An article at Foreign Policy by Christian Brose notes that Australia has gazed at the tea leaves and concluded that the United States, especially under the current administration, is no longer much inclined to use military force to protect its allies and that it's time for Australia to start building up its defenses.
After listing the upgrades Australia is undertaking (and under a very leftist prime minister, no less) Brose goes on to write:
But why is it a bad thing for our allies to strengthen their defenses? .... I see the Australian white paper as a reason to be optimistic that America's relative decline can be managed in a smart way that leaves us in a good strategic position. Westhawk puts his finger on one reason why:
"If the Australian defense ministry can reach these conclusions [that the U.S. is a declining power], why shouldn't the Japanese, South Korean, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Singaporean, Indian, and Russian defense ministries also formulate these same planning assumptions?.... The greatest loser from such a chain reaction would be China."
I'd go even further. The United States should want the Indians, and the Japanese, and the South Koreans, and the Indonesians to reach the same conclusions. We should actively encourage them to reach the same conclusions. And that goes for our NATO allies as well. (The Russians, not so much.) We should work to get more and more of America's like-minded allies investing in the capabilities to shoulder a greater share of our collective defense. And to that end, the perception that the "unipolar moment" is passing can actually play in our favor, as will the fact that China's "peaceful rise" remains an open question at best.
Brose is right, I think. It is time our allies started carrying more of the burden of our common defense. Europe, for example, has evolved into a continent-wide welfare state largely because they've had the luxury of not having to spend large sums of money on their militaries as long as the U.S. was guaranteeing their safety. It's time, though, that Europe stopped acting like the guy who mooches off his parents well into his thirties and never moves out on his own. Let the Europeans follow Australia's example and provide for their own security. Except for Britain and Poland they haven't been much help to us when we needed them anyway.
RLC