By framing the war in Ukraine as a moral struggle, Australian media have left the public blind to the security risks facing its own nation. Moral questions surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, regarding a fellow democracy’s sovereignty and the legality of such action, have dominated headlines and commentary. This moral framing is understandable.

And yet, one key question has been notably absent from Australia’s national foreign policy discussion: Does this conflict actually serve Australia’s strategic national interest? Though government officials, foreign policy analysts, and media figures assert that Australia has some stake in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, such claims are often vague, rhetorical, or assumed rather than argued. What remains lacking is a rigorous and transparent examination of what “national interest” really means in these contexts, and whether conflicts in regions outside the Asia-Pacific meaningfully engage it. In an age of complex global entanglements, moral clarity is important, but so too is strategic clarity. Australians deserve more than words and hyperbolic sentiment. They deserve a nuanced account of how distant wars affect the nation's security and strategic interests.

Australia’s National Strategic Interests

If we are to define Australia’s strategic and security interests, a logical starting point is a comprehensive model. I believe one is laid out by Australia’s most prominent national security strategist, Hugh White, in his book How to Defend Australia.

White’s framework is notably inspired by Lord Palmerston, the famous British foreign minister and Prime Minister in the mid-1800s, and his “concentric circles” approach, a model that guided British grand strategy for generations. Palmerston’s framework endured because it was rooted in geography, a largely unchanging factor in international politics. More variable considerations, like relative power, military capability, and political intent, were layered on top of this geographic foundation, giving the strategy both longevity and flexibility.

As Hugh White puts it, “each interest is reinforced by those further out in the concentric hierarchy”. Applying the Palmerstonian concentric model to an Australian context, White identifies four enduring strategic interests, ordered from most to least important as:

  1. Prevent direct attacks. The ability to prevent an adversary from launching an attack on Australia across our air and maritime approaches.
  2. Denying forward bases. Denying adversaries access to bases in the inner arc of islands lying within a few hundred kilometres of the Australian coastline.
  3. Balance in Southeast Asia. Maintaining a favourable balance of power in the Southeast Asian archipelago.
  4. Balance across broader Asia. Preserving a favourable balance of power in the broader Asian region.

As White argues, ensuring Australia’s interests are met in the peripheral concentric rings reduces the likelihood of threats emerging in the ‘inner ring interests’. Yet if this logic is extrapolated further, there is an implication of a fifth interest: the global balance of power. A stable global balance of power, especially one that effectively contains the rise of a regional hegemon in Asia, by definition, reinforces Australia's core interests. If the global balance of power can act as a “check-in-balance” on China, Asia’s potential hegemon, then Australian security is bolstered from the outermost ring inward, extending to our most inner interest, defending air and maritime approaches. In that case, sustaining the global balance of power should be central to Australia’s foreign policy, as it is theoretically the easiest to action and bolsters all other inner interests.

The Global Balance of Power: Implications for Australia

Australia has already contributed over $1.5 billion of aid to Ukraine, including the donation of forty-nine Abrams tanks, which were completely delivered in October of 2025. If Australia is serious about securing its future in a more contested Indo-Pacific it must stop aid to Ukraine. Simultaneously, Australia should apply the highest diplomatic pressure on its security guarantor, the United States, to shift its military commitments from Europe and other regions towards Asia. Every dollar spent on Ukraine and other distant conflicts is a dollar diverted from the decisive strategic contest of the 21st century: the balance of power in Asia. The steady rise of China’s economy and military capability makes China a very real threat to vie for regional hegemony in Asia. Containing China and preventing it from reaching exalted hegemonic status is not just in Australia’s interest. It is also in America’s interest.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has laid bare the limits of its military power. Despite early concerns, Ukraine has resisted far longer than most analysts expected, even without formalised NATO troop involvement. That alone should prompt a recalibration of threat perceptions. While Russia continues advancing on the battlefield, its inability to dominate Ukraine, a nation with a fraction of its resources, reveals an international truth: Moscow is not a potential hegemon in Europe. Russia is a declining power, a fact that makes it clear it cannot hope to dominate Eastern Europe, let alone the entire European continent. Any argument that states otherwise is not a serious argument. Thus, the US should seriously draw back its efforts and commitment in Europe. China is a peer competitor; Russia is not.

Consequently, Washington has a vested interest in balancing a rising China, which requires allocating maximum resources and supplying Asia-Pacific allies with critical equipment. Continued U.S. military involvement in regions other than Asia serves diminishing strategic returns for Australia and the United States. The Pentagon is increasingly stretched. In May, the U.S. was forced to come to a ceasefire with the Houthis largely because its airstrike campaign was faltering and unsustainable, depleting critical American resources. In June, the USS Nimitz and four warships were redeployed from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East. By July, arms exports to allies were under review by the Pentagon due to shrinking stockpiles, particularly high-demand air defence munitions.

Australia’s Interest in Balancing China

The United States and Australia share a core strategic interest: balancing China's rise and resisting its push for regional hegemony. As Elbridge Colby outlines in The Strategy of Denial, 20th century Europe had multiple great powers capable of forming coalitions against hegemonic aspirants like Napoleonic France, Imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany. In contrast, Asia lacks a sufficient number of great powers to balance China alone. As a result, the United States remains indispensable to any effective anti-hegemonic coalition in the Asian and Indo-Pacific region.

For an anti-hegemonic coalition to succeed, Washington must reorient its strategic focus. This requires shifting attention and resources toward Asia, a process begun under the Obama administration and articulated by the then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the “pivot to Asia.” I reiterate; every dollar the U.S. continues to spend on prolonged security commitments in Europe is a dollar not spent on the primary theater of 21st-century geopolitics: Asia. Like everything, it is an opportunity cost.

Australia and other regional powers must recognize the strategic reality, limit their own entanglements in strategically unimportant regional theatres, and work to persuade the United States to reduce its security involvement in regions other than Asia. Asia is the new fulcrum of global power. For the sake of both American and Australian security, and long-term regional stability, Canberra and, especially, Washington must end their distractions and refocus on Asia. As a neighbour in Asia, our Australian future depends on it.