As the planes struck on Sept. 11, 2001, Australian Prime Minister John Howard was in Washington to mark the 50th anniversary of the ANZUS Treaty which formalizes the security alliance between Australia and the United States. The poignancy of Howard’s presence in Washington that day, and the symbolic significance of the anniversary that he was there to celebrate, have lent weight to a wider hypothesis: that Australia under John Howard is undertaking a fundamental realignment of its international relationships away from Asia and toward the U.S.