Why Australia Is Gearing Up for Possible War With China
The Pacific is vast, but there is an increasing understanding in Canberra that a conflict over Taiwan would hit very close to home.
(This is the third in a series of dispatches from partner nations the US will depend on in its rivalry, and potential war, with China. Read part one here; part two, on Japan, here; part four, on India, here; and part five, on Europe, here.)
Japan is America’s single most important ally, but Australia has historically been its most reliable. Alone among US allies, not just in the Indo-Pacific but globally, Australia has fought in all of America’s major wars since World War I.
As I found during three days in Sydney and Canberra, the prospect of war in the Taiwan Strait is forging Australia, Japan and the US into a latter-day Triple Entente — the pre-World War I coalition that sought to contain Imperial Germany — in the Western Pacific. That comparison is reassuring and disquieting at the same time.