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I think you underestimate Australia significantly. They've geared up for a fight with nearby powers they (and NZ) have fought before. And if Aussie ever ends up in a stand-up fight against an invader, NZ will jump back in with them.
Admittedly, the ANZACs haven't met the nearby power in regular warfare, only irregular warfare. But each country now has the measure of the others and make plans accordingly.
Hence why Australia is very good in jungle environments.
And why NZ military maintains close ties with Singapore's military.
The idea is that the more weapons you have the less likely it is that you would ever need to use them in a defensive full-scale war.
> Tactically, Australia will probably just lose any fight against anyone more scary than New Zealand or Papua New Guinea.
They might lose it strategically, but I don't really see how or why would China want to invade Australia (besides maybe trying to nuke its major cities). It hardly makes sense logistically.
Invading Australia isn't easy. It is a long way from anywhere. It is very big (12x the area of Ukraine). Much of the terrain is inhospitable. It has no land borders. Very different situation from Ukraine, where Russia is literally right next door – and not remote Siberia either, the western densely populated parts of Russia.
Yes, in the unlikely event that Australia embarked on a solo offensive expedition against another major country, it would probably lose. But it seems very unlikely that Australia would ever do that.
You simply blockade any ships arriving here. And being an island that heavily depends on imports that's a problem.
Hence the need for long range submarines.
These new subs are South China Sea range. So it's an increase in Australia's strategic projection.
Trump may withdraw from Europe but it's unlikely he'd take that approach with Asia. He and the Republicans are hawkish on China, and they don't have the equivalent of a powerful Europe to do the heavy lifting for them. Russia is also only 0.1x the size of China, and the US doesn't have key interests in Eastern Europe aside from NATO preservation. Trump has also given more firm verbal commitments to Asian allies in the past.
> America’s Asian allies, like its European ones, may be on their own under Trump. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister recently said aid to Ukraine was critical in deterring Xi from invading the island. Communist China’s leaders “have to understand that things like that can’t come easy,” Trump says, but he declines to say whether he would come to Taiwan’s defense.
> Trump is less cryptic on current U.S. troop deployments in Asia. If South Korea doesn’t pay more to support U.S. troops there to deter Kim Jong Un’s increasingly belligerent regime to the north, Trump suggests the U.S. could withdraw its forces. “We have 40,000 troops that are in a precarious position,” he tells TIME. (The number is actually 28,500.) “Which doesn’t make any sense. Why would we defend somebody? And we’re talking about a very wealthy country.”
https://time.com/6972021/donald-trump-2024-election-intervie...
Once Trump was actually sitting in the White House, he was surrounded by countless advisors and lobbyists working overtime to talk him out of his crazier ideas, and in very many cases they succeeded.
Of course, it could be different this time around, if he wins in November. Then again, it could also very easily be largely the same as last time.
Weren't most of the "hawk"/classical interventionist Republicans subsequently mostly purged from the party in favour isolationists and/or nutjobs? Bolton isn't coming back to the White House if Trump wins...
Most likely, the US will run this experiment by electing Trump in November. Everything is pointing to this happening and this year being largely an echo of the 2016 election. The Trump supporters still love him, he's doing great in the primaries, and the Dems are running a very unpopular candidate (again), and have fractured their support because of the Israel/Gaza war and Biden's unquestioning support of Israel which has greatly angered the younger voters. Most likely, they're going to stay home on election day, or vote for the Green party or something (again, just like so many people did in 2016--look at the number of votes the Greens and Libertarians got that year and how that would have changed the results), resulting in a Trump win.
The last time the Democratic Party tried running a very unpopular candidate, the US elected Trump. Why do you think this won't happen again? It's not just 2016 either: it's a long-standing pattern with the DNC.
I thought the implication was obvious, but I vote for the person who most aligns with what I want. So what I want is not irrelevant, in fact.
> what's important is who wins the White House, and that's looking very, very much like Trump right now
I can tell from your comment that you’re not new to US elections, so it’s bizarre to me that you’re putting any kind of faith in polling data this far out. If polls could accurately predict who would be president based on approval ratings six months before an election, Trump would’ve won in 2020, and Republicans would’ve had their red waves in 2018 and 2022.
The only polling that actually matters anymore is what’s happening on Election Day. The rest is all fodder for pundits to hem and haw at.
> Face it: the non-Trump voters are not at all united, and a large fraction of them genuinely hate Biden.
This has no bearing on US elections. A democrat voter isn’t going to vote for Trump because they don’t like Biden. They’re going to vote for Biden and, at worst, write some pithy line on Facebook about how they wish they had better choices.
Yes, this is true: according to the pollsters, Trump had zero chance of winning in 2016. They were even saying this while the votes were being counted.
I'm not looking at polls, however, I'm just looking at popularity that I see in general. Hillary was not well-liked at all, and she didn't even have the Gaza problem that Biden has now. People just didn't like her much; she had no charisma. There weren't any big conflicts going on, there were no huge protests at college campuses, there wasn't massive inflation squeezing the working classes like now, etc.
>This has no bearing on US elections.
It totally does.
>A democrat voter isn’t going to vote for Trump because they don’t like Biden.
No, they're going to stay at home, or vote for the Greens, exactly like they did in 2016.
> They’re going to vote for Biden
History doesn't show this at all.
That's true, but the situation has changed. After 4 years of Trump and almost a year of him bungling the Covid response and George Floyd protests, lots of voters wanted a change, and people who had previously sat out the 2016 election or voted Other showed up this time to vote for Biden, who seemed like a boring but competent candidate. (Don't forget, however, Trump got more popular votes in 2020 than he did in 2016; it was simply outweighed by the even greater increase on the Dem side.)
Now, it's 4 years later; Covid is over, but the economy is suffering from high inflation (which is fine for rich people but hurting the lower/middle classes), the housing situation is worse than ever, and now the progressives/GenZ are royally pissed about Biden's handling of the Gaza situation.
Historically, one thing that's been pretty constant with US Pres elections is that people vote for change when they're mad about the economy (and of course blame it on the current Pres).
>But elections aren’t about who you like anymore, they’re about who you dislike and what that person you dislike is going to do.
This has pretty much always been the case. But as the Dems have failed to learn over and over, you still need to nominate someone that has some degree of charisma and doesn't have a lot of baggage. (And it's unfair too: the Republican candidates don't seem to have such a high bar to meet here, but it is what it is.)
I could be wrong of course, but I can easily see enough voters staying home to allow Trump to win.
If the GOP had picked someone a bit more mainstream and less divisive than Trump, they’d probably be winning against Biden easily. Likewise, if Biden had decided against a second term, some other Democrat could easily have been well ahead of Trump right now.
A big reason why the election is about “who you dislike”, is both parties decided to run with what is arguably close to the worst option out of their realistic choices. If either had chosen differently, it would likely have been a very different election.