As China rises, Australia is increasingly enmeshed in the US war machine. Is the alliance still worth the risk?

“Physical security matters,” said Kevin Rudd, at his axiomatic best before the National Press Club this week.“Our first responsibility is to secure our people’s future in this most contested region of the world.”Prime minister, to foreign minister, to ambassador, Rudd – on his self-declared, self-deprecatory “career trajectory towards infinitesimal demotion” – has an unparalleled perspective on Australia’s place in the world.In a time of dramatic global upheaval, he argued, the nation’s security alliance with the United States was neither trivial nor sentimental.“Our alliance with the United States remains a force multiplier for Australia’s defence needs.”But, Rudd said, it did represent one of the seismic challenges Australia faced: countenancing “the rise and rise of China at a time when America continues to debate what sort of global power it wants to be in the future”.Alliance with the US, he said, was necessary but not sufficient for the country’s long-term national security.“We must also re-embrace national self-reliance to anticipate the full range of future uncertainties.” A Rudd sentence if ever one was said.And the alliance, like any, carries risk.Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailTwice in a row, Rudd was asked whether Australia would even have a choice if the US were to become involved in a war with China over Taiwan, which Rudd judged a “one in three” chance in 2028 (the year of Taiwan’s next presidential election).Or whether, in that scenario, Australian support would be automatically expected.Both times Rudd declined to answer, even as he was asked directly whether – if US nuclear submarines were steaming from Australian ports, and US bombers taking off from Australian airfields, heading for Chinese sea and airspace – Australia could decline to be part of another American war.“On Australian responses: I’ll engage in classic duck and weave,” Rudd said.Growing enmeshmentThis week, the Guardian published new data showing the US military and its defence industrial interests control, or have access to, more than 100 military bases across the Australian continent.The enmeshment of the Australian military within the giant US war machine has hastened over recent years, and is set to grow even further.US nuclear-capable bombers take off from Australian airfields on missions across the world – potentially carrying nuclear weapons (the US government won’t say, Australia won’t ask). From next year, nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines will port through HMAS Stirling off Perth.The US remains Australia’s fundamental security ally, but it is also a country currently mired in what many international law experts say is an illegal, unprompted war, and one seen by many in Australia as a superpower in decline and increasingly unreliable.The federal government maintains the US remains indispensable to Australian security. Marking 75 years of the Anzus Treaty this week, the deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, said the US “remains our closest ally and principal strategic partner”.“For more than seven decades, the alliance has underpinned peace, stability and prosperity in our region and continues to contribute to the region’s strategic balance,” he said.