Reimagined deputy? Australia has a unique role to play in the multipolar, ‘middle power strategy’ world

Yet despite Australia’s considerable military, diplomatic and economic contributions to the United States-led international system, the nation is still too often reduced to the role of Washington’s “loyal deputy”.

The description has proven to be convenient, but it is also increasingly inadequate. Australia’s strategic circumstances are changing faster than at almost any point since the Second World War.

While the United States remains Australia’s most important strategic partner, the assumptions that have underpinned the American-led order are being challenged by the return of great-power competition, the rise of China, India and Indonesia, the persistence of Russian power, wars in Europe and the Middle East, technological disruption and the increasingly transactional character of international relations.

The second Trump administration has added another layer of uncertainty. For Australia, this does not mean abandoning the United States.

It means recognising that the alliance will be strongest when Australia is capable of bringing more to it, and when Australian interests are sufficiently embedded within the strategic interests of our partners that Australia’s security becomes indispensable to theirs.

That is the central challenge of Australian strategy in the emerging multipolar world. And perhaps, more importantly, it is the opportunity.

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The origins of modern Australian strategy can be traced directly to the collapse of British power in the East. For generations, Australians had relied upon the British Empire and, above all, the Royal Navy to provide the ultimate guarantee of the continent’s security.

That assumption was shattered in February 1942. Japan’s lightning advance through Malaya culminated in the surrender of Singapore, destroying the perception of British military invincibility and exposing Australia to the terrifying possibility that its traditional great-power protector was simply incapable of defending it.

Australia’s strategic anxiety was immediately elevated to an existential level.

Australian troops deployed in North Africa and elsewhere were urgently recalled. Japanese forces were advancing through Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Bombs fell on Darwin. Australian territory itself was under attack.

The old strategic order had collapsed.

Prime Minister John Curtin responded with one of the most consequential strategic decisions in Australian history: Australia would look to the United States. Indeed, in his famous 1941 appeal to the American people, Curtin said: “Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.”

This came as a profound strategic realignment. Australia had effectively recognised that geography had placed it on the front line of the emerging Pacific order, and that its survival could no longer be guaranteed by a distant imperial power.

The wartime relationship with the United States subsequently became institutionalised through the signing of the Australia, New Zealand and United States Security Treaty in San Francisco in 1951.

ANZUS did not provide Australia with an automatic American security guarantee. But it did something arguably more important. It embedded Australia within the strategic architecture of the world’s emerging superpower. For a country haunted by the experience of strategic isolation, this was transformative.

The alliance also provided the foundation upon which Australia developed its post-war strategic doctrine, one defined by the nation’s role as a “loyal deputy sheriff” to the United States, paving the way to contemporary Australia’s predicament and opportunities as a trusted “middle power” partner in the new multipolar world.

Highlighting this is Raquel Garbers and Michelle Khiangte in a piece for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s (ASPI) The Strategist, titled Australia can lead middle-power support for US – and make itself indispensable, in which the pair said: “In a world influenced by competition between great powers, middle powers’ best path forward is to join forces in coalitions of the capable dedicated to building their power in ways that protect their relationships with the United States. Australia is leading the way, creating managed dependencies that turn vulnerabilities into leverage, starting with AUKUS.”

Rise of the loyal deputy and a fractured world order

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Australia turned its traditional strategic policy and posture on its head. Rather than waiting for threats to arrive at Australia’s shores, Canberra sought to engage them further forward through military deployments, alliances, bases, intelligence cooperation and regional partnerships.

Australian soldiers fought in Korea, Malaya, Borneo and Vietnam. Australian ships and aircraft operated throughout Southeast Asia in what would ultimately become known as the “Forward Defence” era, laying the foundation for Australia to truly solidify its position as America’s “loyal deputy” in the preservation of the post-war economic, political and strategic order.

This would ultimately see Australian forces subsequently fight alongside the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq and participate in operations across the Middle East and wider Indo-Pacific.

The underlying logic was remarkably consistent: Australia would contribute to maintaining a favourable regional balance of power well beyond the Australian continent, thereby reducing the likelihood that a major threat would ever reach it.

For much of the Cold War, and particularly during the period of overwhelming American primacy following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the strategy worked.

The United States provided the strategic weight and umbrella, while Australia provided a capable, geographically important and politically reliable ally. The combination produced influence disproportionate to Australia’s population and economic size.

But it also created a perception that Australia was simply an American auxiliary. Across parts of Asia, Australia’s participation in Vietnam, and later in America’s post-September 11 wars, reinforced the image of Canberra as Washington’s “loyal deputy”.

The label has never fully captured Australia’s strategic behaviour. But it does reveal something important, Australia became comfortable operating within a system largely designed and underwritten by somebody else. And that is the part of the old strategic model that is now becoming unsustainable.

By now it has become an inescapable reality, that while the post-Cold War international system created extraordinary opportunities for countries such as Australia, it also inadvertently planted the seeds of our own current predicament.

Where American military supremacy provided strategic stability and security, American-backed globalisation created enormous economic opportunities, often at the cost of domestic industrial bases across the Western World.

China’s integration into the global economy generated unprecedented trade, as did the steady flows of low-skilled, manufacturing jobs from across the Western World which radically and rapidly transformed the economies of the formerly developing world across the Indo-Pacific.

But ultimately, middle powers did not build the system, they merely benefited from it and it is a distinction that matters.

This is a reality that Garbers and Khiangte not only identified but also articulated, saying, “Australia understood early that the middle powers punched above their weight and enjoyed outsized influence in the post-Cold War period because they were sheltered by US hegemony and, if it were enforced, the rules-based order. That system is now fracturing, hedging is no longer viable and key powers are calling for clear alignment.”

Because the strategic environment of 2026 increasingly resembles a contest between multiple centres of power rather than the relatively straightforward hierarchy of the post-Cold War era.

China has emerged as Australia’s largest economic partner and one of the world’s most powerful military, technological and industrial states. India is rapidly becoming a major economic, demographic, technological and military power.

While Indonesia is emerging as one of the Indo-Pacific’s most consequential states and Australia’s most important neighbouring strategic power. Russia remains capable of generating strategic disruption well beyond its immediate borders, while its invasion of Ukraine has fundamentally altered Europe’s security environment.

Again, Garbers and Khiangte were quick to identify an uncomfortable reality, middle powers like Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, France and others have been slow to understand the scale and scope of this shift, and more importantly, failed to truly grasp the implications for themselves and their position in a new, multipolar world.

The pair said: “Middle powers that don’t yet understand this shift imagine themselves more powerful than they are and mistakenly think that they can band together to rival the great powers. Geopolitical reality says otherwise, and Washington is unimpressed...

“All middle powers are facing the same new reality. What differs is how they are responding. Canada, often compared to Australia, is pursuing a strategy that includes deepening its partnership with China, a choice that sits in direct tension with the imperative of staying anchored inside the US orbit as a valued ally. Given Canada’s deep interconnectedness with the US, its China embrace has provoked Washington into taking a harder line in its bilateral dealings with Ottawa. Canada’s play – implying it will cosy up to China to hedge against the US – is a strategic own-goal.”

The wars and instability across Europe and the Middle East have simultaneously demonstrated how quickly crises can consume American military, diplomatic and economic attention.

And the global contest is no longer confined to armies and navies. It encompasses artificial intelligence, semiconductors, energy, critical minerals, space, cyber capabilities, telecommunications, infrastructure, finance and industrial capacity.

Australia’s own Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet now describes the operating environment as one of increasing global uncertainty, economic pressure, deteriorating security conditions and major shifts in the global balance of power.

The old assumption that Australia could simply remain prosperous, secure and influential beneath the American strategic umbrella is becoming increasingly dangerous.

The Trump factor and a ‘Coalition of the Capable’

The return of Donald Trump to the White House has only served to intensify this uncertainty. The challenge presented by the second Trump administration is not simply that Washington may demand greater defence spending or burden-sharing from its allies.

It is that the traditional assumptions surrounding American leadership are being questioned more openly than at any point in the post-war era.

The United States remains overwhelmingly powerful. But American foreign policy is increasingly transactional, domestic political pressures are reshaping international commitments and Washington is demanding that allies contribute more directly to their own security and to the broader strategic competition with China.

For Australia, the appropriate response is neither panic nor complacency. Nor should it be an attempt to somehow “replace” the United States. That would be strategically absurd. Australia cannot substitute for American military power. Nor can a collection of middle powers realistically recreate American primacy.

Garbers and Khiangte detailed this, saying, “The goal is not independence from Washington, but a managed dependency inside the US orbit that makes Australia indispensable to the US. It is strategic savvy that turns vulnerability into leverage.”

Building on this, Garbers and Khiangte argued the notion that middle powers can simply band together to rival the great powers misunderstands the emerging strategic reality. The more useful concept is a “coalition of the capable”: countries that possess sufficient capability, political will and strategic alignment to undertake meaningful collective action.

The pair said: “Australia’s geopolitical instinct, reflected in its hard alignment choices, gives it a credibility that hedging middle powers cannot easily claim. That credibility is the foundation for something larger: leadership of a coalition of the capable in the Indo-Pacific, and a bridging role between the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres that no other country is positioned to fill.”

However, ultimately, for Australia, this distinction is crucial. The answer to American uncertainty is not strategic separation, rather it pivots to an important question: What is Australia’s true strategic value?

Shifting from dependency to leverage

This is where Australia’s middle power strategy should fundamentally change, the objective should not be independence from the United States. It should be to make Australia’s relationship with the United States so strategically valuable that Australian security becomes intertwined with American security.

That is a very different proposition.

Australia’s geography already provides an extraordinary strategic advantage. The continent sits outside the most concentrated areas of China’s missile envelope while occupying a pivotal position between the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

The pair said: “To better shield itself from China’s counter-moves, Australia should make itself indispensable to the US such that striking Australia puts core US security interests into play. Three opportunities stand out, the first being critical minerals. Australia holds some of the largest critical-minerals reserves, which will be crucial for the AI and defence supply-chains of the next era of great power competition. China dominates their processing. The US-Australia Framework for Securing Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths, signed in 2025, positions Australia as the US’ primary trusted partner alternative to Chinese processing.”

HMAS Stirling provides a critical submarine operating location. Tindal provides strategic depth for long-range air operations. Pine Gap provides intelligence capabilities of extraordinary importance to the United States and its allies.

“Australia should also leverage its strategic geography. Removed from China’s dense strike- missile envelope while anchoring the southern Indo-Pacific, it provides forward basing for submarines at HMAS Stirling, long-range strike at Tindal and intelligence infrastructure at Pine Gap. This system of joint facilities, built over six decades, gives Washington strategic depth it cannot get elsewhere in the region,” Garbers and Khiangte said.

Together with communications, space, logistics and other joint facilities developed over decades, these capabilities provide Washington with strategic depth that is exceptionally difficult to replicate elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific.

The objective should therefore be to deepen this advantage. Australia should become the place from which allied forces can operate, repair, rearm, refuel, resupply, communicate, analyse intelligence and generate combat power across the Indo-Pacific.

In other words: Australia should become an indispensable infrastructure for the coalition of the capable.

China and the problem of economic dependence

The economic dimension is equally important, China remains an enormously important market for Australia, that reality cannot simply be wished away nor can it be replaced overnight by diktat.

Australia’s trade with China was worth approximately $326 billion in 2025, according to ASPI. At the same time, diversification of Australia’s economic relationship with China has proved considerably more difficult than successive governments have hoped.

The answer should not be economic rupture, nor should it be naïve dependence. The more useful concept is selective decoupling, something successive governments have sought to design and deliver since arguably 2016. Through a policy of selective decoupling, Australia should reduce strategic vulnerabilities in sectors where economic dependence can be converted into political leverage.

Particularly in areas like technology, telecommunications, critical infrastructure, energy diversity and security, critical minerals processing, advanced manufacturing, defence supply chains, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing.

It is well past time for both Australia’s policymakers and the Australian public to recognise that these are not ordinary commercial relationships, they are components of national power. Australia possesses enormous reserves of many of the minerals required for the next generation of defence, energy and technological systems.

But possessing resources is not enough.

If Australia merely digs the minerals out of the ground and exports them for processing elsewhere, then much of the strategic value remains offshore. Australia should instead seek to become a trusted alternative source of mining, refining, processing and advanced manufacturing for the United States, Japan, South Korea, India and Europe.

The 2025 Australia–US framework for critical minerals and rare earths provides a foundation for this effort, positioning Australia as an alternative to Chinese processing dominance.

This is middle power strategy in practice: turning vulnerability into leverage.

A tale of 2 middle powers: Australia v Canada

There is another opportunity that few countries can replicate: Australia can help connect the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres.

The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that European and Indo-Pacific security can no longer be treated as entirely separate strategic problems. Russia’s deepening relationships with China, North Korea and Iran have shown how strategic competition increasingly crosses geographic boundaries, while instability in the Middle East continues to affect global energy supplies, maritime trade and the strategic bandwidth of the United States and its allies and partners.

For Australia, this creates an opportunity to become a genuine strategic bridge between two increasingly interconnected theatres.

Australia can work closely with the United States and United Kingdom while deepening its relationships with France and other European powers. At the same time, it can strengthen partnerships with Japan, India, Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines and the Pacific Island nations.

This is not diplomatic freelancing. It is networked statecraft: using Australia’s geography, alliances, partnerships and diplomatic relationships to build a broader strategic network in which Australian interests are advanced across multiple theatres simultaneously.

Australia does not need to choose between being an Atlantic partner and an Indo-Pacific power. It can be both. Indeed, its geography, economic weight, military capabilities and unusually broad network of relationships mean it may be one of the few middle powers capable of doing so credibly.

The emerging thinking of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney provides an important parallel. Canada and Australia share a fundamental strategic dilemma: both are prosperous, resource-rich middle powers situated beside a vastly more powerful ally. For decades, that geography delivered enormous economic and strategic benefits. But it also created vulnerability through dependence.

Carney’s argument that middle powers must build greater resilience, diversify their relationships and reduce exposure to coercion is therefore highly relevant to Australia. Canada’s recent confrontation with Washington demonstrates how quickly deep economic interdependence can become a source of strategic vulnerability when relations with a great power deteriorate.

The lesson for Canberra is not that Australia should distance itself from the United States. Quite the opposite. The lesson is that the strongest alliance is one underpinned by capable, resilient and strategically confident partners.

Strategic autonomy does not mean strategic isolation. Alignment does not have to mean dependence.

Australia should therefore seek to make itself indispensable to the United States while simultaneously ensuring it is never wholly dependent upon Washington. That means maintaining the strength of AUKUS and the US alliance while expanding Australia’s economic, diplomatic, technological, defence and political relationships across Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

A capable middle power should be able to say: we choose our alliances because they advance our national interests, not because we lack alternatives.

That distinction does not weaken alliances. It gives them greater durability. And for Australia, it offers something more ambitious than simply navigating great-power competition: the opportunity to become one of the principal connective powers linking the strategic interests of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific worlds.

Final thoughts

Australia should stop thinking of middle power status as a limitation and start treating it as a strategic model. We will never possess the population of China, the economic mass of the United States or the demographic weight of India and we do not need to.

Our opportunity is to become disproportionately powerful in the areas that matter most to strategic competition: a southern Indo-Pacific military hub; a critical-minerals and advanced-processing powerhouse; a trusted energy supplier; a defence-industrial, intelligence and technology partner; a leader in autonomous systems and maritime security; and a diplomatic bridge linking the United States, Europe, India, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and the Pacific.

That is how Australia punches above its weight: not through rhetoric, but through capability.

The historical lesson is important. John Curtin did not reject the United States in 1942; he recognised that Australia needed America while also understanding that Australia’s geography gave it a strategic role that mattered to America in return.

More than eight decades later, that principle remains relevant. Australia’s choice is not between dependence upon Washington and independence from Washington. It is between dependency without leverage and interdependence with leverage.

AUKUS, the US alliance, the Quad, partnerships with Japan, India, Indonesia and South Korea, our Pacific relationships, critical minerals, energy resources, geography, intelligence capabilities and emerging defence-technology sector should therefore be understood as parts of a single national strategy: one designed to make Australia difficult to coerce, difficult to ignore and difficult to replace.

The era in which middle powers could simply enjoy the benefits of an American-led order without helping to sustain it is disappearing. Australia must therefore stop asking whether it should remain America’s “loyal deputy” and start asking whether it can become the indispensable middle power of the Indo-Pacific.

That means building a nation capable of defending itself, supporting its allies, organising coalitions, absorbing economic and strategic shocks and connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans with the wider Euro-Atlantic world. It also means possessing enough national power to say no even to our closest friends, when Australian interests require it.

The objective for the 2030s should therefore be neither independence from America nor dependence upon America, but strength through interdependence.

Australia’s future should not be that of a loyal deputy waiting for instructions from a great power. It should be that of a capable middle power whose geography, resources, technology, military capability, alliances and diplomatic networks make it indispensable to the balance of power across the Indo-Pacific.

The era of the “loyal deputy” need not end with Australia walking away from the United States. It should end with Australia becoming powerful enough that Washington wants Australia beside it, Beijing must account for Australia, and the region looks to Australia to help shape what comes next.

That is the opportunity presented by the emerging multipolar world, and it may be the defining strategic opportunity of Australia’s generation.

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 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Stephen Kuper

Author

Steve has an extensive career across government, defence industry and advocacy, having previously worked for cabinet ministers at both Federal and State levels.

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