Our allies have a Plan B as geopolitical tectonic plates shift, and Australia needs one too

share_windows This article appeared in Crikey on January 21 2026.

A number of developments outside Australia last week could be signs of the geopolitical tectonic plates slowly shifting. Not that you’ll read about them in Australia’s mainstream media — these developments would be considered either too peripheral to Australia’s national interest, or too incompatible with the existing narrative framework of reporting the world.

First, Canada. Last Thursday, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney visited China and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang. He wanted to leverage Canada’s national strengths to cooperate with China on trade, energy, agriculture, seafood and other areas. Describing the Canada–China relationship as 'distant and uncertain for nearly a decade', Carney declared, 'We’re changing that':

We’re recalibrating Canada’s relationship with China — strategically, pragmatically, and decisively — to the benefit of the people of both our nations.

This would not have been extraordinary if not for the fact that, as recently as April 2025, when asked during a televised election debate to name Canada’s biggest security threat, Carney responded with one word: 'China.'

Confronted with this dramatic flip, some Canadians might have felt the ground shifting beneath them.

On the same day as Carney’s arrival in Beijing, the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz performed an equally eyebrow-raising rhetorical manoeuvre by telling a New Year’s reception in Halle, in the former East Germany, that:

Russia is a European country, our largest neighbour. If we succeed, in the longer term, in once again finding a balance with Russia — if peace prevails, if freedom is guaranteed — then we will have passed another major test.

Meanwhile in France, angry about the White House’s threat to impose extra tariffs on European countries if they oppose the US’s takeover of Greenland, President Emmanuel Macron urged the European Union to consider activating its Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI). Dubbed Europe’s 'trade bazooka', the ACI was originally designed as a 'nuclear option' to 'deal with bullying by a hostile external country', and, as the BBC’s Europe correspondent Nick Beake said, 'at the time they were thinking of China'. 

Now, you may be saying: hang on, isn’t the US the most powerful ally of the global West? Aren’t the allies supposed to stick together to fight the baddies, namely Russia, China and Iran (they’re usually mentioned in one breath, like the tripartite ingredients in a classic BLT)? And haven’t the allies of the US, including Australia, been talking about the China threat for a decade? Hasn’t Australia been told to get ready for a Chinese invasion?

Australians may still remember that back in 2023, the 'expert' team assembled by The Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher predicted in its Red Alert series that a war with China was likely to happen in three years (which, by the way, will be in March this year; stand by for updates on that prediction).

Of course, any country’s leaders would not be doing their job if they were not attending to the security of their nation by remaining alert to the possibility that external powers may harbour hostile intentions towards them, and by designing contingency strategies for such a possibility. And just as we can’t choose our parents, we can’t choose geography. That is why South Korea is terrified of the nuclear-equipped North Korea, and why Japan is intimidated by its neighbour China. It’s also why Poland, alongside many other European countries, eyes Russia with deep distrust; why India doesn’t trust Pakistan; and why Israel is watching Iran. The list goes on.

But until a few months ago, some of these security worries were somewhat mitigated by a conviction, as demonstrated by our Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, that the all-powerful United States would come to the rescue when needed. And this conviction is even now sustained by a hope that President Trump can be, as the BBC’s political correspondent Rob Watson puts it, 'placated, charmed, and managed' as long as the allies keep up the flattery. In response to the US threat to invade Greenland, leaders of many European countries seem to be signalling a change of strategic policy on Russia, from one of isolation to one of engagement. Europe thereby appears to be acting to rebuild its security architecture by departing from a liberal-normative logic of international rules and norms, and returning to a balance-of-power logic dictated by a rational recognition that Russia is best managed and accommodated rather than denied and isolated.

Similarly, possibly recalling Henry Kissinger’s famous line — 'To be America’s enemy is dangerous, but to be America’s friend is fatal' — Canada is pivoting to China, and seems to be ready to align itself with its former perceived 'enemy'. In doing so, Canada appears to be prioritising strategic survival over the liberal internationalist agenda of promoting liberal-democratic values. 

It may be too early to conclude that the old alliances are dissolving and new ones forming, but it’s clear that the rules of the global chessboard are being recast right before our eyes. In response to Canada’s latest move, Carl Bildt, co-chair of the Board of Trustees for the European Council on Foreign Relations and former prime minister of Sweden, shared his thought process:

Interesting with Canada ‘recalibrating’ its relationship with China. They are of course denying that it’s a Trump effect, but it obviously is. Has the time come for the EU to do the same? We EU members have to look with new eyes on our global relationships.

So far, Australia is showing no sign of looking at its global relationships with new eyes. Instead, it seems to be sitting tight and watching these dramas unfold elsewhere like a TV series. After all, Australia is lucky because it is surrounded by oceans. In his 2023 National Press Club speech, Paul Keating challenged the idea that China is a military threat to Australia, arguing that a military invasion of Australia by China is implausible, and that 'threatening' Australia would require a land invasion by a massive fleet — something China is neither capable of nor intending to do. Unlike members of NATO, Australia doesn’t need to worry about its own territorial sovereignty if Greenland becomes a battlefield. By implication, we are also safe from the threat of increased tariffs that many European countries are facing. 

So far, the Australian government has carefully maintained a delicate balance in our relations with the US and China, talking up trade relations with China while continuing its defence strategy of assuming that China poses an existential threat to us. 

But Australia does have a fatal strategic weakness. Canada, like Australia, is a Five Eyes country, and by sharing a border with the US, it naturally has some long-standing, pre-existing strategic cooperation arrangements with the US, such as the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). But Canada is not weighed down by AUKUS. In comparison, Australia’s strategic enmeshments with the US — including AUKUS, the long-term US military infrastructure in northern Australia, and Pine Gap — have resulted in a deeper operational commitment, and perhaps make our relationship with the US more intractable and less open to flexible and agile decision-making in our international relations.

All these musings invite a question: does the Australian government have a Plan B, in case the US alliance emerges as no longer reliable? If it does, it clearly hasn’t shared this with the Australian public yet.