It’s almost a month since the US announced a 30-day review to determine whether AUKUS fits within its ‘America First’ agenda. Rex Patrick looks at what might happen.
Putting Donald Trump’s flawed obsession with tariffs to one side, and his crude diplomacy, there’s some logic and strategy in his geopolitical manoeuvring.
Trump wound back American support for Ukraine and then insisted that other NATO countries take greater responsibility for European security. NATO countries have now agreed to increase their military spending to 5% of GDP by 2035.
Trump supported Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu because Israel is a pro-US power centre that, coupled with friendly authoritarian Arab governments, gives the US some influence and control over the Middle East and its oil. Helping Israel club Iran and its proxies into the ground suits US interests.
Having others take the lead in Europe and the Middle East now allows the US to turn its attention to maintaining US global primacy against a rising China. Trump’s problem is that the US is losing the military dominance race against China, which already has the largest Navy in the world and is churning out relatively capable military hardware at a much faster rate than the US.
Submarines, a highly potent stealth weapon well suited to complex operating environments like the South China Sea, are an area where the US is simply not meeting its own capability needs. The US Navy want a force of 66 nuclear attack submarines by 2056. It currently has only 49 (23 Los Angeles, 3 Seawolf and 23 Virginia class).
Mission impossible
For Australia to get its subs, the US needs to hit a never-achieved build rate of 2 subs per annum (as funded for since 2011) to meet its own target. It’s only achieving 1.2 boats per annum. The inability of the US submarine builders to shift the dial is the result of systematic flaws in the program, supply chain weakness, and a shortage of skilled workers.
Getting to two Virginia subs per annum looks impossible against a backdrop that also requires their submarine industrial base to build 12 new Columbia Class nuclear ballistic missile subs, whilst also dealing with an increasing number of their existing attack subs, which are being backlogged in maintenance shipyards.
The US won’t hit two Virginia subs per annum any time soon, which means it won’t hit the 2.3 target required to enable some Virginias to be transferred to Australia.
If the US review is to be honest with Australia, they need to tell us to adopt a plan other than AUKUS.
Stop would be good news
The US pulling out of the AUKUS submarine deal would be good news to all but the Defence Department, which has failed to achieve any solid outcome since the Collins replacement program was announced in 2009 (other than lifetime gold with the Qantas frequent flyer program for numerous admirals and top cat bureaucrats).
They’ll have spent approximately $7 billion going nowhere in 16 years.
AUKUS Gravy Plane: $633K a month in flights with the taxpayer picking up the tab
For Australia, cancellation would allow us to gracefully walk away from what is proving to be a
sovereignty-sinking, financially bankrupting, industry-destroying, all-eggs-in-one-basket risky program.
We could chart our own course. We could better plan defence spending around capabilities more relevant to the defence of Australia. We could develop and support our own Defence industry, which would, in turn, support our national security when needed. And we could have a diversified force, with procurements based on much lower costs and procurement risks.
Laying the groundwork
Perhaps the Prime Minister has read the tea leaves. Perhaps he was laying the groundwork on the weekend when he spoke of John Curtin having “the confidence and determination to think and act for ourselves” and “to follow our own course and shape our own future.”
He quoted Curtin’s views of the greatness of the Australian labour movement lying in the fact that it “had never followed the flags of other lands, or patterned itself on the movements which originated in other places.”
Perhaps it’s dawned on Albanese that the US is unreliable in both trade and defence and that the population is quite willing to reduce, rather than strengthen, its reliance on it.
Certainly, his newly expanded left-wing party room would be comfortable with that course.
What’s next?
If AUKUS is cancelled by Trump, officials in Canberra will likely respond as a very young child might just after parents have removed the dummy and placed it, and the other spares, in the bin. But, at some stage, the dummies have to go. It’s a part of growing up.
The US has become an unreliable ‘friend’. It’s ripped up a written trade agreement without batting an eyelid,
with no guarantees it will honour the spirit of the ANZUS alliance treaty.
Australia needs to stand on its own two feet. Even the China hawks know that Australia is not in the Chinese firing line apart from the US-linked assets of Pine Gap and the submarine communication station at North West Cape.
US Australia prepare for war with China, remain mute on consequences of nuclear attack – FOIs
We have time. Australia is independently defendable. We have the great advantages of distance and ocean expanses built into our strategic position. As historians Geoffrey Blainey and strategist Paul Dibb long recognised, the so-called “tyranny of distance” is our advantage.
The US will continue in its endeavour to put a check on China. Australia can continue to treat our biggest trading partner with respect, whilst also engaging in Defence cooperation with the US. And, should China attack Taiwan, the Australian government of the day can choose our response.
We would, of course, need to reform the Defence Department, which has spent billions on risky and unnecessary procurements, thereby putting our national security at risk. There’s already been talk of a significant shake-up at Russell Offices, the home of the Defence waste. Albanese needs to bite the bullet on this.
Dishonest outcomes
If the US is dishonest with Australia, they’ll stick with the AUKUS program.
That’ll mean we’ll continue to expend valuable time and money on a capability that might get canned at the next review, but won’t be delivered in any case.
It could well be that the review is a shake-down, with the aim of forcing Australia to increase its Defence budget, and to add to the $4.7B we are already pouring into the US submarine building industry.
But with a friend like that, who needs enemies?
Rex Patrick is a former Senator for South Australia and, earlier, a submariner in the armed forces. Best known as an anti-corruption and transparency crusader, Rex is also known as the "Transparency Warrior."