The Trump administration started 2026 as it means to continue: with violence and lawlessness.
Trump’s attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of the Venezuelan president clearly contravene every principle of international law.
This attack, and the administration’s escalating threats against other places, like Greenland, send a clear message. Trump is leading an imperial revival. His version of America has no respect for old alliances. It has no care for the safety or security of the rest of the world.
We are, now, in uncharted territory. The America we thought we knew is gone. And it isn’t coming back. Even a “decent” America (and there are many decent Americans) will be looking over its shoulder, cautious and reluctant.
This has deeply serious consequences for Australia. As our colleague Allan Behm wrote in The Point this week, we simply cannot bury our heads in the sand and hope this will all pass us by. It will not.
The Trump administration has already made that clear. It has trashed the Free Trade Agreement we signed with the US in 2004. The US Congress is threatening the Australian eSafety Commissioner with contempt charges if she does not testify before a congressional committee. She is being accused of “harassing” US tech companies – for enforcing Australian domestic policy and law in Australia.
If international law matters to Australia – and it does – then our response to Trump’s concerted attacks on the rule of law also matters.
And yet the Australian government appears reluctant to respond with clarity or moral courage, or to face what all this might mean for our own future.
Perhaps that is for fear of endangering the $360 billion Aukus submarine deal. Why anyone would think that this president, of all presidents, can be trusted to stick to an agreement, is unclear. And why anyone would think that a deal like that – which promises only that Australia will hand over billions of dollars and offers nothing real in return – would make us safer, not only ignores our new reality, but actively makes us less safe.
We are not defined by the Aukus deal, or this version of our relationship with the United States. For as long as we remain fixated on great power rivalries and the assumed need for us to take sides, we fail to see the threat that’s right in front of us. Repudiation of the international rule of law and the resultant lawlessness creates a kind of global Wild West, where anything and everything goes. Random wars, small and large, create a much more dangerous world than head-butting between muscled-up power freaks.
We are not powerless when it comes to shaping our own future or a better future for the world, though you might not know it from listening to the government’s responses. The fact is, Australia has power and agency, and now is the time that the government needs to exercise that agency in the interests of our own security and that of the many other nations that observe the international rule of law.
There is a great deal that Australia can do to reaffirm the rule of law, and to build genuine peace and security in the world. And there are plenty of opportunities to step up.
This week, the Trump administration withdrew from a raft of UN agencies and committees, covering issues from international law to the prevention of violence against children to climate change.
As I write this from Victoria, which today is dealing with catastrophic bushfire conditions, the grave security threat posed by our global, collective failure to act on climate is all too clear.
The Trump administration – now taking over sovereign nations by force in order to extract their fossil fuels – is actively making this threat worse.
And right now, Australia is complicit.
But that is not inevitable. It is entirely possible for Australia to act in its own interests and those of the global community by phasing out fossil fuels. And we can make it clear that international law matters. We can recognise that building the conditions for peace requires real action on all fronts – and that this means, now, changing our relationship with the United States from one of security dependence to constructive international cooperation.
It is up to all of us to continue pressuring this government to make the brave and necessary choices it was elected to make.
We are all of us in a world of darkness. All we can do is do what we can do. And for Australia, that is quite a lot.
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