Ambassador Rudd was always a high-reward, high-risk gamble

1 month ago 7

Anthony Albanese’s choice of Kevin Rudd to be Australia’s top diplomat in Washington always stood out for being ripe with potential but laden with risk. That’s precisely how it turned out.

Like his first prime ministership, Rudd’s stint as ambassador was full of drama and ended prematurely - even if, this time around, he had more say in the timing of his departure.

As a former prime minister and world renowned China expert, Rudd brought unique gravitas to the role. Working with the Biden administration - which was stacked with left-leaning policy wonks - during the first two years of his posting played to his strengths. His prodigious work ethic was on full display as he assiduously courted Democratic and Republican congresspeople.

Kevin Rudd brought gravitas to the role but also baggage.

On the downside, his ambassadorship has been a distraction, and at times an irritant, in Australia’s most important strategic relationship from the moment Trump emerged as the leading Republican contender for the 2024 presidential election.

Before his appointment, Rudd excoriated Trump as “nuts”, called him “the most destructive president in history” and described him as a “traitor to the West”. Some of Rudd’s criticisms were posted on social media, and he only got around to deleting them when Trump won a second term in the White House.

The decision to scrub the posts was dubious given it drew more attention to them; if deleting them was necessary it should have been done long before Trump’s election victory.

To be sure, the Coalition and Sky News-led campaign to undermine Rudd has often been marked by bad faith and driven by political considerations. But it was hardly partisan, or fanciful, to think the transition to the second Trump administration would have been smoother had Australia’s ambassador not been so disparaging of the president.

Dan Scavino, a top Trump advisor who is now deputy White House chief of staff, posted an ominous image on social media in November 2024 of sand trickling through an hourglass in response to a post by Rudd. This showed that Rudd’s past criticisms of Trump had been noted within the president’s inner circle, even if Trump himself never seemed fully aware of exactly what Rudd had said about him.

Rudd’s defenders have noted Trump’s close bonds with those who previously made scathing criticisms of him, including Vice President JD Vance. The catch is that these rapprochements usually required the apostates to kiss the ring and become Trump lackeys, not a position Australia wants for its ambassador.

Within Australia’s foreign policy community there have been persistent questions about Rudd’s level of access to the White House and key MAGA figures, reflected in the fact it took nine months after Trump’s inauguration for Albanese to secure a meeting with Trump.

That meeting, of course, was more wildly successful than Albanese could have hoped for as Trump gave Australia a pass on the need to increase defence spending, signed up to a critical minerals pact and declared AUKUS to be full steam ahead.

In some ways, the lucky country lived up to its nickname with fortuitous timing, but Rudd’s efforts laid the groundwork for success.

He seized upon the potential of Australia’s vast reserves of critical minerals early as a key point of leverage with the Trump administration, and kept beavering away at the issue even when the US side appeared to be losing interest in a deal. Similarly, he realised that increased access to Australia’s pool of superannuation savings could appeal to a transactional administration with little interest in traditional alliances.

Rudd had to suck it up when Trump said during the White House meeting that he would probably never like him. The idea this was a mere joke was undercut a few days later when Trump said he doesn’t forget those who have besmirched him.

In the end, Rudd’s critics who predicted he would not last out his full term can claim vindication. Summing up his ambassadorship, Rudd can fairly retort: look at the scoreboard. Despite the chaos of Trump 2.0 and the significant ideological differences between his administration and the Albanese government, the US-Australia relationship remains fundamentally strong and the envy of most other countries.

With the high-risk, high-reward Rudd gamble almost over, there is a strong case for a successor with less baggage, even if they carry less star power.

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