AUSMIN: Bending the arc of history towards liberty

Even before the official start in Washington on Tuesday, the stage is set for this year’s Australia-US Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) between Defence Minister Richard Marles, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin to be vitally important to geo-strategic security on both sides of the Pacific. Australia’s most significant defence purchase in decades, nuclear-powered submarines, will be central to the meeting.

Mr Austin, in a speech to a defence conference at the Reagan National Defence Forum in California last Saturday, highlighted the importance of the AUKUS pact between Australia, Britain and the US. The three nations agreed in September last year to boost their defence co-operation, including supplying Australia with nuclear-powered submarines by 2040, as a counterpoint to China’s growing power and aggression. “We’re charting the best pathway for Australia to acquire a nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarine as early as possible – all while upholding the highest non-proliferation standards,” Mr Austin said.

Mr Marles also will participate in the first meeting of AUKUS defence ministers in Washington, with Mr Austin and British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. The meetings are timely. For Australia, it will be the last AUSMIN before the Albanese government announces its AUKUS submarine road map in March. Mr Marles and Senator Wong also will visit Japan to meet their counterparts on Saturday.

The US, as Mr Austin said in his speech last Saturday, is determined to “bend the arc of history toward liberty” in defiance of Beijing. He spoke a day after unveiling the next generation of US stealth bombers, the first in 30 years, the B-21 Raider. It was developed at a cost over the life of the production schedule of at least $US203bn ($298.5bn). The batwing-shaped aircraft, able to carry conventional and nuclear bombs, is part of a modernisation of US defence forces aimed to make “it plain to any potential foe: the risks and costs of aggression far outweigh any conceivable gains”, Mr Austin said. Advances in technology would ensure “even the most sophisticated air defence systems will struggle to detect a B-21 in the sky”. The aircraft will be built “in numbers suited to the strategic environment ahead”.

The AUSMIN meeting also coincides with the Pentagon’s annual update on the strength of the Chinese military, showing the People’s Liberation Army would stock about 1500 nuclear warheads by 2035, more than triple the current level. “These next few years will set the terms of our competition with the People’s Republic of China,” Mr Austin said. “And they will determine whether our children and grandchildren inherit an open world of rules and rights – or whether they face emboldened autocrats who seek to dominate by force and fear.”

As always, the AUSMIN agenda will be significant and farsighted, focused on the region, especially Southeast Asia. It is 12 years since we reported that Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state at the time, who was visiting Australia for AUSMIN talks with US defence secretary Robert Gates, Australian foreign minister Kevin Rudd and defence minister Stephen Smith, was concerned about the importance of ensuring supplies of rare-earth minerals after China’s decision to slash its exports of the minerals – vital for military and civilian technologies. The issue has taken on greater importance since. In a recent pre-AUSMIN analysis, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute noted the world’s supply of rare-earth minerals remained limited. It recommended that AUSMIN “agree to a joint state-of-play review for energy gaps and limitations with current technologies in defence in order to identify possible collaboration opportunities”.