This week, Richard Marles put a different spin on what "making real progress in relation to AUKUS" now means.
(ABC News: Shaun Kingma)
If there has been an underlying theme in global politics in the past 18 months it has surrounded the lack of reliability of the United States as an alliance partner or, more recently, the cost of having such an alliance with the US.
As Donald Trump has led his country away from its alliances and into a war that has made the majority of its allies in the Middle East vulnerable Iranian targets, countries around the world have been left scurrying to re-evaluate their needs and their friendships.
No-one inside federal politics seems particularly interested in discussing the large orange elephant in the room and how it is materially changing every other country's views of the world.
Donald Trump has led his country away from its alliances. (Reuters: Evelyn Hockstein)
There is an increasing unease in the Northern Hemisphere about how the Ukraine and Gulf conflicts seem to be slowly melding into each other, particularly as the links between Iran and Russia seem to expand, and stories of their deep technological cooperation on weapons continue to appear.
In Europe, there is growing consternation about Russian incursions into European airspace, into drone attacks in Germany and Poland, and into European political campaigns.
This weekend, the German state of Saxony-Anhalt goes to the polls, amid allegations of heavy Russian interference in an area that was once part of East Germany and where the far right AfD party is predicted to win a huge majority.
The implications of this result for the government led by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and for the balance of policies in Germany, is significant.
The AfD is hostile to Ukraine and supportive of Russia. The result will intensify pressure on Merz to back away from Germany's current support for Ukraine, which of course wouldn't matter so much if European states weren't already trying to make up for the withdrawal of US support for Ukraine.
The far right AfD party is predicted to win a huge majority in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt this weekend. (Reuters: Thilo Schmuelgen)
Europe, the Middle East, the Baltics, the subcontinent, South East Asia, North Asia — they are all pragmatically reorganising themselves to deal with the growing absence of the US.
Instead, our Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister, Richard Marles, turned up in Washington this week, beaming like a kid in a lolly shop next to Defence Secretary Peter Hegseth, announcing that the US was going to be escalating even further its military presence in Australia.
Australia and the US, along with the United Kingdom are now operating under the AUKUS alliance. The most notable aspect of that alliance agreement was supposed to be the transfer from the US to Australia of (initially) some US nuclear-powered submarines and (later) the technology to build a new nuclear-powered submarine class, the SSN AUKUS, in Australia in conjunction with building in the UK.
But in Washington this week, Marles put a different spin on what "making real progress in relation to AUKUS" now means.
