![Which sane country would wager its national security on the sanity of the mad king?](/web/20170222152021im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/g/i/4/i/image.related.landscape.460x307.gugsh7.png/1487704766267.jpg)
Australia can't trust its ally with the 'mad king' in power
The lesson of the fall of Singapore must surely be that Australia can not trust its survival wholly to a foreign power. Even a close ally. Yesterday Britain, today America.
Peter Hartcher is the political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. He is a Gold Walkley award winner, a former foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Washington, and a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. His latest book is The Sweet Spot: How Australia Made its Own Luck and Could Now Throw it All Away. His 2005 book, Bubble Man: Alan Greenspan and the Missing Seven Trillion Dollars, foresaw the collapse of the US housing market and the economic slump that followed.
The lesson of the fall of Singapore must surely be that Australia can not trust its survival wholly to a foreign power. Even a close ally. Yesterday Britain, today America.
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