A military plane leaves Kabul (Image: AP)

Our “great and powerful friend” the United States has suffered another humiliating defeat, this time in Afghanistan. In fact, in the more than 75 years since victory over Japan, the US has rarely won a clear victory.

Since the 1940s, in conflict after conflict, the US has had to withdraw bruised and bleeding — despite its apparently overwhelming superior force.

We are reminded of the wisdom of late PM Malcolm Fraser: “Our great and powerful friend can be a dangerous ally.” Why? Because we can be lockstep with the US without considering the chances of success, let alone whether the ends justify the means. Then, as has happened too often, we are burdened with consequences we had never really considered, let alone prepared for.

Afghanistan is just the latest instance of that sad picture of desperate people scrambling into planes to escape the consequences of taking our side in the fight.

There is much work to be done cleaning up the mess. That Australia would for a moment entertain leaving behind those who supported us in the ill-fated fight with the Taliban says it all for how amoral we and the Americans can be in escaping responsibility.

But the biggest challenge we face as Australians is not the one we face with all those party to this failure. The issues we need to face now are: where do we go next in the world, and what is to become of our alliances?

We can’t just hope it will disappear. It won’t. We can’t do what we’ve been doing for much of the time since World War II. That was locked in from when wartime PM John Curtin announced his now-exhausted decision to “look to America” for our main alliance.

“Without any inhibitions of any kind,” Curtin declared, “I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.”

That historic shift meant we changed. But we did it theoretically. We still had a long way to go culturally to move to independence. And we had really just substituted one form of imperial dependence for another.

The question we have needed to ask over many years, if not decades, is why haven’t we made the change that stares us in the face? Why can’t we stand on our own?

One reason we should have is that America is in decline; its economy is much weaker relatively than it was when Curtin made his declaration. Standing with it simply flies in the face of what is in Australia’s best interests.

Another reason is geography. We’re next to Asia — not Europe or the US. Obvious as that may be, it hasn’t been a perception shared by many.

Many have been saying these things for a long time. Fraser said it at length in his 2014 book Dangerous Allies. Gough Whitlam said it and acted on it in the generation before Fraser.

But now we have a golden and glorious opportunity to discover how to stand on our own feet, forge alliances that start to shape how we relate to our neighbourhood — and the wider world beyond.

What would that look like? There are plenty of indicators for us now to forge an identity as an Asia-Pacific nation unencumbered by our European and US allegiances. But let’s not get misty-eyed. Waiting to leap into the gap created by US mismanagement and brain dead Australian compliance are the forces that have been there for some time: the People’s Republic of China and the post-imperial imperialist power of Russia.

Decades before it got rid of its own sclerotic communist government, Russia attempted to thwart Iran by helping to boot out the shah, and then gained control of Afghanistan. That effort ended in tears too, shortly before the US turned up in Afghanistan. Now China will be salivating at the prospect of advancing its belt and road project at an unusually rapid pace as it tries to trump its major power rivals, with a strategy and resources already in hand.

What should Australia do?

The easiest and most predictable thing is to once again do nothing and fall into line with US strategy, which will keep aiming to thwart China and Russia. But we don’t need to. Other US allies probably won’t. It’s difficult to see South Korea or Japan doing that openly. The major Europeans allies — Germany, France and the UK — probably won’t either. Neither will India and other Asian countries with substantial militaries.

It is a wonderful opportunity for Australia to claw its way out of the rabbit hole we have dug for ourselves and work to become a mature and self-possessed member of the community of nations.

Michael Kelly is a Jesuit priest, journalist, refugee advocate and long-term resident of Asia, mostly based in Bangkok.