Australian apologists think Trump can do no wrong
The Australian Financial Review
Date: 8 January 2026
Sovereign equality was always a delusion. Nations are not equal. Power is not evenly distributed. Military might follows economic heft – and there is a hierarchy of economies with the US and China currently at the top.
Respect for sovereignty, however, is a different proposition altogether. It is not something which is earned, but something conceded to enable relations between nations to be smoother than they would otherwise be.
This is why Donald Trump’s rendition of the president of Venezuela is so significant. Trump is essentially saying that respect for sovereignty is only as good as the behaviour of the other nation’s government, and he will determine when that line is crossed.
This has an immediate attraction. If the price of ignoring sovereignty is ridding the world of dictators, drug peddlers, terrorists and other evils, what’s the fuss?
So far so good. But how does this work, and where does it end? Who judges when the threshold for ignoring sovereignty has been reached? Who decides which elements of bad behaviour trigger breaching another nation’s sovereign rights?
If the answer is that those with the power make the decisions, we are really saying that the law of the jungle is not only a fact of life but a perfectly acceptable outcome. We have been here before, and we know it does not end well.
If you sit in Washington and Beijing, which have real power, this may be an attractive doctrine. Also in Moscow, although its power is fading fast.
But for Australians this is a dangerous position because we can neither buy nor bully our way in the world. Sure, under the “Donroe Doctrine” we could invade Tuvalu and Kiribati, maybe even the Solomon Islands if they annoy us, but is this a principle which serves our larger interests?
There is a reason why respect for sovereignty, even in those cases where the sovereign deserves no respect, is such a fundamental principle of international relations.
The international system is fundamentally anarchic. It faces a stark choice. Let the law of the jungle rip or accept the concept of respect for sovereignty with all the contradictions, hypocrisy and frustrations that go with it.
The question is less whether non-interference in the domestic affairs of another country is a marvellous concept, but rather whether it provides a necessary and pragmatic foundation for relations between states, and whether abandoning this principle would deliver more stability to the international system.
The cheerleaders in Australia of Trump’s grand Venezuela adventure should reflect on where their position takes them.
They see themselves as defenders of righteousness: not allowing soppy notions of international law to get in the way of decisive action against a tyrant. But Trump is less concerned with righteous vindication than with the geopolitics of power. The western hemisphere belongs to the US and that means it can do whatever it likes to protect its interests.
If Trump were a Woodrow Wilson or a Franklin Delano Roosevelt – in other words a real apostle of liberal democracy – you might just be able to accept this. But Trump’s values are something the Trump acolytes down under seem to be oblivious to.
Trump’s values are not the values of Australians and not the values which sustained the Australia-US alliance for these past seven decades. And if the counterargument is that Trump’s values are irrelevant then the door is opened to China doing in its hemisphere what Trump has done in his.
It is not that China and Russia need encouragement to interfere in the sovereignty of other countries, but why make it easier for them to do so? Moral equivalence is devastating to the standing of the US and its allies.
There is a dangerous view developing among Trump’s Australian apologists that Trump can do no wrong, even when they are uncomfortable with what he says or does.
That may be easier to argue when we are dealing with the likes of a Maduro. But will the same justifications apply if Trump moves to take Greenland, which is no longer as ludicrous an objective as we all thought? It’s much harder to paint those Danes as nasty tyrants unfairly protected by international law.
If I were an American I might well be attracted to a position which justifies doing whatever it takes to advance my country’s interests, leaving to one side Trump’s conflation of his personal interests with the nation’s interests. But as an Australian I would rather not live in a world governed by might is right.
Power will always be the decisive variable in international relations but for a country like Australia, never in the top tier of power, our interests are best served by a system which tries to constrain power within a set of agreed principles. That ultimately is what international law is all about. It is highly politicised and has weak to no means of enforcement, but it at least allows middle and smaller powers some protection against the law of the jungle.
We have been so used to the US being on our side and sharing our values that some of us seem incapable of seeing what is staring us in the face: this US administration is moving in directions which are fundamentally opposed to Australia’s interests. It is great to have the lion on your side until it is not. Then we are all wildebeests.