CANBERRA –

The Donald Trump presidency has the potential to mark an inflection point in the evolution of America's alliance arrangements from Europe to the Pacific. On Nov. 20 this paper reported that with Trump coming to power, Japan could pivot away from U.S.-centric policy. Because of Trump's "America first" policy, some argue, Japan may need to chart a more self-reliant foreign policy. Trump has a history of demanding that U.S. allies in Europe and the Pacific, instead of free-riding on the American taxpayer, accept a bigger share of the costs of their defense. But if they become self-reliant in paying for national security, almost inevitably they will also pursue a more self-reliant diplomacy as well.

Thus the election of Trump could prove a disruptive force in forcing many allies to engage in a clear-eyed and hard-headed analysis of the costs, risks and constraints of the U.S. alliance alongside the security, diplomatic and economic benefits. In consequence, Australia too could emerge from the shadow of the U.S. alliance as a self-confident and independent Indo-Pacific actor. During its two-year term on the United Nations Security Council, for example, Australia was able simultaneously to advance the common Western agenda on some issues while leveraging its close relations with Washington to advantage in promoting some of its own priorities. With Trump, however, the fundamental question of a coincidence of interests and convergence of values can no longer be avoided.

Yet, reinforced by the strategically foolish entanglements in Vietnam and Iraq, the perception persists in several quarters that often Australia plays a lickspittle role of deputy sheriff to Uncle Sam. A recent example of this is Australia being one of 38 countries to vote against the U.N. resolution on Oct. 27 for a treaty to ban nuclear arms that was supported by 123 countries. As noted in an earlier article in these pages (Nov. 5), this put Australia on the wrong side of history, geography (all Asia-Pacific countries save U.S. allies Australia, Japan and South Korea voted for the ban treaty) and humanity. Given all we know about Trump's erratic and volatile temperament, his election as U.S. president should elevate nuclear disarmament to the very top of Australia's foreign policy priority.

In the 1980s, New Zealand split off from ANZUS (the Australia-New Zealand-U.S. security treaty) because its core value of opposing the nuclear dimensions of the alliance could not be accommodated within it. Charting an independent Australian foreign policy according to a Canberra-based calculation of national values and interests does not require a break from ANZUS. However, as with New Zealand in the 1980s, if the alliance is seen to require a total subordination of Australia's voice, vote and interests to U.S. demands, then calls for cutting the security umbilical cord will gain currency. Thus a visibly independent foreign policy on matters important to Australia may well prove to be the most effective strategy for preserving the core of the alliance.

Australia is located in the Indo-Pacific region, must survive economically and strategically in this region, and must define its international role at least in part through this immutable geographical reality. To date, Australia has successfully navigated the gravitational pull of a resurgent Asia with the civilizational pull of European cultural and political heritage. Its historical memories, cultural antecedents and the ideas on which its society was constructed were primarily European. But its contemporary interests are increasingly far-flung and diverse. Although the historical origins and cultural roots of most Australians lie in Europe, their primary strategic alliance is with the United States, their primary security focus is on the Indo-Pacific region, and their major trading partners are in Northeast Asia.

Australia's security policy, framed by the belief that the Western Pacific must be dominated by an Anglo-Saxon maritime power, has given priority to supporting its ally's primacy. Now the U.S. is engaged for strategic primacy in the Pacific with China as the latter morphs from a continental to a maritime great power, with increasing power projection capability. While Trump has indicated a preference for cooling tensions with Russia in Europe, which is welcome, he has also threatened to escalate trade and possibly strategic tensions with China, which is high risk.

Both Beijing and the world are having to adjust to the new reality of China as the rising global player. Previously, the ascendant and triumphalist West wrote the rules and made all the big decisions on the international economy, trade, and peace and security. Now there is a significant economic, geopolitical and even moral rebalancing in train in global norms, institutions and practices. This may be unsettling and uncomfortable for Westerners, but the implications cannot just be wished away.

There is of course some risk that a posture of appeasement toward China will set the stage for conflict down the road. The bigger risk of falling into the Thucydides trap of war during power transitions will come from the U.S. trying to thwart China's legitimate aspirations and attacking its interests, particularly in the context of two centuries of slights, injustices and humiliations inflicted on China by the West and Japan.

In Chinese eyes, Australia appears to have joined the U.S. in a de facto containment strategy. What Americans portray as "rebalancing" can be (mis)read as "overbalancing" or even an attempted "counterbalancing" against China's growing presence and clout in the region, with Australia constituting the southern bastion of the containment strategy. Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser was not alone in worrying that, under the rhetorical rubric of a strategic pivot to Asia and with Australian collusion, Washington was turning China into an enemy that China does not wish to be and Australia does not need.

Before his death, Fraser became progressively more skeptical of the value, utility and reliability of the U.S. alliance. Doubtful of the quality of decision-making in Washington, he became increasingly vocal at the folly of surrendering an independent capacity to decide whether or not to go to war by stationing U.S. troops and hosting U.S. facilities in Australia. Given Fraser's lack of faith in their policy toward China in particular, the ever closer bonds between the Australian and U.S. militaries left him distinctly uneasy.

In a hard-hitting analysis published in an influential U.S. journal just before his death, Fraser argued that Australia had "effectively ceded to America the ability to decide when Australia goes to war" even as their value systems had diverged. Much of recent U.S. policies on the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia had been "arbitrary, imprudent and capricious." Its strategic decisions vis-a-vis China were especially "ill balanced and dangerous" and could leave Australia as "a defeated ally of a defeated superpower." Consequently, "Our task is not to embrace America, but to preserve ourselves from its reckless overreach."

How much more will this analysis resonate after the new administration takes office in January, especially if in developing and implementing his foreign policy agenda Trump fails to moderate electioneering rhetoric as foreshadowed by Ralph Cossa in these pages?

Ramesh Thakur is director of the Center for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University.