Australia stands exposed as AUKUS stranded by inaction
This has been obvious for some time. But I form the conclusion anew after reading a report by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Its authors, Abraham Denmark and Charles Edel, don’t use the word crisis but outline unaddressed critical shortcomings.
The cancellation of AUKUS now would devastate the credibility of both Washington and Canberra. Malcolm Davis of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute argues that Canberra pulling out of AUKUS would probably destroy our US alliance.
The CSIS report sets out the positive AUKUS vision. If done right, it’s “the boldest strategic declaration of the 21st century”. AUKUS pillar one provides nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines for Australia from the 2030s. Pillar two provides for integrated military technology sharing and development.
The purpose of AUKUS, the report makes clear, is military technology sharing, which will enlarge industrial capacity benefits and confer general economic benefits. But centrally AUKUS is about deterrence.
As Denmark and Edel write: “At its core, AUKUS has always been about deterrence against aggression from potential adversaries who threaten wars of expansion against their neighbours, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or China’s looming threat against Taiwan.”
The CSIS report doesn’t say this but the Albanese government has recently become so squeamish about saying anything Beijing doesn’t want to hear that it has lost the capacity to explain what AUKUS is for. In my view, if a government can’t comprehensively explain deterrence it will prove impossible to sustain the financial, political, social and military commitment AUKUS requires.
The CSIS report explains the advantages to the US from AUKUS. There will be a submarine rotational base in Perth where US nuclear subs will spend a lot of time. This will also provide a maintenance facility and the US is desperately short of maintenance at the moment, to the extent that this is compromising its ability to deploy its submarine forces. And in submarines it has clear military superiority over the People’s Republic of China and anyone else for that matter.
The authors comment: “Most importantly, for deterrence, a rotational presence from HMAS Stirling will quickly provide the US access to an operational base for its SSNs (nuclear-powered submarines) in a critical location west of the international dateline, astride the Indian Ocean and close to the South China Sea.” The need for allied deterrence of Beijing is self-evident, but the CSIS report makes the point: “This (Chinese) build-up of conventional and military forces is unprecedented in modern history, with policymakers repeatedly drawing comparisons to the rise of German and Japanese military power prior to World War II.”
With its close ally, Australia, possessing nuclear-powered submarines, with US forces rotating through Australia, with an enhanced British nuclear submarine industry, Washington seeks “to create a far more complex and challenging strategic and operational environment for its potential adversaries and to diminish the prospect of successful military adventurism”.
It can’t be stressed enough that this is all designed to prevent war, to prevent military conflict and the loss of innocent life. Deterrence works, but only if it’s militarily and politically credible.
So what’s making the prospects of AUKUS bleak?
One factor is US industrial failure. The US needs to build more than two Virginia-class subs per year but let its shipyards and workforce decline to the extent that it never reached that level and in 2024 it was building nuclear-powered subs at the rate of 1.13 per year.
Maintenance is an even bigger issue. In 2023, the US notionally had 48 Virginia subs. But only 32 were operationally ready. That’s less than half what the navy regards as essential, namely 66.
The US has invested new money to build up its capacity but this latest funding increase is a one-off, not a regular part of the US defence budget.
The US won’t sell any Virginias to Australia if Canberra is not seen as a strong, reliable ally. No one, least of all the US, would expect any nation to commit to going to war, for example over Taiwan, before such a choice becomes unavoidable. But Australian forces have committed with the Americans in every major engagement since World War I. It’s also true that in any military conflict with the PRC, the US-Australia joint communications facilities would be a target; so would US forces in Australia; so would Australian forces if there’s the slightest chance they could support the US.
As part of normal alliance evolution, Washington is asking that Australia get involved in joint military contingency planning so that if there were conflict, and Australia decided to be involved, the two militaries could do so effectively. My judgment is that under any Australian government other than the Albanese government this would be routine. But the Albanese government is apparently so terrified of offending Beijing that it won’t commit even to this.
The CSIS report makes clear that the Australian government is not devoting sufficient resources to the AUKUS project or, I would say, to defence generally.
The report comments: “Only six countries currently possess the ability to build nuclear-propulsion submarines. Doing so requires an extraordinarily complex knowledge base, a nuclear-trained workforce, a robust industrial base and the requisite budget … This does not come cheap.”
The report comments that of the three AUKUS partners Australia is furthest away from the industrial capabilities it needs. Consider this. The European NATO partners have agreed with the Trump administration that they need to lift defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP. Yet not one of those nations is embarking on a program to buy and build nuclear submarines from scratch.
Despite fatuous claims about the extent of defence spending increases, when Anthony Albanese came to office defence accounted for 2 per cent of GDP. It’s just above that now. No one thinks this adequate. The Albanese government looks likely to produce the worst of all worlds, gutting the rest of the defence budget to pay for AUKUS but not even doing that sufficiently to make AUKUS work. In trying to do defence on the cheap, it could destroy everything.
The report is withering on AUKUS pillar two. It has been going for four years and delivered not a single weapon in combat. AUKUS pillar two should stop its woolly talk, stop its twittering about getting new countries involved, and focus on real, deliverable military capabilities.
No country, and Australia is by far the worst, is showing the urgency AUKUS needs to succeed. At this stage AUKUS is not enhancing deterrence. The report sensibly suggests an annual trilateral AUKUS review statement, a potentially brilliant innovation. But as things stand, it comments, “the goal of enhancing deterrence … will remain rhetorical rather than tangible”.
Good grief.
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Details of the review must be released
It’s now clear. The AUKUS agreement is in a slow-burning crisis. The next six months are crucial. The onus is primarily on Canberra but Washington and London are also at fault. No one is doing enough to make AUKUS happen.