Can it be Australia is pitching to be a contestant on the next episode of The Apprentice? Imagine. A kind of global TV reality show, with Donald Trump to select his favourite, most loyal, MOST BEAUTIFUL diplomatic ally. Because that seems to be the aim. We already insist on a capital letter for the Alliance.
Forget deputy sheriff. The chain of command is clear. It was a US admiral, rather than the Australian government, who announced in Sydney last week that sophisticated and deadly US fighter jets, the F-22 Raptors, would fly out of bases in the Northern Territory from next year.
![What happens to Australia when Donald Trump makes the calls?](/web/20161218013202im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/n/6/c/3/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtcsvj.png/1481937555097.jpg)
Remember the importance of sovereign border protection and all that?
At the same time Defence Minister-in-Wanting Christopher Pyne was in France, inspecting shipyards and gleefully quoting the wisdom of Trump, telling Australians not to be "strategic bludgers" and to spend more money on the military.
Pesky questions about the leaking of France's secret submarine schematics be damned. Let alone any attempt to explain exactly how meeting an arbitrary spending target to devote 2 per cent of Australia's GDP to guns and bombs would make the nation a more reliable ally.
Here we sit, a happy sunburned island surrounded by a moat, but it's as if Australia's military policy has been tailored to fit inside a 140 character tweet:
Spend more, SPEND MORE, is the battle cry. #nobludgers
And speaking of Twitter, apparently there is no need to worry that Trump is alarmed at the "out of control" cost for another brand of stealth warplane, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.
Unlike Raptors, this is the model the US is willing to sell and Australia has committed billions of dollars to buy. Just don't look too closely at the collapse in Lockheed Martin's share price after Trump tweets.
And speaking of thought bubbles, how much consultation was made with allies before Trump signalled a change to the longstanding one-China policy by accepting a telephone call from the President of Taiwan?
Not that anything is wrong with acknowledging reality: Taiwan looks, acts and sounds very much like a country, and a democratic one, too. But we're now told (after the fact), Trump's break with four decades of diplomatic pretence by following the so-called one-China policy was actually deliberate and long planned.
For all the talk of indispensable allies, such a shift will also have a profound impact on Australian foreign policy. Would be nice to have got a little warning.
Beijing is certainly cranky and there's already a mite of tension about China's battlements in the South China Sea. Malcolm Turnbull has flagged he may not follow along with Trump's Taiwan tryst and Australia will speak with its own voice. "Our position on Taiwan has been consistent for decades and there will be no change in that," he has said. Fair enough.
But here is risk. If Trump does decide to go ahead and embrace Taiwan, and Turnbull does not, is that not … a choice?
And isn't the notion of being forced to make a "choice" between China and the US exactly the circumstance Australia's political leaders have been scoffing at for so many years? Who gets told they're fired?
What if we're auditioning for the wrong show? Maybe we'd be more comfortable on the next global season of I'm a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here.
Daniel Flitton is a Fairfax Media senior correspondent.
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