When Scott Morrison, Joe Biden and Boris Johnson fronted up to a somewhat awkward press conference to announce AUKUS, Australia firmly and irrevocably hitched its wagon to the United States. As ASPIs Marcus Hellyer said in a recent article, ‘If there was any doubt about what Australia would do in the event of armed conflict between the US and China over Taiwan or the South China Sea, that’s now gone. The US doesn’t provide you with the crown jewels of its military technology if you are not going to use them when it calls for help’. But who is it that we have bound our fortunes to?

The societal issues of the United States are well documented at this point. Trump’s 2016 election victory emboldened the far right and led to a rise in hate crimes. There was a car attack in Charlottesville that killed a woman. The George Floyd murder and the subsequent trial of the officers involved and the summer of riots and civil disturbances that resulted.

The age of Trump culminated with the events of January 6, 2021, when the President and his allies seemingly encouraged a mob to storm the US Capitol Building in an attempt to overturn an election. The Republican Party has been taken over by unserious people like congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and author cum politician J. D. Vance.

But US moral decay is not only an epidemic of the right.

The US media is quick to assign racism when the perpetrator is white even in the complete absence of evidence.

There has been a horrific rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes during and since the recent Israel-Palestine conflict.

And where was the moral outrage when African American Republican candidate for Governor Larry Elder was attacked by a woman wearing a gorilla mask? If this woman was wearing a MAGA hat and the victim was a Democrat, I can guarantee that the coverage would have been very different.

Whataboutism reached new heights in the past week with a video released of activists pursuing Arizona Democratic Senator Krysten Sinema into a bathroom to confront her after she declined to speak with them. As noted Never-Trumper Tom Nichols said, ‘Once you agree it’s acceptable to physically intimidate officials who won’t do what you want, the difference between January 6 and the Sinema escapade is one of *scale*, not *kind*’.

Afghanistan was another sorry chapter in US foreign policy. Its ignominious withdrawal from the country left behind many who had aided them to the tender mercies of the Taliban. And it seems their attitudes towards women have not changed. It was clear to everyone what was going to happen, but President Biden was adamant that the US be out by the 20th anniversary of September 11 whether it was prudent or not.

These are the people we are binding ourselves to. These are the people who will demand our help for giving us the keys to the cookie jar.

Many people, including me, were apprehensive about US long-term engagement in Asia. A nation of unserious people with no appetite for enforcing the liberal world order they created does not make for a dependable ally. However, this concern was seemingly blown away with the AUKUS announcement and Joe Biden has largely continued with his predecessor’s strategy to contain China. But despite AUKUS, that worry in the back of my mind endures. China is continuing to apply pressure on Taiwan. If war breaks out, can Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, and Australia rely on the US to act?

I want to say yes, but politicians are so beholden to the present that I am concerned that the US will put up no more fight than it did for Ukraine in its fight against Russia. And let us not forget that we are not the only country in the crosshairs of France over AUKUS; France also recalled its ambassador to the United States. If you ask the French, they would say this is the latest in a string of slights as the US foreign establishment has turned its focus on Asia.

Now don’t get me wrong. The decision to build nuclear-powered submarines is long overdue and the correct decision given our strategic fragility. And as John J. Mearsheimer has argued, China and the United States were always going to force us to choose between them. And in the end, Australia was always going to side with the West because what other choice did we have? China has interfered in our politics, stolen the intellectual property of our companies and institutions and, held us to ransom for daring to lend our support to an inquiry on the origins of COVID-19. None of this is conducive to long-term peace and stability between nation-states.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy has pushed us even deeper into the corner of the United States. Xi’s actions turned the tide of public opinion and brought about something that a few years ago seemed impossible; nuclear propulsion for Australia. But Australia must remain vigilant and ensure that we don’t compromise on our sovereignty.