Australia and Korea playing knock and run between the U.S. and China
The U.S, or at least some of those within influential circles in the U.S, are creeping towards war with China. Preparations are well underway. Australia, Japan, and South Korea, are pushed, prodded, and compelled to line up and play. They’re playing knock and run.
In 1980s Australia, wayward suburban kids loved to play knock and run. After pushing, prodding and compulsion, a gang of four or five kids creep up to a house—preferably with a long driveway and grumpy owner, ring the doorbell, and run!
Each kid takes a turn, and when the last kid rings the doorbell, the grumpy homeowner is well on to it, opens the door, and tries to grab and sometimes beat the nearest kid.
Every kid knows, you only ever play when you’re not the slowest in the gang! Ice-cream eating Tubs McDugan wants to play - you’re in. The swift-running Swaines and Haggerty brothers want to play, you’re better off playing footy or throwing cans from the overpass (yes, I had a misspent youth).
If the U.S. is creeping towards war with China, who will be the slowest runner? It’s not the U.S. and it’s suredly not Japan. The question becomes, who is the slowest runner, Australia or Korea?
Now, when I say slowest runner, I’m clearly not talking about the physical process of running. I’m of course talking about the capacity to shape and reformulate policy and capacity to avoid being dragged into conflict, near conflict, or even tumultuous relations with the grumpy homeowner—China.
The U.S. is safe and sound in the Western hemisphere. It can disengage from the region, and can even retreat behind its oceans with relatively little cost. If the conflict spirals out of control, it will still have distance, geography, and dominance over the Western hemisphere to fall back on. Its credibility may take a hit, but it will survive.
Japan is large enough and influential enough to remove itself from U.S. influence—if it chooses to. It has the industrial capacity, technological base, and a long history of balancing regional dynamics. While its alliance with the U.S. is deep, it retains enough strategic autonomy to say “no” when national interests are clearly endangered.
This falls to Australia and South Korea—two allies whose economic relationship with China and deep reliance on the U.S. makes refusal harder and consequences more immediate. One of them will be the slowest runner. And when the knock is made and the door flung open, it’s one of these two that will find themselves caught, bruised, and left asking why they played the game in the first place.
Both Australia and South Korea are currently debating the relationship to the U.S., but they do so under very different constraints.
In Australia, the debate is still abstract—anchored in think tank essays and op-eds that cautiously question the sustainability of American power in Asia. It’s also abstract because let’s face it - geographically, Australia is already at least a block away from from the grumpy homeowner. But for a long time, particularly since the end of the Cold War, Australia could not imagine a strategic environment in which the U.S. did not play a central and dominant role.
Voices arguing against the U.S. playing the central role in Australia’s strategic outlook were few and far between—they were marginalised as idealists, contrarians, simply naïve (or former prime ministers!). The ANZUS alliance was sacrosanct, and Canberra’s strategic culture revolved around staying close to Washington no matter the global weather.
There is space, however narrow, to imagine a future of strategic autonomy—though it still remains politically risky. Well-established academics such as Hugh White and Sam Roggeveen today attract much more support and serious engagement than they would have just a decade ago. White’s arguments on the declining rationale for U.S. involvement in the region, and Roggeveen’s argument that Australia can actually defend itself without the United States, are no longer considered fringe. For younger or less-established academics, it’s still very difficult to go against the mainstream.
There is however, a growing recognition that clinging to a declining hegemon may be more dangerous than standing on one’s own. But whether that intellectual space translates into actual policy change is another matter entirely.
In South Korea, the debate is even more perilous. Any suggestion of distancing from the U.S. is quickly met with accusations of disloyalty or appeasement, amplified by a security establishment that is deeply tied to American doctrine. The alliance is woven into the very fabric of South Korea’s national identity, security apparatus, and political discourse. Criticism of the alliance is not just strategic dissent—it is seen by many as a threat to national survival.
Few policymakers are willing to stake their careers on rethinking the fundamentals of the U.S.–ROK relationship.
Yet, despite this firm alignment, there has always been vociferous dissent, particularly on the left—from student movements of the 1980s to progressive parties today. There is a long history of philosophical thought on international relations that views independence as the ultimate goal—not just militarily, but economically, culturally, and ideologically. The left has consistently argued that reliance on the U.S. weakens Korea’s sovereignty and warps its priorities.
In Seoul, the question is existential: not just how to align, but who to be. There is more than a millennia of maintaining independence and strong relations with China by being the willow that bends rather than the oak that breaks. But that path today means questionin gthe country’s identity.
Both Australia and Korea face the same underlying dilemma: how to navigate a world where their closest ally is also the one most likely to drag them into a confrontation with their largest trading partner.
And so here we are, crouched at the end of a long driveway, staring at a door we’ve been told to knock on. The U.S.—fastest runner in the gang—gives the signal. Japan’s already halfway down the road. But for Australia and South Korea, the moment of hesitation lingers.
Both know that once the bell is rung, the homeowner won’t be chasing the one who lives on the other side of the ocean. He’ll come after whoever’s within reach. And when the dust settles, when bruises are counted and excuses made, the question won’t be who rang the bell—but who was foolish enough to still be standing on the porch when the door swung open.
