Across a continent that once imagined itself a sovereign actor in its own strategic destiny, the United States military has quietly embedded itself into more than half of Australia's defence infrastructure—110 facilities in total, from signals intelligence stations to missile assembly plants. What began as alliance partnership has, in the view of serious analysts, become something closer to saturation: a condition in which Australia's capacity to refuse American wars may have already quietly expired. As public trust in Washington falls to historic lows, the nation finds itself asking, perhaps