The aussies have been a steadfast member of the Commonwealth and non-NATO ally. To the extent that they were willing to accept the protective blanket of the US in terms of not going nuclear themselves, along with other European countries and Canada, in spite of the means and the know-how and in their particular case the huge natural resources to do so.
Off late however there seems to be growing dissatisfaction and unease about the readiness of the US to back up her allies in their times of duress in spite of expecting all of them to rally to the American call with men, machinery, and money, when and where needed.
This has most recently come out in the open with the US refusing to provide the British Falkland Islands with its protective hand against the Argentines - something that has really miffed their longest standing friend and ally, the UK. There are many voices in Britain that wonder what thy are doing in first Iraq and then Afghanistan, for a war that was not their own, when a similar courtesy is not automatically offered in their own time of need, especially now with Britain having rolled back severely on their naval might due to domestic economic pressures.
It is hardly difficult then to understand the cause of the aussie concern, sitting as they are in the backyard of an increasingly dominant China, with nowhere close to the means, conventional or nuclear, to thwart it.
