I really don’t think any of our politicians are ready to move away from the US. We need someone with some spine to step up.

Sorry for posting a paywalled article… Here are the main points:

That the US becomes a fascist autocracy is now a significant possibility — some argue it already has. History shows that such regimes are very difficult to remove without some external event like losing a war. Are Australian policymakers grappling with what this means for our security? Can Australia be a loyal ally of a fascist autocracy? We’ve been content to ally ourselves with the US despite many repugnant features of its polity — its murderous gun obsession; its enthusiasm for invasion and mass murder in other countries — so perhaps the answer is that, yes, we will be. Let Trump trash US democracy and basic human rights, as long as he flogs us those subs.

How much more evidence does Australia need that being a US “ally” now brings no benefits in the event of a threat from a hostile power? Ask Ukraine. Ask Poland. Ask Qatar. An Albanese-Trump meeting isn’t going to provide any guarantees about security. Trump’s words are irrelevant; it’s his actions, or inaction, that tell the story.

But there’s a more pragmatic calculation: if we need a fascist autocracy in the United States to protect us from a nationalist autocracy in China, perhaps we’d be better off with the more stable and economically prosperous of those two.