Since the end of World War II, Australia has enjoyed an ideologically simple security environment: all its core allies have been liberal democracies, and all its foes have been illiberal. The United States, the architect and defender of the liberal rules-based world order, has long served as Australia’s most important security guarantor against illiberal foes.
But this simple division of the world into liberal allies and illiberal foes has ended, at least for now and perhaps for good.
Although the US still operates under a formally democratic system, the administration currently setting its foreign policy is openly and proudly illiberal. To a growing number of Europeans, the US is even beginning to look something like an antagonist. Meanwhile, the US remains Australia’s top security partner.
In this ideologically complex security environment, Australia faces difficult choices as it seeks to ensure its security, its sovereignty and the integrity of its democratic political system.
The Trump administration has little time for liberal international norms. ‘I don’t need international law,’ Donald Trump told The New York Times on 8 January, days after he ordered military seizure of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, a move condemned by some US allies as a violation of the UN charter. Amid the US-Israeli war against Iran, Trump this week said ‘a whole civilisation will die tonight’ in Iran unless leaders in Tehran opened the Strait of Hormuz – a threat that prompted a rebuke from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Though previous US administrations have sometimes acted in apparent violation of international law when dealing with adversaries, this administration’s open disdain for the multilateral organisations and treaties that comprise the liberal international system is unprecedented. The Trump administration has sanctioned the International Criminal Court, slashed funding to UN aid agencies and withdrawn from more than 60 international organisations and UN bodies.
The Trump administration’s hostility towards the liberal democracies of Europe is also unprecedented. The White House wants to annex Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark, a US NATO ally, and has even raised the possibility of using military force to do so. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said a US takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO. In December, Denmark designated the US as a potential security concern, noting that it ‘uses economic power, including threats of high tariffs, to enforce its will and no longer rules out the use of military force, even against allies.’
Washington’s new National Security Strategy also calls for the US to engage in political interference in European democracies, saying US policy should prioritise ‘cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.’ Britain’s Liberal Democrats, the third-largest party in Parliament, have called for the US to be included in Britain’s ongoing inquiry into hostile foreign state interference. The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy ‘reflects nothing less than an explicit call for interference in European politics – including our own,’ they say.
In fact, the only ideological foe identified in the National Security Strategy is liberal democracy itself; there’s no mention of Chinese or Russian authoritarianism.
The US’s divergence from 80 years of commitment to liberal allies and older commitment to liberal values poses grave concerns for Australia’s security and sovereignty.
Because the US and Australia formerly shared a common vision for the world, Australia could comfortably allow itself to rely on the US in the realms of security, trade and diplomacy. It could trust that the US would almost never abuse that reliance with demands violating Australia’s values and laws.
Now Australia can have no such confidence.
The clearest hazard is that the US may try to interfere with Australia’s domestic decision-making and political processes. It’s not hard to envision what this might look like. The new social media ban for children under 16 – a law adopted through Australia’s robust democratic processes – has already attracted ire from Elon Musk, and has prompted American tech giants to file a complaint with the US Trade Representative’s office alleging unfair treatment of US companies.
Don’t expect that this issue will be addressed through normal legal, trade and diplomatic channels, as it would have been during any previous US administration. Trump administration broadsides against Europe and the European Union, for example, are due in part to anger at EU regulations that affect US social media companies. The Trump administration took the extraordinary step in May 2025 of placing visa sanctions – a tool usually reserved for gross human-rights violators, criminals and those with ties to terrorism – on five people, including EU citizens, for their advocacy of the regulations. Such measures, analogous to China’s visa bans on those who displease it, are a form of coercion aimed at controlling speech and changing decision-making within democracies. Australia could easily be next.
It’s also crucial to note that the root causes of the Trump administration’s ideological ire against western Europe also apply to Australia. These are the factors it sees behind what it’s called Europe’s impending ‘civilisational erasure’: the decline of Christianity; a broad embrace of LGBT rights; and mass immigration from non-Western countries that has greatly changed European demographics. These factors are all present in Australia as well.
The Trump administration has yet to openly align itself with Australia’s far right in the precedent-breaking way that the Republican Party has aligned itself with Alternative for Germany and Hungary’s Fidesz party. But the leader of Australia’s far-right One Nation party, Pauline Hanson, visited Mar-a-Lago in November and gave a speech to gathered conservatives praising Trump’s approach. Given One Nation’s dramatic rise in polls this year, such outreach should be taken seriously.
Additionally, as the US adopts a more openly illiberal posture, Australia could face greater uncertainty over how much sensitive AUKUS technology Washington is willing to share, program delays driven by political swings in Washington, and growing expectations to align targeting or force posture more closely with US preferences.
In this strange new world, Australia is manoeuvring carefully. The government has sought to affirm the US–Australia alliance where it can while standing firm on certain key issues, such as supporting Denmark’s basic sovereignty and declining Trump’s demand to send Australian naval vessels to help the US open the Strait of Hormuz.
This approach is reasonable. It can minimise, though not remove, the risk of direct confrontation with an administration that has shown its willingness to clobber allies with punishing tariffs and other forms of coercion.
Australia has also pursued stronger trade and security ties with the world’s remaining liberal democracies. Australia and the EU signed a sweeping trade deal in March. Negotiations for it began years ago, but the move to diversify trade and security ties to reduce reliance on the US fits the current moment well.
This is an approach that the government should continue to pursue vigorously. Stronger and more diverse ties to other democracies could help expand Australia’s options in the face of coercion from any illiberal government. The transatlantic alliance and the larger rules-based order may not recover to a pre-2025 state. Australia’s leaders should make plans for a future in which it does not.
There is an alternative scenario that, while unlikely, should not be ruled out as impossible. Australian voters may choose to join Western illiberalism. Britain, France and Germany have all seen once-unthinkable electoral triumphs for their own far-right movements. In Australia, One Nation is outpolling the traditional conservative opposition.
An Australian far-right government would likely not be good news for the rules-based order, but it could reduce the tension between US and Australian values and foreign policy – if it were to happen while the US were still led by an illiberal far right. For those who prioritise the US–Australia security alliance over the preservation of liberal democratic values and the rules-based order, this could be an acceptable outcome.
Australian hasn’t yet been seriously tested by the second Trump administration. If or when it is, regardless of which option Australia chooses, one thing is clear: there’s no going back to how the world used to be.
This article has been amended to say that the Australian government should vigorously diversify trade and security ties.
