Australia has been a hopeless ally to the US of late. As well as hesitating about support for President Trump’s favour to the world in destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities, Albanese has refused to commit to even half of Nato’s new target of five per cent of GDP defence spending by member-states. His dismal status as one of the West’s few leaders who hasn’t managed to secure a meeting with Trump suggests the special relationship is in far from capable hands.

Yet, while Team Trump may feel irritated with Australia, that will be nothing compared to their feelings about the lack of support America’s European allies, especially Britain, have shown. The respected British military commentator Colonel Richard Kemp says Trump asked Prime Minister Keir Starmer to support the US attacks against Iran, possibly by joining offensive actions. Starmer said no – doubtless because he’s less worried about a nuclear-armed Iran or damage to the US-UK special relationship than about losing anti-Israel leftist and Muslim voters.

Moreover Starmer, whose guiding principle in global affairs is leftist interpretation of international law, seems to have accepted the view of Attorney-General Richard Hermer, an anti-Israel obsessive, that offensive action against Iran is unlawful. Thus former UK national security advisor Peter Ricketts says he believes the US decided it was better not to ask to launch the B-2 bombers from the RAF base on (for the moment British) Diego Garcia than to be told no.

Starmer also refused to help brave Israel against the latest Iranian attacks on its territory, in contrast to twice in 2024. London’s endless pacifist platitudes after the Israeli attacks began – ‘de-escalation’, ‘restraint’, ‘return to diplomatic negotiations’ – were coded criticism of Netanyahu which would have allowed the survival of Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. When pressed, Starmer has said Iran must not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons and that preventing this was ‘a good thing’ for the UK. But he’s never explained how this might be achieved other than by force given that talks with the regime had clearly become pointless.

Not only has Starmer’s policy on the Middle East been shown to be passive and weak (except when it comes to denouncing Israel), he appears incapable of reading Trump.  Despite spending hours in his company at the G7 meeting in Canada, Starmer told the media, ‘I don’t believe President Trump will attack Iran.’ Probably because Trump’s team didn’t trust him, Starmer appears to have been sidelined as it developed the attack plans. When Starmer learned about them at the eleventh hour, he tried to persuade Trump to call them off with the clearly unpersuasive arguments that they could risk Iranian terrorist attacks or could endanger Westerners in Iran.

Starmer’s reaction to Trump’s military action has been even more woeful than Albanese’s. He’s refused to welcome it and even won’t say if the UK would support the US if it was attacked.

The White House probably sees France as even more useless than Britain. Trump took the extraordinary step of publicly slamming the ‘publicity-seeking’ Macron, who ‘always gets it wrong’ after he told the media that Trump was leaving the G7 early to negotiate an Israel-Iran ceasefire. After the US attacks, Macron went even further in the uselessness stakes than Starmer by condemning them as ‘illegal’.

Only a couple of senior Europeans will have earned some respect from Trump over Iran. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz became a lonely voice commending Israel for doing the ‘dirty work’ ‘for all of us’, adding that, ‘I have the greatest respect for the Israelis, having the courage to do this.’  And former Dutch prime minister, now Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte, will have become Trump’s best European friend with his effusive congratulations for his ‘decisive action in Iran’ which ‘makes us all safer’.

Rutte also congratulated Trump on driving Nato members to sign up to defence spending of five per cent of GDP by 2035 (all but Spain agreed), which Trump has said is the condition for continued US security guarantees to allies. Substantially increased European defence spending is something a long list of US presidents has attempted but failed to get and is a real Trump achievement – 3.5 per cent of the commitment is for core military expenditure, which will be a huge increase for most member-states.

Still, the new target isn’t quite as impressive as it sounds as 1.5 of the five per cent can be ‘broader security investment’, non-military expenditure supposedly critical to national security. This is a joke: it can include virtually anything, including border and energy security. So, it could include wind farms, measures to push greater public electric vehicle and heat pump uptake and, in Britain’s case, vast payments to the French who pretend to be trying to stop the relentless flow of illegal immigrants across the Channel.

The EU was as irrelevant over Iran as Britain and France. Yet it insists on its right to be taken seriously as a serious global security force. In fact it remains a strategic pygmy, having consistently failed to resolve any of the crises in its region, with its only foreign policy achievement the confirmation that America is the only Western power that matters. So it was that the failed meeting of European ministers with their Iranian counterpart just before the US attack included EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas. But her presence was of interest only for what it revealed about the Brussels view of European values – she meekly accepted the Iranian shaking the hands of her male colleagues, but not hers.

Yet Albanese, half-hearted about the things that really matter to Australia – the good repair of our alliance with Washington and the huge positives of Trump’s blow to Iran’s nuclear ambitions and his broader restoration of respect for US power – is enthusiastic for a ‘Security and Defence Partnership’ with the EU. One exciting prospect this offers is co-operation on maritime security. The EU displayed its capabilities in this area in 2021, when it sent vessels ostensibly to help Greece deal with a new wave of illegal immigrants flooding in from Turkey, its idea of ‘help’ being to escort the people-smugglers’ boats into Greek ports where all their customers claimed asylum. Athens has declined the offer of return visits.