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Australia and like-minded middle powers have long celebrated and communicated their investment in and commitment to maintaining the post-Second World War “rules-based order”. Now important questions are being asked about the validity of propping up a “wavering order”.
Since the end of the Cold War, middle powers like Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan and others have sought to position themselves as invaluable and foundational components of the post-Second World War economic, political and strategic order built in large part by the United States.
And for the most part, the global and regional economic, political and strategic circumstances and environment following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the sporadic regional brushfires in the Middle East, southern Europe and Africa all served to not only reinforce this but also entrench this frame of reference in middle power capitals across the world.
This ultimately culminated in the Global War on Terror following the September 11 attacks, which saw the United States and an array of global allies engage in a decades long and disastrous quagmire in Afghanistan and Iraq, opening the door for the world’s revisionist powers, namely Russia and China, to formalise their efforts to usurp the post-World War II global order.
During this period of costly distraction, political leaders across the liberal democratic world bought into the “End of History” myth, championed by American historian and political academic Francis Fukuyama and the supporting narrative of the “Clash of Civilisations” of Samuel Huntington, effectively blinding these leaders and, indeed, their public to rapidly shifting global balance of economic, political and strategic power.
In the truest sense, this effectively created an environment where “when the cat’s away, the mice will play”, which leads us to the early stages of the more concerted and formal emergence of a parallel world order led in large part by China and Russia, backed by a gaggle of revisionist emerging middle and great powers ranging from India and Iran to Brazil and South Africa, all eager to directly confront and challenge the post-Second World War order.
This new reality would ultimately come to light in the most tangible manner during the mid-2010s, when Beijing actively and assertively ramped up its island and land reclamation efforts in the South China Sea, active coercion in regional nations and the subversive weaponisation of multilateral organisations like the World Health Organisation and the like.
Ultimately, however, it was Beijing’s actions during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly those targeted at Australia, that saw the mask slip for many leaders and populations across the Liberal Democratic world. However, by that point, the damage had already been done; the economic power had already vastly swung in favour of the Beijing-led bloc, with political and strategic power and influence continuing to grow.
Indeed, recently, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney detailed at a World Economic Forum gathering at Davos the intricacies and necessity of a renewed and more coordinated effort to establish “middle power strategy”, bringing together the aggregated power of middle powers to offset and, in some ways, rebalance the global scales in the event of chaotic or unpredictable super power competition or aggression spirals out of control.
Today, the reality of this new world order is far more apparent, particularly for leaders across the Western world, including Australia, as the scales have fallen from our eyes and we begin to grapple with the realities of an uncomfortable world and regional order – that being that the post-Second World War economic, political and strategic order is, for all intents and purposes, on life support.
As a result, many are beginning to ask important questions about whether or not Australia’s policy and indeed strategy for engaging with, shaping and operating within the paradigm of this new world order is fit for purpose, and equally important, are our efforts worth sustaining a “waning order”?
Highlighting this is William D James, assistant professor in strategic studies at S Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in a piece for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, titled Australia and Japan are stewards of a wavering order, in which he posited that the emerging Australia–Japan alliance is “ emblematic of a broader pattern I call ‘stewarding’, in which core US allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific reinforce the United States-led order independently of Washington’s leadership”.
“Despite a growing consensus that most US allies and partners are hedging, Australia, Japan, Poland and Britain are all deepening their bonds with the US, while simultaneously building lateral bridges with one another. They are doing so to sustain the existing order and bolster regional deterrence amidst hegemonic uncertainty,” James said.
Countering hegemonic ‘uncertainty’
At the core of the shift in middle power thinking is the growing uncertainty and unpredictability of the United States as the hegemon and guarantor of the global “rules-based order” that has become an increasingly important point of conversation since the first Trump administration, beginning in 2016, and then being amplified during the chaos of the Biden administration and increasingly during the second Trump administration.
James detailed this, saying, “Allied disquiet with the US predates President Donald Trump. The Obama administration’s pivot to Asia promised much for allies in the Indo-Pacific, only for US boots to remain stuck in the quicksand of the Middle East and Afghanistan. President Joe Biden later pledged to restore US credibility after Trump’s erratic first term, then unilaterally withdrew from Afghanistan without consulting partners – many of whom had sacrificed a great deal in its blood-stained valleys. More broadly, US political polarisation and periodic government shutdowns are hardly reassuring.”
This concept of “hegemonic uncertainty”, as established by James, focused on and, in many ways, exacerbated Australia’s longstanding culture of strategic and security anxiety, forcing Australian policymakers to approach decision making under the pressures of an increasingly complex and contested global and regional environment in a dramatically different way to the past.
“Concerns about US reliability are therefore not new, though they have sharpened markedly under Trump. Talk of annexing Greenland and striking grand bargains with Russia and China over Ukraine and Taiwan have not helped. It’s no wonder, then, that many predict the fraying of the US alliance system and a global rise in hedging behaviour,” James said.
For American allies like Australia and Japan, the idea of hedging against increasing “hegemonic uncertainty” goes beyond the traditional “hard power” domain, whether that means economic or military power. It provides opportunities for the middle powers to pool their resources, their capital and their objectives to more effectively offset the challenges presented by “hegemonic uncertainty”.
James cited a number of examples where middle powers are seeking to implement a more coordinated strategy of “middle power strategy”, saying, “Following years of ministerial dialogues, Japan and Australia signed a reciprocal access agreement in 2022 – the first Tokyo had extended to a partner beyond the US. Both Japan and Australia later reached similar understandings with Britain in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
“For its part, Britain in May signed a new security treaty with Poland that explicitly named Russia as the overarching threat to Europe – underscoring that neither ally would hedge anytime soon, regardless of any deal over Ukraine. Both states have also struck pacts with France and Germany since Trump returned to the Oval Office. Through such initiatives, these US allies are layering security guarantees onto their existing arrangements with Washington.”.
Despite these efforts, the nations are far from being in the position to solidify any effort to formalise a coherent structure to maximise the hedge of middle powers against “hegemonic uncertainty”, with these nations also torn between the competing, historic, cultural and security ties, particularly with the United States and the often overlapping and/or competing national interests.
Bringing us to the necessity to understand that any efforts to hedge will require clear guard rails and an understanding that our nations all have their own interests and too rigid or too formal a structure will serve to effectively kill off any hedging attempts before they can truly bear fruit. Rather collaborating where we can and disagreeing where we must, or more simply, using the model Australia has leveraged increasingly as its strategy for engaging with Beijing.
Stewarding a ‘wavering’ world order?
However, as is increasingly becoming commonplace in the nation’s political discourse, one important and central question has to be asked: are Australia’s investments in maintaining what is clearly a fraying and wavering world order worth the costs, effort and time?
James said: “Given the turbulent state of the world, the temptation to write off the US-led order and the alliances that underpin it is understandable. Yet that impulse should be resisted. While many US partners are hedging, the core allies are doing the opposite: working with Washington and increasingly with each other to keep the existing order standing.
“The blossoming relationship between Canberra and Tokyo captures both a striking continuity in the core allies’ commitment to the principles of that order and a limited but substantive shift in how they reinforce it.”
Achieving this in a quantifiable and measurable way will require a dramatic shift in the way that Australia not only views itself and its role in the region and more broadly the globe, but also the way it invests in itself, because any hedge is only as strong as the sum of its parts and in order to more effectively and sustainably deliver a hedge in the face of “hegemonic uncertainty”, Australia will need to be as independently capable as possible.
Final thoughts
Australia’s greatest strategic vulnerability has never been a lack of geography, resources or trusted alliances. Rather, it has been a longstanding tendency towards strategic complacency, the assumption that geographic isolation would continue to insulate the nation from major conflict and that, should serious challenges emerge, larger allies would ultimately bear the burden of responding.
That assumption is no longer sustainable.
The international order is undergoing its most significant transformation since the end of the Cold War. Great power competition has returned as the defining feature of global affairs, extending far beyond military capability to encompass economics, technology, critical infrastructure, energy security, supply chains and industrial capacity. National resilience is now as important as military strength, demanding a far more integrated approach to statecraft.
Australia therefore faces a defining strategic choice. It can continue to rely on favourable circumstances and inherited assumptions, or it can embrace a more considered, robust and holistic national strategy that strengthens every element of its comprehensive national power.
Meeting this challenge requires more than increased defence spending. It demands sustained investment in sovereign industry, advanced manufacturing, technological innovation, secure energy systems, critical infrastructure, resilient supply chains and a national economy capable of supporting long-term strategic competition.
Defence, foreign policy, trade, industry and economic policy must become components of a coherent whole-of-nation strategy.
As Australian strategist and former Defence Department policy thinker Marc Ablong rightly reminded us, luck has never been a strategy. Australia’s future security and prosperity will depend upon the choices made today. The question is not whether great power competition will define the decades ahead, it already does.
The real question is whether Australia will shape its own strategic future through deliberate preparation and national resolve or allow others to determine that future on terms far less favourable than those we can still secure today.
Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below or get in touch at
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