I keep referencing Canada’s PM Mark Carney as he is the only political leader I know who has called out where we are and the choices we need to make.
”When the world fundamentally changes we must respond with new approaches…”
We have passed a tipping point where the old way of doing business at the political level, the defence level, the environmental level, the societal level and potentially the economic level is not able to cope with the speed of change and more importantly the interactions between these changes. Something must change. Each of us is going to have to make a choice in the next few years - do we want to help design our future or do we have it done to us.
The ‘rule of law’ no longer applies
Humans find it easier to assume that the future will continue on a steady, upward path but any reading of history shows that the past is a series of phase transitions or ruptures that result in a ‘new normal’, a world that is fundamentally different from what has become before it.
President Putin and the return to the USSR
President Putin has been the most aggressive of the three great power Hegemons. As the table below shows Russia has been actively exercising its military power under his rule. There is every indication that Putin will not stop with his invasion of Ukraine unless he is defeated or removed.
The false premise that Putin promotes is that Ukraine belongs to Russia. The historical record as shown below shows just how false this premise is. Modern Russia has its origins in what is now Ukraine.
President Trump and the US break with ‘rules based order’
The US which acted as the world’s super power, was also largely responsible for what is called the ‘rules based order’. Most people suggest that this order ‘broke’ in 2025 with the re-election of President Trump and his aggressive tariff and military policies.
The new US Defense Strategy was released in January 2026.
This strategy exhibits a fundamental break from previous US Defense Strategy as shown in the table below. It also asserts its ‘might is right’ approach to the US domination of the Western World.
The US prior to President Trump exercised its military power leading coalitions it formed and organised. Under President Trump we have seen attacks on Venezuela and with Israel on Iran. These are the actions of a Hegemonic President and should not be seen as anything but an exercise in raw power. Combined with his use of tariffs as an exercise of economic power, President Trump has destroyed any belief in a ‘rules based order’ led by the country most responsible for creating and supporting this concept -at the same time as being one of the principle beneficiaries.
President Xi and return to ‘great China’
The third Hegemon that we need to fear is President Xi and the CCP. While China has wielded most of its power by economic means it has been active with military action.
The reason we need to fear President Xi and the CCP is that, just like Russia, China has argued that periods of its historical control give it the right to absorb other countries. The two most important examples are shown below:
Now that China has fully incorporated Tibet and gone a long way to destroying the Tibetan culture it is arguing that it has the right to control Taiwan, including by force if the Taiwanese people continue to want to remain independent.
The biggest lie by the CCP is it use of the nine-dash line to argue its right to control the seas within this zone. At no time has China had exercised administrative control of this zone, and this another example of how history is distorted to legitimize a grab for power.
China is not just using military force or the threat of military force to exert control. It actively uses trade coercion to demonstrate its hegemonic powers.
The new reality - US military is no longer preeminent
The war with Iran has demonstrated the limits of US power. In fact, Iran has won the war and we are just waiting to see what the end state will be. My assumptions is that Iran will control the Strait of Hormuz and will end up as a nuclear power. The only hope for the US to achieve any of its war aims is if the Iranian regime is overthrown.
The extent of this loss of military supremacy against a well prepared enemy is what is also happening in the Ukrainian/Russian war. In recent military exercises in which Ukrainian drone operators have participated they have played a dominant role and demonstrated that NATO military doctrine needed to be transformed.
“Exercise Hedgehog 2025 exposed an uncomfortable reality for NATO: the alliance’s logistics system, built for secure rear areas and deliberate decision cycles, cannot survive in a battlefield defined by constant surveillance, rapid targeting, and cheap attritable drones. In short, NATO’s system cannot be adapted, it must be transformed” (HEDGEHOG 2025: PRICKLY LOGISTICS IN A TRANSPARENT BATTLEFIELD)
What it means for each of us?
If you accept the premise that the world ‘rules based order’ for all its imperfections, is broken beyond repair, there are some hard choices to be made. I am influenced by my personal history of being actively involved in the anti-war movement in 1971 including anti-conscription siege at the University of Melbourne, and the Halt All Racial Tours campaign against the all white Springbok Tour. I remember shouting slogans like “Smash US Imperialism” at some of the big protests against the Vietnam War.
I also remember arguing with my father who had retired from the Australian Navy and who had joined the Navy as a naval cadet at 13, was at war by 17 and was involved in naval support during the Korean and Vietnam wars about protesting against the Vietnam War. I wasn’t clear if he supported the Vietnam war but he did think that the Americans had created an excuse to scale up its war effort in the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The one thing that my father did that has stuck with me every since was to ask me - “if you are against the war, what would you do instead?”. A question I am still struggling to answer.
Over time my opinions have changed - I am no longer ‘anti-war’ but I am also clear that Australians should not be sent to war overseas without Parliament voting to approve the war. One recommendation:
“For each military deployment, the Australian Government should provide and routinely update a clear statement of national interests and strategy. The strategy statement should include the elements of power to be used, the end state to be achieved, an indication of the exit strategy and likely time frame for the commitment of force.” (former Australian Army chief, Peter Leahy, quoted in ‘Parliament and the Australian way of war’, The Strategist, 2022
As a person who strongly advocates ‘participatory democracy’ I think we, the people, should be consulted to agree to the National Defence Strategy for each election cycle. As someone who is too old to fight, I don’t want, as a matter of principle, to ever commit anyone to a war. I also don’t want to see our armed forces committed to endless, futile wars like Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan as way to ‘buy US protection’.
Blame the Government, Not the People
The other thing we must do is to separate power structures from the people in these countries. I am fearful of the coercion that the CCP will use to exert control over the countries in its regional hegemony. I don’t blame, and I will never blame, the Chinese people or the Russian or Iranian people. They are controlled and brainwashed and are effectively powerless to resist - just look at the Tibetans, Hong Kong and Iranian people and see where resistance has got them.
Democratic Coalition - opt in only
I think people living in democracies where we do have the right and ability to change governments must stop trying to solve problems of ‘evil governments’. We need a new approach, one where we form a single super coalition of all the democratic countries. Leave the UN to do what it can but build a new coalition of willing participants to focus on things that benefit all these countries. Build resilience by cooperation with the only requirement that there are free elections overseen by a new independent electoral commission. This approach will be instantly opposed by the US who is already trying to break the EU as it doesn’t want another power bloc that it cannot coerce or bully.
Offer entry to this new coalition to any country that is prepared to agree to the principles and values of democratic countries and focus on defence, trade and resilience allowing each country to manage itself and its own coalitions and interests. Stop trying to fix broken countries with problems that cannot be solved externally and focus efforts on making a new coalition something the peoples in these countries want to join so that when an opportunity arises there is a clear path forward for them to choose to enter this democratic coalition.
Just like the EU there will be some conditions of entry around how a country qualifies, to ensure people have the basic freedoms necessary for a democracy to function and that corruption is not so widespread that it destroys effective democracy. Think of this democratic coalition as an “EU lite” - no single currency, no parliament, and limited bureaucracy, primarily to validate that elections are free and fair, with cooperation focused on defence and resilience.
Australia now needs to choose a strategy
It’s time we accept the reality that the US enforced ‘world order’ is broken and it will not be coming back. The US military defeat in its war with Iran has demonstrated that the US is no longer a military super power that can enforce its will anywhere in the world. The new ways of war, including the hybrid war being waged by Russia against Europe, combined with the inability of the US to protect its bases, results in a US that will not fight China over an Taiwan invasion.
If you accept this premise you need to rename Plan B to Plan A and start preparing for the new world of hegemons where middle powers like Australia cannot trust the US as much as we can’t trust China. The US only needs bases in Australia while they are prepared to try and contain China and protect Taiwan. Once the reality of their inability to fight China, close to China is accepted then Australia is irrelevant to US interests.
Australia needs partners - we need a NATO for the Pacific, where we agree with Japan, South Korea and any other countries who may be prepared to stand-up to China to sign a collective defence agreement. How long before Japan and South Korea look at developing their own nuclear deterrence when they can no longer rely on the US?
We need to follow Canada’s policy and reduce our economic dependencies on China as rapidly as possible. We need to support Ukraine and partner with them to develop new low-cost defence technologies as soon as possible, and most importantly we need Ukraine to win in its war with Russia. Australia has supported Ukraine. We need to fund and partner with leading Ukraine defence firms to licence the manufacture of all the major drone and missile categories in Australia while supplying these drones and missiles back to Ukraine. Canada has shown how much we should seek to contribute and we all need to demand more support for Ukraine.
The UK has shown what a joint partnership with Ukraine might look like. Developing this type of partnership with Ukraine and the UK would help reduce our reliance on the US as a defence supplier while accelerating our exposure to and use of the latest defence technologies. Ukraine’s focus on developing anti-ballistic missile systems in partnership with NATO members could also give us access to this technology at a much lower cost than we could obtain it from the US, and potentially within a few years instead of being near the back of the queue for access to Patriot anti-missile systems.
How participatory democracy could select a Defence strategy
If China were to try to take over Taiwan would people in Australia or New Zealand be asked if they would support the US and its allies in resisting this attack? If China does invade Taiwan the politicians in Australia and New Zealand won’t have time to ask if people support a war with China.
These type of decisions need to be discussed now. Taiwan and Ukraine have been excluded from any of these alliances because countries are afraid of the power that China and Russia can exert. Waiting too long guarantees that the hegemons including the US will use both economic and military coercion without effective push-back.
The chart below has been created as an example of what could be asked at the next election to help define the Government’s Defence strategy for the next electoral cycle. We can move from having to elect a government on its promises that is then capable of taking us into a war with no effective agreement from the Parliament, let alone the Australian people. I don’t think that this is good enough. Let me know in your comments or emails if you think that we should allow a government to take a country to war without any guidance at all from the people who will suffer and die in the war.
What about Israel and the Palestinians?
I need to be clear that I totally oppose the war Israel is waging on the Palestinian people. Israel has the right to exist but they are replicating what was done to them in the early stages of Hitler’s solution to the ‘Jewish problem’. At the same time I totally oppose the way Hamas has acted. Are they really fighting for the Palestine people or their own power over their people? This is a wicked problem and one that I don’t think anyone has a viable solution at this time.
Reference Information
Both AIs have checked the final version of these charts, maps and tables. Treat them with skepticism, but they provide information in minutes that would take me hours or longer to compile and create. This article has no AI input except for basic editorial review.