Has ANZUS turned Australia into a target

Second, elements of US strategic behaviour have at times appeared reckless or poorly calibrated, raising the probability that Australia could be pulled into crises not of its own making. ANZUS and AUKUS lock Canberra into American decision-making cycles with limited independent leverage.

In a fast-moving kinetic exchange, Australian territory could be sacrificed or treated as expendable while the primary US homeland remained relatively insulated.

Australia continues to display a cultural and institutional reluctance to conduct a clear-eyed audit of its actual geopolitical position. Successive governments and the defence establishment have treated the US alliance as an article of faith rather than a policy choice subject to continuous re-evaluation against changing technology, relative power, and national interest.

The result is a posture that maximises Australia’s value as a staging platform while minimising its freedom to stay out of distant confrontations. An independent foreign and defence policy, or at least a more genuinely neutral stance would not eliminate all risk, but it would reduce the incentives for any adversary to treat the Australian continent as a primary target in a U.S.-centric conflict.

The original logic of ANZUS rested on a different technological and strategic environment. Missiles and drones of today’s sophistication were not part of the 1951 calculation. Neither was the scale of integrated US presence now visible across Australian facilities.

Defence policy must adapt to these realities rather than cling to mid-twentieth-century assumptions. A serious national conversation is required. One that weighs the genuine benefits of alliance cooperation against the concrete increase in targeting risk, examines whether Australia’s security is better served by deep entanglement or by greater self-reliance and regional diplomacy, and asks whether the nation is prepared to accept the possibility of becoming collateral in someone else’s war.

Continuing on the present path without such a review is not prudence, it is the uncritical acceptance of elevated vulnerability. Australia’s geography once conferred a measure of natural protection. Policy choices are steadily eroding that advantage. It is time to rethink the foundations of the pro-US defence orientation before the next crisis tests those assumptions in the harshest possible way.