Australia could risk the fight against terror closer to home if it bows to US pressure to scale up its military contribution in Afghanistan, experts fear.
US President Donald Trump announced his new war blueprint on Monday but refused to confirm reports he would boost the current 8400 troops in Afghanistan by 4000.
The Turnbull government recently made a modest boost of 30 to Australia's contribution, bringing its total troop numbers to 300.
Australian National University expert John Blaxland said it was in the national interest to resist the siren call to alter that commitment.
"The incidents in Marawi (in the Philippines, involving Islamic State militants) demonstrate that the world we live in, in our patch is much more problematic, much more unstable and requires our undivided attention," he told AAP.
It was problematic Defence and the diplomatic corps were filled with a generation of officers who lacked specific regional knowledge, he said.
"They speak Pashto or Arabic and their experience is in the sandpit not in the jungles or the cities of south-east Asia," Dr Blaxland said.
Security agencies estimate more than 750 southeast Asians have joined terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq, including about 110 Australians.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute director Peter Jennings believes the Americans are more likely to prefer Australia step up its efforts to fight IS in the Philippines rather than do more in Afghanistan.
Mr Trump urged NATO allies and global partners to support his new strategy with troop and funding increases. "We are confident they will," he said.
Australian Defence Association chief Neil James doesn't think the president was referring to Australia.
"I think you'd have to say the Americans don't regard us as one of the strategic bludgers. He was mainly having a go at the Europeans and the Pakistanis," he told AAP.
He thinks Australia could be asked to send more defence medics, intelligence support and trainers to mentor Afghan soldiers.
Mr James praised Mr Trump for concentrating on the limits of America's powers and what went wrong in the past, such as setting troop withdrawal deadlines that allowed the Taliban to wait it out.
Former army chief Peter Leahy said it was conceivable the 17-year Afghan war could play out over another 17 years.
The University of Canberra professor told AAP the security situation had been rapidly deteriorating since February when the America's top commander in Afghanistan General John Nicholson warned the war was at a "stalemate".
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