There is a familiar pattern to American wars. The beginning is dramatic, the middle is complicated, and the ending is usually somebody else’s problem.
First comes the announcement from Washington. Something terrible has happened somewhere in the world. The language is grave, urgent and full of resolve. Military assets are moved into position. Aircraft carriers glide across oceans. Missiles are launched.
Then comes the next stage – the part that always seems to surprise the people who started it.
“What happens now?”
For a nation with the world’s most sophisticated military machine, the United States has developed an almost charming habit of forgetting to plan the second half of the story.
Planning the war has never been the problem. Planning the peace is where things tend to get a little vague.
This is not a new phenomenon. From the Vietnam War to the Iraq War and the twenty-year odyssey that was the War in Afghanistan, Washington has repeatedly demonstrated that starting a war is the easy part. Ending one – or even defining what victory looks like – tends to be an afterthought.
And yet here we are again.
The United States has once more found itself in a conflict in the Middle East, the kind of situation that escalates quickly, spreads unpredictably, and leaves allies nervously checking their calendars to see when the phone call from Washington might arrive.
You know the one.
“Hey, we’re going to need a hand.”
For Australia, that request has historically been difficult to refuse. From Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, successive Australian governments have embraced the role of loyal partner in America’s military adventures.
Loyalty between allies is a valuable thing. But loyalty is supposed to be a two-way relationship – not a reflex. At some point, a mature ally has to be able to say, politely but firmly, “Not this time.”
But this time, the national mood feels different.
Trump’s informal appeal on social media for allies to contribute naval forces to patrol the Strait of Hormuz – a chokepoint for global oil that ranks among the planet’s most dangerous shipping routes – has quickly sparked the anticipated domestic reactions.
“Why?”
That question, inconvenient as it may be, deserves a clear answer.
What exactly would Australia be defending?
What is the objective?
How long would we be there?
And perhaps most importantly – how does any of this serve Australia’s national interest?
Because behind every overseas deployment is not just a government decision, but thousands of Australian families waiting at home and hoping the mission they’ve been asked to sacrifice for actually makes sense.
These are not anti-American questions. They are adult questions.
The uncomfortable truth is that Australia has spent decades participating in American conflicts that were sold as urgent and necessary, only to end with quiet withdrawals, ambiguous outcomes, and long lists of unintended consequences.
The lessons should have been obvious.
Military power can destroy things with remarkable efficiency. It is far less effective at building stable political realities afterward.
Yet Washington continues to act as though every new crisis is a unique event rather than another chapter in a very long pattern.
Which brings us to the present moment.
If the United States chooses to escalate the conflict with Iran, that is ultimately a decision for Washington. Great powers have the capacity – and sometimes the arrogance – to make those choices.
But allies are not obliged to follow every time.
Australia is not under attack.
Our trade routes are not threatened in any immediate sense.
Our national security does not hinge on sending a handful of warships halfway across the world to participate in a conflict whose endgame nobody can clearly explain.
The deeper question for Australia is whether we intend to remain permanently tethered to Washington’s military decisions. Agreements like AUKUS suggest that our strategic future is increasingly being written in American defence planning rooms rather than in Canberra.
Because if there is one lesson modern history keeps trying to teach us, it is this: wars launched without a realistic plan for what comes next tend to expand, entangle and endure.
The first missiles are always the easy part.
The next twenty years are where things get complicated.
So perhaps this time Australia should try something radical.
Instead of automatically reaching for the uniform and the deployment orders, we could pause.
We could ask questions.
We could remember the experience of the last several decades.
And if the formal call does come from Washington – asking allies to help patrol the Strait of Hormuz or otherwise lend support to yet another unfolding conflict – Australia might politely respond with a sentence rarely heard in alliance politics.
Good luck with that.
But this time, America can fight its own war.
Keep Independent Journalism Alive – Support The AIMN
Dear Reader,
Since 2013, The Australian Independent Media Network has been a fearless voice for truth, giving public interest journalists a platform to hold power to account. From expert analysis on national and global events to uncovering issues that matter to you, we’re here because of your support.
Running an independent site isn’t cheap, and rising costs mean we need you now more than ever. Your donation – big or small – keeps our servers humming, our writers digging, and our stories free for all.
Join our community of truth-seekers. Please consider donating now via:
PayPal or credit card – just click on the Donate button below
Direct bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
We’ve also set up a GoFundMe as a dedicated reserve fund to help secure the future of our site.
Your support will go directly toward covering essential costs like web hosting renewals and helping us bring new features to life. Every contribution, no matter the size, helps us keep improving and growing.
Thank you for standing with us – we truly couldn’t do this without you.
With gratitude, The AIMN Team
The USA is the world’s Pied Piper and our Free Democratic Governments are the rats. Sadly, the general public are the children who followed to the very END!!
I agree ….. This time Australia should pass getting involved in America’s imperialist adventure to wrench control of the Iranian ENORMOUS known & potential oilfields for the benefit of the US multinational corporations.
And while we are about it, perhaps we should cancel Scummo’s USUKA sub debacle before we get nothing except the bill from the American submarine building industry.
Australia has no economic or social interest in a ”Greater Isrevil” ZIONAZI theocracy between the Nile & Euphrates Rivers …..
I agree absolutely.
Just for once, have the guts to say thanks but no thanks.
This is America’s and Israel’s war, started again on the basis of lies.
Oh but eait.
Perhaps we should reconsider…. could it be that refusing makes us antisemitic?
Mmmmmm.
Still no thank you.
If you elect a supreme liar and fuckwit, who surrounds himself with arguably bigger fuckwits,this is what you get.The animal Netanyahu has been trying for years to get the yanks involved in attacking Iran, and in Trump, he’s found his patsy.Amazing what desperation will make people do.As everybody can see, it’s all going to shit in a hurry,and stupid with the bad combover has screwed himself six ways from Sunday,thanks to the war criminal in Israel.
This is going to end badly for everyone, especially Israel.Will the maniac Netanyahu reach for the nuclear option,or will the cooler heads in the IDF prevail?Stay tuned folks for the next exciting episode of The Demise of an Empire.
Don’t expect Albanese to make a decision, unless he’s led by someone else.
We should (sez I) be as clearly resolutely neutral or we are suckers, in world affairs, as is possible, we are potential victims, for nothing good or certain guaranteed, set-up as targets, peasantlike dependents. Evil. Pine Gap alone makes us highly vulnerable. The USA is now run by undesirables, animals, filthites, greedites. Who has profited from rocketing oil prices? Not you or me…
If more world leaders were to ask the Trump what the purpose, plan and end result of this war should be and be prepared to question his glib pointless responses instead of just taking his word at face value the world might not be in this state.
The protests have started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeHZY3k0pvE
Labor’s support for this war only extends the harm.
@ Phil Pryor: Your objective evaluations of the situation are very accurate & commendable. Agreed.
Many Americans are good folk, but not those from the oligarchy who run governments.
“..For Australia, that request has historically been difficult to refuse…”
There is no doubt that the US contribution to the Battle of the Coral Sea during WW2 defeated the existential threat of Imperial Japan and thus saved Australia from invasion. Since that time however “that request” has never been put to the Australian electorate to decide whether or not participating in America’s wars are in Australia’s interest. The difficulty has always been related to political cowardliness and fear of retribution from the US if Australian politicians were to decline the “request”.
Yes definitely, but like the not unrelated Esptein files, our information ecosystem dominated by RW MSM, with some indie voices, are more interested in blaming PM, DM and FM for a pummeling, but ignoring deeper issues?
Ditto by those spuriously linking Rudd to Esptein very indirectly, but ignoring actual inner circles of elite perps and their victims; petty and small minded.
Great piece from Roswell, totally agree.
Another good punch line I reckon is in your title: “We’re sitting this one out”
Like, mate, you started it, you sort it.
I may be naive, but the way I see it, Trump is attempting to lure Nato members into joining his war by 1) framing it as initiated by Iran and thus triggering article 5 as an attack on the US, 2) depicting the Strait as somehow the collective “property” of Nato countries, & 3) legitimising his illegal war by joining it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78n6p09pzno
If this schmuck wants to impose prohibitive global trade sanctions on other countries he is now begging for help to get him out of his own filthy, murderous mess, he should be accorded the respect his Donroe isolationism warrants.
And if we’re going to have to tighten our belts due to the an ME war in any event, then why not hold our ground? If Albanese stood up and framed our neutrality as a position of integrity in the spirit of the Commonwealth/commonweal alongside Nato, he might also claw back some of his disenchanted voters…
https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2026/03/17/nato-strait-of-hormuz?ahe=d029aa687687b0d59a9aa93accfc8e69ea641f8f712bf002ec5b90d8bfa2bd49&acid=4790344&utm_campaign=Morning%20News%20-%2020260317&utm_medium=tnd_email&utm_source=tnd_email&lr_hash=b6dbcee63ac8c295c32eef81401291ad
@Phil Pryor:
Since they’re being handed out willy nilly these days how’s about a Nobel Peace Prize to every sucker nation who resists being groomed by this mendacious sex fiend and psychopath?
All I can say is, “Thank dog the bloody LNP isn’t in power!”
@ GL:
Surely not much more damage they could inflict on the place…except maybe take us into an illegal war, pay up front for de nooklar subs, supply arms parts to Israel, beat up peaceful protesters, shake hands with war criminals, amass property portfolios, living high on hog on the taxpayer…(yawn)… oops, my bad!
Surely not much more damage they could inflict on the place, GL…except maybe support nooklar subs deal with US, supply arms parts to Israel, beat up peaceful protesters, shaft asylum-seekers, shake hands with war criminals, amass property portfolios, approve new coal, oil, and gas developments, lead Australia into an illegal war… oh dear, fait accompli per the incumbents, my bad!!
Obviously the USA has not learned from history. In WW1 arrogant England and its lapdog Australia thought the Turks would be a pushover… Instead the Turks defending their homeland from imperialist attack, sent the attackers away with huge losses of life and their tails between the their legs.
Also remember that in WW2 England was prepared to let the Japanese take all of Northern Australia. Since WW2 Australia’s subservience to the USA and its warmongering imperialism has not made us safer, it has made Australia a target.
Maybe the world is starting to finally wake up that the worlds worst terrorists are the USA and Israevil
Roswell is a good writer. His article is quietly and directly trenchant and I don’t think this readership would disagree with most of it.
So most of us identify with the trajectory.
I’d only say one thing in any attempt at mitigation: the extent to which the USA and its clients have infiltrated our own systems and what damage they could do us for open dissent. (as suggested by the Australia Institute defence writer Allan Behm in the Guardian a week or so ago wrote,
“Australia’s shameful support for the US attack on Iran makes us gullible, or duplicitous, or both”.
Near the end of his article, he comments,”Australia, along with Canada and the United Kindom, may well be locked into the US global signals and intelligence command and control systems…”
Would it be a fait accompli to “enable” cooperation from underlings, even thru arm twisting? Or would it be such an actual threat with draconian results if the underling in question refused to cooperate.
Behm, like most of us, would like to see Oz politics “grow some”
but could the fear of real consequences be reason enough to stifle dissent?
I think Behm is right for more or less suggesting the government “grow some”…What role is our attitude re AUKUS (even kick-backs?) shaping our timid responses?
Many have seen pics and clips of what is going on in the M/E and nearly retched at the egregious human toll.
Why do politicians not feel similarly…little kids wondering dazed through rubble, mass rape and other forms of torture as well as utter destruction of cities including Beirut and now Tehran.
@ Thomas Brookes: An excellent point re Churchill abandoning Australia in his defence of England. A former colleague spent 2.5 years in North Australia with a pack horse, an Aborigine, a radio & a rifle watching out for the invading Japanese Army ….. that fortunately did not arrive. Those about 400 country men were known as Curtin’s Cowboys, remembered in the Darwin War Museum but rarely elsewhere.
It is time for Australia to ”grow some political testicles” by becomiong a Republic with an Australian borne Head of State, without the Scummo USUKA sub debacle and emerge as an unaligned neutral middle power as NZ has done.
Perhaps removing the USAF from Tindal Base NT, and decommissioning Pine Gap & other spy stations will be more difficult, but we appear to get few, if any benefits, from their presence.
Hear, hear…
Some say Texan cowboys walk funny from riding high in the saddle.
Oz MPs are already talking funny, but I’m on the lookout for Albo & his govt walking funny due to their palisade of pickets. On the one side the banks of hyper-liberal investors from Uncle Sam, and the other banks of hyper-sonic missiles from US-Zionistas and return fire from the Middle Eastern mélange.
Rectum rectitude – blew ’em to smithereens.