> Australia has been largely recognised as a failure. Australia just exported to elsewhere

Not only that, but the loss of coal imports from Australia led directly to massive power outages in the northeastern provinces this fall. Though it's possible that the people aren't aware of that causal connection.

> Anything else is to accept the final end of US leadership in the world

There is some sense in which the US is willing to relinquish its "leadership in the world" and "take some me-time"; it's just too much of a pain in the ass. This has been a trend since 2001, when george bush was elected on a "humble foreign policy" platform (but not delivered upon), skipped obama's cabinet (though he was famously aloof during high level diplomatic meetings), through Donald Trump, who hasn't started any new foreign adventures, and Biden has actually withdrawn from Afghanistan. I think that we are emerging into an zeitgeist where the US doesn't really care to be number one, it's just so stupid and so much of a waste of time.

But even in context of deliberately disengaging from the world, the US still goes to bat for Taiwan.

> Not only that, but the loss of coal imports from Australia led directly to massive power outages in the northeastern provinces this fall.

This myth has been repeated so many times, how about: https://www.worldometers.info/coal/coal-production-by-countr...

The outage was caused by misguiding policy incentive (clean air etc), which was seen as a huge blunder, rightfully so, but it had nothing to do with Australian coal.

Reuters claims that Australia used to be the #2 foreign supplier of thermal coal behind Mongolia.

"what should we have done then, when the Chinese invaded Taiwan?"

"anything at all besides what you did"

- On the Beach (2000)

We've seen what happens when authoritarian governments which start locking minorities up in concentration camps progress to inventing historical grievances to start seizing territory. Appeasement doesn't work.

Your description matches American labour camps / private prisons. So, what happens?

I am concerned about an authoritarianism in America, even more so if the president started saying stuff like: "Canada and the US are essentially the same people and should be one country. The Canadian government has always been propped up by foreigners to weaken us. Reunification must happen, by force if necessary."