the forum has been struggling for relevance. DFAT describes Quad is a key pillar in Australia’s foreign policy. Yet, its Leaders’ Forum hasn’t convened since Joe Biden hosted a meeting in Washington in September 2024. Trump’s tariff war with India scuttled the scheduled meeting in 2025. 

Following on from previous declarations, the final Quad communiqué again highlighted the partners’ commitment to the complete denuclearisation of North Korea. This is, of course, totally unrealistic.

Two things stand out from these defence and foreign policy chin-wags. First, the Quad has lost further ground as a forum for articulating a foreign policy narrative that matters. Second, the Shangri-La defence forum confirmed the ascendency of militarism over statecraft in the dialogue between the US and the nations of the Indo-Pacific. There is no opportunity to discuss development issues. Instead the dialogue agenda is clogged with the obsessions of a fading superpower eager to extract tribute from nations apprehensive about the rise of China.  

Australia is praised by Hegseth, not for promoting the values of human rights, tolerance and conflict resolution between nations – but for Marles’ promise to step-up investment in weapons ready for what Hegseth called a ‘high-end fight’. We are also praised for investing in ‘real combat power’ and for our willingness to integrate more deeply with US-led joint forces. Our reward, says Hegseth, will be to be recognised as a ‘model ally’.

Returning to Australia after Shangri-La, Marles had to fess-up that Hegseth had given him some bad news on AUKUS after the meeting. For once the Minister faced intense questioning by the Australian media. He struggled repeatedly to explain why the original US commitment to provide one new and two ‘in-service’ Virginia class submarines had been downgraded by Hegseth to three ‘in-service’ models. The reaction has been seismic. Despite Marles’ desperate efforts to portray the news as a win, the decision has reignited a rumbling debate within the Labor party about the purpose and value of AUKUS. Importantly, the public reaction to the news has also drawn doubts in senior Liberal party ranks about the AUKUS deal. There are now serious calls emerging for a Plan B.

The misguided importance attached to AUKUS by successive Australian governments has corrupted both defence and foreign policy priorities. Its failure risks Australian prestige and whatever soft power we retain in our region. Allowing Richard Marles to dominate Australian foreign policy, as a fellow traveller with the toxic Trump administration, is a huge mistake. But the mistake is bigger than the likely failure of AUKUS. It matters that Australia’s international standing and national security has been attached so profoundly to a flawed defence project. 

The deeper problem for Australia’s foreign policy is the inability of our leaders to understand the fading hegemonic power of the United States. Despite all the warrior talk that Marles has taken in from Hegseth, the emperor is naked. The Trump-Xi summit earlier in May announced the new policy of ‘constructive strategic stability’ between the US and China. Australia still fails to see the concession of regional power by the US to China. Marles’ insistence that we live in a world of escalating strategic tension is obsolete. Our national security posture is still anchored in our conviction that the US will remain the dominant power in the Asia-Pacific. That is simply no longer the case.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong remains on the periphery with the Quad. She is also stuck with the thorny task of explaining our tacit support for the war crimes of Israel and Australia’s sketchy efforts to counter Chinese influence in the Pacific. Despite his disproportionate influence on foreign policy, Richard Marles has thus far escaped the policy scrutiny he deserves.

It is becoming obvious to many in Labor that prioritising defence over statecraft does not play to Australia’s historical strengths. No matter how much we spend on building up our armed forces to meet the expectations of the Pentagon hawks, we cannot expect to counter the military power of China. Nor should we try.

But it is realistic to rebuild our diplomatic stocks and to reclaim our aspiration as a creative and independent-minded middle power. It remains to be recognised by policymakers that the armed forces of Australia should be an instrument of foreign policy, not its master. As Gareth Evans and others have long advised, its time to articulate a foreign policy that balances traditional security and economic interests with moral decency and cooperation on global challenges.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/06/the-kentucky-colonel-who-drives-australian-foreign-policy/ 

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