For seven decades, Australia has sheltered beneath the American security umbrella, but the shelter has grown so large it now casts its own shadow. With more than a hundred US military installations across the continent and nuclear-capable assets operating from Australian soil, the alliance that was meant to guarantee peace may instead be quietly enrolling Australia in a war it has never chosen. The question that senior Australian leaders will not answer in public — whether the country could refuse to follow the United States into conflict with China — has become the most consequential question