There’s a huge difference between the symbolism of poor optics and the substance of poor strategy.

There’s no doubt appearing in a group photo that included dictators Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin was poor optics for Dan Andrews (perhaps why Bob Carr chose to skip it).

Barnaby Joyce responded by urging Andrews “don’t come home”, and The Australian wrote about “how Andrews and Carr became Xi’s ‘useful idiots'”.

But in the end the photo was pure symbolism; Daniel Andrews appearance in it poses no threat at all to the security of Australians.

While the political establishment spent a lot of effort finger-wagging at a photo, they missed the significance of massive strategic transition that we’re watching happen in real time.

The Australia Institute’s Allan Behm once wrote that the greatest strategic risk to Australia was “the political and social collapse of the United States of America”, because America’s strategic collapse would follow. If as many front pages or column inches had been devoted to the security implications of Australia’s biggest military ally rapidly descending into outright authoritarianism as the supposed threat from China, perhaps Australia would be in a better position.

The decline of the United States has been rapid. Australia is unprepared for the fallout.

President Donald Trump is deploying the military against the civilian population in Democrat-run cities like Chicago and Los Angeles.

ICE is deploying anonymous masked agents to violently subdue and arrest people without due process and disappear them.

After the Supreme Court ruled the President cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed while exercising official duties, experts warned Trump could get away with murder.

Last week, the US ordered a military strike on a boat in international waters, summarily killing 11 people suspected of smuggling drugs. The Supreme Court has systematically removed limits on the President’s powers.

Following the news of the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump blamed “the radical left” and vowed retribution. He completely ignored the political violence unleashed by the extreme right, including the recent assassination of Minnesota state Democrat Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the vicious hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, husband to former Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which Republicans mocked.

Trump has basically announced his intention to weaponise Kirk’s murder to consolidate his control over the political right. Where Democrats universally condemn political violence; Trump pardons it.

Plainly, the political and social collapse of America poses an infinitely more serious risk to Australia’s security than does China. It is obvious that tying Australia closer to the United States only makes Australia complicit. Yet, the current strategy to secure Australia’s safety is to bind Australia even closer militarily to an increasingly unhinged and unreliable United States through the AUKUS ‘security pact’.

Time and again experts have warned about the impact that the AUKUS will have, not just on Australia’s security, but on Australia’s sovereignty.

Firstly, there’s not a single guarantee in AUKUS that Australia will ever receive a single submarine.

For those who think Daniel Andrews and Bob Carr attending the Chinese V-Day commemorations makes them “Xi’s ‘useful idiots'”, it begs the question – what does that make Australia’s AUKUS pact?

We’ve committed $368 billion for nuclear submarines with no enforceable contract to ensure we’re delivered what we’re paying for. There are no refunds.

But there are serious doubts about the United States ability to build and deliver the nuclear submarines. On the heroic assumption we do get them, Australia will need to double the number of submariners we have currently to operate them, and we don’t have the capability to train them in Australia.

There’s also the fact that the size and capabilities of the nuclear submarines we have commissioned are less suited to defending Australia and much more suited to long-range missions contributing to US battle plans against China, far from our shores.

When the United States asks Australia to deploy its submarines to support US military ventures, can an Australian government genuinely decline the request? Assurances ring hollow.

Former NSW Labor senator Doug Cameron delivered the 2025 Laurie Carmichael lecture and gave this stark warning about the risk AUKUS poses to Australia’s sovereignty.

“These submarines are designed to attack our most important trading partner China, in an effort to maintain US hegemony and military superiority … AUKUS, along with the Force Posture Agreement, diminishes our sovereignty, and increases the likelihood that we will be dragged into a war with China over Taiwan”.

Cameron challenged the left of the Labor party to stand up to rampant militarism, to question AUKUS and to pursue genuine peacebuilding as it had done historically, asking, “Why has the parliamentary [Labor] left allowed themselves to be defanged and co-opted into supporting US military aggression?

Caucus solidarity must never come before opposition to war, genocide and starvation of innocent civilians in Gaza.”

Cameron then quoted Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser, who articulated the flaw in Australia’s strategy to rely on the United States – it may not be able to defeat China’s military.

Where would that leave Australia? Cameron continued: “[Fraser] argued that the United States would not have the capabilities or the determination to defeat China and that if Australia allied ourselves with the US, they would eventually retreat back to the mainland America.

“We would be left as defeated allies in a region dominated by China.”

It’s an outcome Australia needs to consider. The United States does not have a great track record of delivering military victories. It could not defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan after 20 years and $2 trillion of military spending.

The reality is AUKUS makes Australia less safe. That is the substantive security issue Australia needs to face.