This is a lightly edited transcript of remarks delivered at the Sovereignty and Security Forum, held at the National Press Club in Canberra on 31 March. The event was convened and chaired by Australia’s former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
I’d like to start with a simple declaration: Australia can defend itself with a less reliable American alliance partner. In fact, Australia can defend itself even if there is no alliance at all.
I’d like to examine this issue in two ways: as a military problem and as a political one.
The military problem, it seems to me, is relatively straightforward. Australia is not that hard to defend. We are not Taiwan, or South Korea, or Israel, or…