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From Schwartz Media, I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

Deep inside Australia’s foreign policy and defence establishment there are whispers that we should be considering an unsettling thought: that we could soon be dealing with a second Donald Trump presidency.

He’s facing dozens of indictments, and the charges carry hundreds of years in jail… but none of it is denting his popularity with Republican voters.

Today, associate editor of The Saturday Paper, Martin McKenzie-Murray – on Trump, Australia’s dependence on America and the future of our alliance.

It’s Tuesday, September 5.

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ANGE:

Marty, Donald Trump's mug shot the other week was instantly iconic, and he's using it to bolster his campaign to become president again. And it does seem wild that an indicted presidential candidate can attract voters. But I guess this is America. How is his popularity tracking?

MARTY:

It is a period of unprecedented weirdness, that's for sure. For a former president, as well as presidential candidate facing a battering of criminal indictments, most recently for conspiring to overthrow the 2020 election. And yet, despite this, or perhaps Ange because of it, his popularity, at least among his base and Republican voters, is still extraordinary.

He is light years ahead of all of the other Republican candidates.

Audio excerpt -- Reporter:

“There were 26 different demographic groups that got broken down, you know how many of those groups Donald Trump didn’t lead amongst? Zero.”

MARTY:

And Trump, early in 2016 on the campaign trail, boasted it was only half joking, I think, when he said I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and I wouldn't lose any voters.

Audio excerpt -- Donald Trump:

“...could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and I wouldn't lose any voters. It’s like incredible…”

MARTY:

And this is just about being borne out. Right.

And the reason his popularity is undiminished is that for many, when that mug shot that you referenced came out, it was instantly iconic, but it also signified different things to different people. For millions It signified the strange American dysfunction.

Audio excerpt -- MSNBC Reporter:

“There's a pathos to that look. There's an anger to that look.”

MARTY:

For others, it signified Trump's martyrdom.

Audio excerpt -- FOX NEWS Reporter:

“It's a handsome mug shot. My wife says he looks fierce. He looks hard. But he doesn't look scared. Does he?”

MARTY:

This is evidence of a persecutorial conspiracy arranged against him by the deep state. And if you have bought into the view that Trump is subject to a prosecutorial plot, then any additional indictment, I think, is just further evidence of that.

ANGE:

And I guess seeing that mug shot makes it hard for us to ignore Donald Trump or to ignore the idea of a Donald Trump presidency returning to the White House. How seriously do you think senior Australian government officials, experts are considering this idea?

MARTY:

Yeah, well, I spoke to two men quite eminent in this field about that question and others about Australia's military posture relationship with the US as well as China.

One being Sam Roggeveen who’s the director of the Lowy Institute's International Security Program. He's also a former senior analyst at the Office of National Assessments, which is a peak intelligence body, and he's just published a book called The Echidna Strategy, which is a lengthy and very thoughtful thesis on Australia's ideal military posture.

The other man I spoke to about Trump and these other matters is Bob Carr, former Foreign Affairs minister.

There's a popular characterisation at the moment, which is America is in decline, perhaps terminal decline. What I would point out is that if America is having a nervous breakdown, I don't think it is. It's had worse once before.

And I remind listeners of the 1970s in America. This was a time of much greater political violence, street violence, of murders, of economic instability. Much greater inflation. Assassinations, aircraft hijackings. And. And very pronounced domestic terrorism. The early seventies, there was a period of 18 months in the early 1970s where there were 2500 bombings on American soil.

We’ve kind of forgotten this, as Bob Carr told me American pathologies and that there's a multitude of them congressional dysfunction, enormous civic discord, great divisions along lines of race and class. These can coexist with an extraordinarily resilient and inventive economy, a cultural dynamism, and its distinctive projection of global power. These things can all coexist.

ANGE:

Right. So I guess what you're saying is that even if America does face this period of, you know, economic chaos or domestic chaos, it doesn't really matter because they've proven to have weathered periods of chaos before and bounce back. But one thing I guess that has changed is that Australia is more dependent on America than ever before for our defence. And surely that means the prospect of a Trump presidency could have a real impact here.

MARTY:

Yeah, I think so. And this is where I think it's unavoidable to bring up AUKUS.

Audio excerpt -- Joe Biden:

“...Welcome Prime Minister Albanese and Prime Minister Sunak, It’s my honour to welcome you both to the United States as we take the next critical step in advancing the Australia US UK partnership, AUKUS.”

MARTY:

That arrangement is historically significant, not just for the enormous expenditure, but for how profoundly and intimately it tethers us to America.

And implicit in the AUKUS arrangement is an assumption that Sam Roggeveen says is highly questionable, that American interest in maintaining its primacy in the Pacific will continue.

And he argues quite persuasively that that's just simply not the case.

Audio excerpt -- Sam Roggeveen:

“But things are changing. Things are different now. And not only has China emerged as a major challenger to American power, but at the same time, we've chosen this moment in Australia to effectively double down on the alliance. And really, my point is that we should be thinking less about the strength of America as a nation and much more about America's motivation to maintain its power in Asia.”

MARTY:

So if we're thinking about another Trump presidency and look at some of the qualities of his first and see what might maintain, Trump is, as we know, incredibly volatile, erratic, impulsive, I would describe him as a narcissistic outlaw. As Sam Roggeveen event points out he's been remarkably consistent on at least one thing and has been for decades, and that is his suspicion of multilateral organisations and alliances, particularly defence alliances in Europe. He's been contemptuous of these. He sees them as kind of parasitic.

Audio excerpt -- Donald Trump:

“We have NATO, and we’re giving countries a free ride. NATO is obsolete, it’s old, it’s fat, it’s sloppy and it doesn’t talk about terrorism…”

MARTY:

So these tendencies, these suspicions, this contempt for alliances. Was in some ways thwarted and resisted by his administration. Could they do so, would they do so, has Trump wised up in a second presidency? So that devolution, his indifference or contempt for international alliances is a really kind of alarming quality of a potential second Trump presidency. And it should alarm us.

ANGE:

Coming up after the break - Is America really committed to Australia and our region?

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ANGE:

So, Marty, we've been talking about the US alliance with Australia and what the future of that might be. It sounds like that's kind of hard to predict right now, but what do we know about America's commitment to our region?

MARTY:

It's in decline. Sam Roggeveen says that America has never seen an adversary in relative terms as powerful as China at the moment.

America isn't committed to maintaining its primacy in the Pacific. But our AUKUS arrangement assumes that it will be. And this is erroneous, argues Roggeveen.

Audio excerpt -- Sam Roggeveen:

“At the heart of it is this basic calculation: Why are we here? Why is the United States in the Asia-Pacific region? Now, that was an easy question to answer before China became big. You didn't have to confront that central question because it was relatively cheap and risk free to remain the biggest military power in Asia. But now, of course, it's incredibly risky and it's incredibly costly. So it doesn’t have a good enough reason.”

MARTY:

It's over a decade now since President Obama declared his so-called Pacific pivot, where the Middle East would be de-emphasised and troops would eventually be withdrawn, and the greater interest and emphasis of the projection of American power would be the Pacific, that never really came to anything. And when earlier this year there were several quite grave and ominous warnings from senior military officials, some public, some within private correspondence within the military, including generals, were gravely warning of the imminence of war with China. When I spoke with analysts earlier this year about their thoughts on that, that was saying, well, there's a curious discrepancy between the ominousness of these warnings of imminent war with China and the lack of a commensurate build up or deployment of troops in the Pacific.

Audio excerpt -- Sam Roggeveen:

“So China has over the last 30 years embarked on the biggest military modernisation program of any country since the Second World War. It's truly impressive. And the United States really hasn't responded in a way that would suggest it is prepared to counter that.”

MARTY:

So Roggeveen stresses that we cannot assume that America is going to consistently have this kind of interest and that our dependency upon America should not be so severe as it is with the AUKUS arrangement. What we need to be doing, he argues, is arranging our military posture, what he calls the Echidna strategy. To become unthreatening but very painful to attack.

And we should also be emphasising not our military but our diplomatic capacity, and we should be helping to arrange a balancing of power in the Pacific rather than assuming American interests in the Pacific are going to remain. And the final point to that is, he says, with the AUKUS arrangement, we suddenly make ourselves much more vulnerable to Chinese attack.

So Roggeveen emphasises the fact that our distance, our remoteness is a great advantage, that London is closer to Beijing than Sydney is, and that at the moment, despite the awesome power of the Chinese military, it's still unthinkable, way too difficult and costly for it to project its power to Australia. That calculus, however, changes if we become, as AUKUS describes. Basically a military stronghold for the US. So we've become a place from which the US can launch attacks to China. And keeping in mind that there's two countries, China and the United States, are nuclear powers, and the threat of escalation is a deeply sobering one.

ANGE:

Right. So some of the experts you've spoken to have been talking about how America might not be as all in the Pacific as Australia is counting on them to be. Is it worrying then, do you think, that there hasn't been more of a debate around AUKUS and if that arrangement is really serving our best interests?

MARTY:

Emphatically yes. So. In newspapers, academic journals, think tank websites, there's been some very substantial analysis. There's been some rigorous debate held in good faith. I don't think this extends to the Australian Government, however.

After that public signing in San Diego of the AUKUS arrangement, there was the sudden death of Simon Crean, former Labor leader. And his death was followed by obituaries, all of which conspicuously made mention of his opposition to the Iraq war 20 years ago.

Audio excerpt -- Simon Crean:

“Sadly tonight, we are a deeply divided nation, we are divided because the government has committed us to a war we should not be in…”

MARTY:

And his suspicion that our relationship with the United States was special and very obviously we shared very deep, profound values. However, he had a suspicion that our support or John Howard support was recklessly and belittlingly unqualified.

Audio excerpt -- Simon Crean:

“Because of the store Labor puts in this relationship, it concerns us that the course Mr Howard is taking our nation may lead some Australians to question the value of the alliance.”

MARTY:

Now, it's interesting to contrast Simon Crean's attitude and position with Labour's deference now. And that's not to say there aren't misgivings inside Labour about AUKUS. But as we've seen recently at Labour's national conference, where they endorsed the inclusion of AUKUS into the party platform, the debate was insipid, almost non-existent.

ANGE:

Marty, I think it's clear that this whole thing is bigger than Trump. It's not even about who becomes president at all or what side of politics they're from. It's about what the US thinks about Australia, right? So does America really care about us?

MARTY:

The short answer is yes, we'll have the ANZUS Treaty Collective Defence Agreement, which is nearly 75 years old and very important. We'll still remain a member of the Five Eyes Intelligence Band with America and other allies. But AUKUS does profoundly tether us in unusual ways and I think in questionable ways.

And so Trump or no Trump the idea of the US at great, great cost and great difficulty maintaining its influence or primacy in the Pacific seems at least as Sam Roggeveen basically argues, highly unlikely. We've put all of our eggs in the American basket. I'm not sure where that leaves us.

ANGE:

Marty, thanks so much for your time.

MARTY:

Thank you.

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ANGE:

Also in the news today…

Qantas has acknowledged that its reputation has been badly damaged by accusations that it sold flights it knew were cancelled, and has offered an apology to customers for its standard of service.

The airline released a statement on Monday, saying: “The ACCC’s allegations come at a time when Qantas’ reputation has already been hit hard on several fronts.”

And…

Liberal MP Zoe McKenzie has spoken out in parliament about the robo-debt scheme, calling it, “one of the poorest chapters” of public administration in Australian history.

McKenzie said she felt the need to speak out about the findings of the robo-debt royal commission because she believed the Liberal Party should be the party of personal responsibility and that lessons had to be learned from what went wrong.

I’m Ange McCormack, this is 7am. We’ll be back tomorrow.

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