13 March 2026
Published in the Australian and Substack
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Australian forces have long been fastidious about “rules of engagement”, but sending personnel to their bunks while their US submarine torpedoed an Iranian frigate takes this combat caution to new levels. What kind of an ally puts its sailors on warships as tourists, should action beckon; and how can Australians learn how to operate nuclear-powered submarines, if they go missing when the pressure is on?
The whole point of an alliance, as opposed to a protectorate, is that allies are prepared to take risks on each other’s behalf. Allies put their armed forces into combat to support each other, as opposed to simply subcontracting their national security to someone else. It’s precisely because America’s European allies have treated NATO as a protectorate, requiring almost no responsibility from them, that the durability of the world’s greatest alliance in now in doubt. And by opting-out of the Iran war, even Britain and Australia, formerly America’s most reliable brothers-in-arms, have become strategic shirkers, leaving the US to do all the heavy lifting without us.
What’s not to support in the American-Israeli strike on Iran? The mullahs’ regime has routinely threatened to obliterate both America and Israel (the two “Satans”); has waged direct or proxy war against nearly all its neighbours; has sponsored terrorism around the globe (including the fire-bombing of Jewish premises in Australia and attacks on anti-regime campaigners in Britain); and has killed untold numbers of its own citizens, tens of thousands just two months ago. Even if the current air-assault does no more than utterly destroy the Iranian war machine and further set back its nuclear ambitions, Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu have done the whole world a massive favour.
Australia says it supports the US action but has not lifted a finger to help. Indeed, by requiring our personnel on the USS Charlotte Los Angeles class submarine to stand down, we may actually have hindered US operations (even if only in a minor way). Imagine the captain being told that three of his crew were now passengers; imagine the Australian personnel facing the humiliation of standing aside from their crew mates’ mission?
Everything the Albanese government does exposes the fact that its senior members see themselves as social justice activists rather than the national security warriors these times demand. Even though Labor ministers, from the PM down, admit that these are the most dangerous strategic circumstances since the late 1930s, not only does the Albanese government stubbornly refuse to lift defence spending, it’s cannibalising every other element of our armed forces in order to pay for AUKUS submarines sometime next decade. This is despite the acknowledged immediate and multiplying threats to a “rules based global order” that’s only existed while America and its allies have been able to intimidate predators from challenging it.
But it’s not just a failure to take seriously our current military preparedness. As exemplified by the red-carding of our personnel on the USS Charlotte, there seems to be a near pathological aversion to using lethal force, even though that’s the whole point of having armed forces.
The Albanese government’s initial response to the attack on Iran was Penny Wong’s call for “de-escalation”, in others words: stop fighting. Although the Prime Minister eventually overruled his Foreign Minister with a statement in support of US efforts, he stressed that he’d had no prior warning of the attack, had not been asked for military help, and had no expectation of any such request in the future. Even though it had been obvious for weeks that the US was gathering forces for an assault; and previous prime ministers, including Bob Hawke, would have picked up the phone to ask the president-of-the-day how Australia might usefully contribute.
When the Albanese government refused to send a frigate to secure freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, in December 2023, it was the first time since the ANZUS alliance in 1951 that Australia had declined an American request for military help. Rather than our ships being fully engaged elsewhere, as claimed, the real reason (I thought at the time) was fear that our ships weren’t up to the job, or political cowardice at being seen to assist Israel’s campaign against Iran’s proxies.
But now it’s worse than that: the Albanese government seems to suffer from a kind of practical pacifism, where the only circumstances our armed forces might conceivably be permitted to fire a shot in anger is at an enemy actually bombing Darwin. What’s all-but-certain is that the current government’s reply to any US request for help, even in our own region, such as in the Taiwan Strait, would be that “we’d like to but we can’t”.
It’s telling that when the Emirati government did, this week, ask us to assist in their self defence, our response was to send an unarmed aircraft for the command and control of fighter jets other than our own; plus the despatch of missiles for someone else to fire.
While Donald Trump has eventually praised our PM for offering asylum to Iranian women footballers, it seems the government only moved after he had demanded it on social media. At some point, the US president who’s supposed to give Australia up to five Virginia class nuclear powered submarines is going to ask about its impact on US firepower. Could a country that benches personnel already embarked on a US sub, ever be trusted to be at America’s side when it really counts?
