Scott Morrison launched AUKUS in a blaze of marketing genius full of slogans, flags and photo opportunities. He locked us into the most expensive procurement in our history without a viable delivery schedule, then moved quietly into consulting work connected to the arms trade.

The Morrison–Dutton–Albanese Continuum

Peter Dutton, never known for nuance, doubled down. Strategy, to him, is an attitude problem solved by looking stern and buying hardware. Price tags and physics are irrelevant. Anthony Albanese is now trapped. He cannot retreat without appearing weak or confessing folly without political cost. So he performs the ritual pilgrimage to Washington, sits beside Trump like a provincial governor presenting tribute to Rome and announces new billions. Defence Minister Richard Marles, nodding beside him, recites talking points with the conviction of a man who has never tested them. Between them they embody the bipartisan reflex that passes for grand strategy in Canberra: obedience as policy, dependence as virtue.

From Gallipoli to AUKUS: The Pattern That Never Dies

Australia has a tragic genius for mistaking other people’s wars for moral duties. We bled at Gallipoli to serve an empire in decline, fought in Vietnam to halt a domino chain that never existed, invaded Iraq over weapons that were not there, and lingered in Afghanistan achieving little beyond fatigue and trauma.

Each time we invoke alliance and security, brand dissent unpatriotic, distribute talking points to a credulous media, ignore the experts, fail spectacularly, and then rewrite the history books. AUKUS follows this script scene by scene. Strategy experts such as Hugh White and Clinton Fernandes warned that dependence on America erodes our sovereignty and that our interests and American interests are not identical. They were ignored in favour of retired admirals moonlighting as defence contractors.

What We Actually Need

Australia’s geography dictates defence, not offence. We need long-range strike to hold aggressors at risk from our soil, air and drone superiority for rapid regional response, cyber and space resilience where real wars now unfold, and coastal and island defence rather than adventurism in the South China Sea. Intelligence networks and underwater sensors must protect our maritime approaches. For a fraction of the AUKUS bill we could build a sovereign, integrated defence designed in Australia for Australia. But that requires courage: to tell Washington ‘no’ and to tell the tabloids we are fine without a new crusade.

The Trump Reality Check

Trump’s return should have jolted Canberra awake. His foreign policy is whimsical performance, one day praising Kim Jong-un, the next threatening NATO, the next inviting Putin to the G7. Yet there was Albanese, praising their ‘fantastic friendship’ and pledging billions more. If AUKUS were sound, we would not need to beg reassurance from the most volatile US president in memory. The Americans would be courting us. Instead, we go hat in hand, confusing deference for diplomacy. Client states flatter. Sovereign states negotiate.

Subs We Cannot Crew to Fight Wars That Will Not Happen

AUKUS is the culmination of our imperial hangover. It combines obsolete technology in an age of drones with geography that defeats its purpose, industrial bottlenecks that guarantee delay, and a strategic rationale contradicted by its authors. Political cowardice is dressed as resolve. We are spending a generation’s wealth on submarines we probably will not get, cannot crew, cannot fuel, to fight wars Washington has already priced out of its plans.

Hugh White was right. AUKUS collapses under its contradictions. The Americans who understand strategy oppose it. Those who support it reject its premise. The technology is dated, the delivery schedule fantasy, the sovereignty illusory. Yet we proceed because in Canberra inertia passes for patriotism. By the time a royal commission finally asks how it went wrong, Morrison will be consulting, Dutton retired, Albanese writing his memoirs, and we will still be paying for submarines that never sailed. AUKUS will not destroy us because the boats fail. It will destroy us because we will spend decades proving they were doomed, dismantling everything else we might have built instead. That is not the tyranny of distance. It is the tyranny of delusion.