National security wolves howl at moon over Red Sea warship

It is true that more questions need to be raised about why the government took so long to arrive at its decision. And about why the Chief of Navy compounded the optics of delay by getting out in front of ministerial consideration of the American request.

It is also true that the decision cuts against the grain of how, for at least the last decade, the Australian navy has assisted in countering piracy in the Indian Ocean in an effort to ensure vital trading routes are not compromised.

But understand what is being displayed here in the alarmed reaction from US alliance sentimentalists.

What is coming together is not only a critique of Labor’s policy on the current Middle East crisis, especially its recent vote in the United Nations where it parted with the US in signing onto a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, but also a view that the government is turning its back on the essence of Australia’s military tradition.

Both political parties are in some respects accountable for this: in talking of the US relationship as a global partnership – not just the southern anchor in US Asia strategy – and in elevating the alliance atop the same pedestal as the Anzac legend, rendering both beyond criticism.

Combine that with the powerful view that Australia should always “punch above its weight” in world affairs, and the government finds itself trapped inside a national security storm where emotion and rhetoric are held to be the primary drivers of foreign and defence policy.

The assumption is also being made that the government’s decision will place the AUKUS agreement in peril. But how?

Critics need to come up with evidence, not a chorus of fulmination. American domestic politics and an Australian national community ill-prepared to sustain and deliver a project as vast as AUKUS will have far more impact on that project’s outcome.

The real questions are why, over recent decades, Australian defence capability has been run down to such an extent that the government has had to openly declare its uncertainty about offering a “meaningful” commitment to the Red Sea. Why does the nation’s operational surface fleet lack genuine anti-drone capabilities? And, why has the government responded to the Defence Strategic Review by calling for another review of its surface fleet?

The Australian public has every reason to be befuddled by this debate. But it needs to be provided with a clearer understanding of the nature of Australian defence preparedness, not sermons from the mount about alliance credentials or sloganeering about “shame”.