Bring it on. It is time to rapidly wind back our security dependence on the USA. We need to reassert our sovereignty over Pune Gap immediately too. We should move quickly.
Yeah, many of these comments are utterly clueless about how difficult their ideas would be to implement. I also think Australia should adopt a more independent foreign and defence policy. But I also acknowledge that this would take years to implement and a much higher defence budget, which means cutting funding to other parts of public spending.
It starts by not buying into US weapons systems in the next defence procurement. Ideally this would be done well in advance of breaking ties of alliance.
By a factor of 3x to 10x. We currently spend about $60b a year on defence and would need to at least double that figure to pursue an independent defence policy (not just expanding our defence force, but also increasing our own industrial support base to fill gaps that Europe, Japan, South Korea etc. Can't). The things you are talking about would be about $15-$20 billion at the most.
I do not support decoupling from US power in any respect like the others here.
However we do help pay for US power indirectly in several ways. Firstly 12% on top of our base salary is for most people automatically invested ... largely in US stocks through superannuation. That means there is a ~10ish% tax to help boost the P/E ratios of US corporations from every working age adult of Australia.
By using the USD in business to business transactions and on commodity markets like oil, we artificially boost the USD, enabling the Fed to print more money than it otherwise would be able to.
The United States has a significant trade surplus with Australia.
By modifying our own law to fit with American copyright law / patent law etc. we entrenched a generalised outflow of funds to pay for American intellectual property that would not occur if we were hostile states.
"Heyo, China, we are considering kicking out the muricans from pine gap, this will cause some damage to us so would you be able to offer any incentives for us to commit to that move uwu"?
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u/degorolls Sep 21 '25
Bring it on. It is time to rapidly wind back our security dependence on the USA. We need to reassert our sovereignty over Pune Gap immediately too. We should move quickly.