LATIKA M BOURKE: Why MAGA’s not ready to absolve ‘dependent’ Australia just yet

When Richard Marles and Penny Wong meet their US counterparts, Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio in Washington DC on Monday, one subject may be back on the table — the consequences of Australia’s low defence spending.

The four meet in DC for annual AUSMIN talks, and after that, the UK’s Defence Secretary John Healey will join Mr Hegseth and Mr Marles for AUKUS discussions.

The US Defence Secretary is on a mission to undo the reprieve his President granted Australia’s Prime Minister on the subject of defence spending.

He delivered a speech on the weekend, warning of consequences for freeriding allies that behaved like dependent children, as opposed to their wealthy and productive selves.

It represents a new fissure in the ongoing debate and pressure from the US under Trump that allies need to do more to bolster their defence capabilities.

Mr Albanese has stubbornly refused to raise Australia’s defence spending to set levels, despite authors of his own Defence Strategic Review saying around 3 per cent of GDP is required to fund the military’s capability gaps.

And he appeared to get off scot-free, walking away from his first White House meeting with the US President, the Prime Minister walked away with a Get Out of Jail Free card.

Mr Hegseth, and his number two at the Pentagon, Elbridge Colby had been openly demanding Labor lift Australia’s defence spending to the new NATO standard of 3.5 per cent of GDP.

But Mr Trump appeared to throw his newly-renamed Secretary of War under the bus when an Australian journalist asked Mr Trump if this was his view too.

“I’d always like more,” the President said.

“But they have to do what they have to do; you can only do so much.”

He noted that the upgrades of WA’s HMAS Stirling and the Henderson shipyards were expensive.

“They’re building tremendous docking because they have a lot of ships and a lot of things happening. And I think their military has been very strong, very, very strong.”

Case closed then? Maybe not.

Over the weekend, the White House issued its National Security Strategy, which combined with Mr Hegseth’s address to the Reagan National Defence Forum, set out the worldview of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.

Much of it codified what was already apparent. The US no longer wants to act as a global cop, has no interest in pursuing democracy and human rights through its foreign policy and will view all its relationships through what benefits America first commercially and security-wise.

And while standing firm on maintaining the status quo over Taiwan, the Trump Administration does not believe in trying to contain or dominate China.

The document mentioned Australia just three times.

Once, when it discussed boosting economic ties with India through the Quad — the grouping including Australia, the US, India and Japan and aimed at trying to hedge against Chinese dominance.

The second, when it called for the US to encourage Australia and other prominent nations to adopt trade policies that help rebalance China’s economy toward household consumption to reduce the burden of the Chinese oversupply of goods that flood overseas markets, undercutting global competition.

Finally, it said the US would harden and strengthen its military presence in the Western Pacific, “while in our dealings with Taiwan and Australia we maintain our determined rhetoric on increased defence spending.”

Speaking in California, Mr Hegseth went further as he outlined the four components of his soon-to-be-released National Defence Strategy, one of which is increasing “burden-sharing with allies.”

“We will actually, for real, get our allies and partners to step up and do their part. We will no longer tolerate free riding,” Mr Hegseth said.

He pointed to President Trump’s success at the NATO Hague summit in getting member states to raise their defence spending promises to 3.5 per cent of GDP and said that was the template being applied elsewhere.

“It’s working. First, there was Europe and Canada, and just last month, South Korea committed to spend 3.5 GDP on core military spending and assume the leading role in the ROK’s conventional defence,” he said.

Mr Hegseth spoke of this effort combining to produce a powerful collective defence shield, where able allies were able to defend themselves and their interests, as well as collective defence. This is not an unreasonable or undesirable outcome.

But his words carried a threat.

“Model allies that step up like Israel, South Korea, Poland, increasingly Germany, the Baltics and others will receive our special favour,” he said.

Notice that Australia is not on that list?

“Allies that do not, Allies that still fail to do their part for the collective defence will face consequences,” Mr Hegseth warned.

“President Trump makes sense to me, likes helping countries that help themselves. And we feel the same way. That’s the nature of partnerships rather than dependencies.

“Our allies are not children. They’re nations capable of doing far more for themselves than they have this time they stand up, and they are,” he said.

Australia should not lift defence spending because the Americans told us so. We should do it because our own assessments say that extra investment is required.

Ideally, that is what Mr Marles and Senator Wong will also be telling their US counterparts today.