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Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, who is also Defense Minister, walked away from meetings with US defense leaders feeling the two countries shared a mission.

Marles met with Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan during their trip to Washington – the first visit by an official of Australia’s new government.

“What really struck me about the meetings we’ve had over the last few days… is a real sense of shared mission at this time, between Australia and the United States,” Marles told the Defense Writers’ Group. “There is a sense of time when the rules-based global order that was built by the United States, Australia and many other countries is now under significant pressure.”

Marles said the system is under the most pressure it has seen since the end of World War II. That order is why there hasn’t been a great power war since 1945. “Obviously, what’s happening in Eastern Europe with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an example of that pressure,” he said. “And right now, the need to have a sense of shared mission, to project forward with a sense of team, is really important.”

Part of his mission in the United States has been to express that concern to the US government, he said. He said he was pleasantly surprised to find that concern for the future of the rules-based order was shared. “We really felt that this was reciprocal in every meeting we had, but at a more detailed level,” said the deputy prime minister.

An example of this is the discussions on the defense industrial base and the search for ways to make the US and Australian bases work in a more integrated way.

Marles’ visit shortly after taking office was to affirm the importance of his country’s alliance with the United States in his worldview, he said. “None of this is in doubt, but it’s an important thing to say from the point of view of a new government coming to meet the US,” he said.

It was not the first high-level meeting between the close allies. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attended the Quad meeting – Australia, Japan, India and the United States – on his first day in office. Albanese, along with Indo-Pacific leaders from Japan, South Korea and New Zealand, also attended the NATO Summit in Madrid.

Marles also met with Austin at the Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore shortly after taking office.

Marles noted that the Quad is not a defense alliance in any sense of the word. “It’s a group of four like-minded countries engaged in the Indo-Pacific that support a rules-based global order and that seek to promote the prosperity that order sustains,” he said.

He noted that it is a forum for the four nations to work together on common interests. He cited the work the Quad has done fighting COVID-19 and building a more efficient vaccine delivery to the region as an example of one way the Quad can operate.

Another initiative is the awareness of the maritime domain. This is important to stop illegal fishing – a matter of life and death for many Pacific Rim nations.

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