Current Australian defence policy involves close integration with the United States military in all areas, making an independent foreign policy impossible and ensuring Australia’s automatic involvement in US-instigated wars such as a war with China, our major trading partner. A policy of neutrality would free Australia from involvement in such disastrous military adventures and enable the pursuit of peaceful and mutually beneficial relations with all countries. Recent polls have shown that neutrality has considerable support in the Australian community.
Source: How to break free from slavish adherence to U.S. foreign policy –
olddogthoughts 
Though I’m no fan of the Beijing government, there’s still a presumptive concept of American leadership as somehow, unless directly militarily provoked, being morally/ethically above using nuclear weapons internationally.
While Ronald Reagan postulated that “Of the four wars in my lifetime none came about because the U.S. was too strong,” who can know what may have historically come to fruition had the U.S. remained the sole possessor of atomic weaponry.
Cannot absolute power corrupt absolutely?
After President Harry S. Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur as commander of the forces warring with North Korea — for the latter’s remarks about using many atomic bombs to promptly end the war — Americans’ approval-rating of the president dropped to 23 percent.
It was a record-breaking low, even lower than the worst approval-rating points of the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson.
Had it not been for the formidable international pressure on Truman (and perhaps his personal morality) to relieve MacArthur as commander, Truman may have eventually succumbed to domestic political pressure to allow MacArthur’s command to continue.
Today, it seems the U.S. still expects the international community to accept that an American presidency would never initiate a nuclear-weapons exchange. But how can that be known for sure, especially with U.S. foreign-policy history?
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