Pact to make nation more secure

When the strategic outlook in the Asia-Pacific, as well as Europe, has not been as menacing for decades, assurances from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth about the future of AUKUS “so that it works for America, for Australia and for the UK” are vital for our national interest.

Aside from joint fighting efforts in World War II after John Curtin “looked to America” in December 1941, and the signing of the ANZUS Treaty 75 years ago next year, this is a pivotal point in Australia’s most important global partnership.

It is clear from the Australia-US Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) summit in Washington attended by Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong how much has to be done to bring AUKUS to fruition. The fundamentals are in place.

Australia is supporting US submarine production to help clear the backlog, and creating a facility to allow US and British nuclear-powered submarines to rotate and be maintained at the Henderson shipyard in Perth, which is an ideal base for rapid submarine deployment to the South China Sea, as Cameron Stewart writes.

Most significantly, the US is committed for the long haul, in keeping with its national security strategy that emphasises its own region. Emerging from the AUKUS review – commissioned and led by AUKUS sceptic and senior Pentagon official Elbridge Colby – with the robust support of the Trump administration ensures Australia will be more secure in the long term.

Donald Trump’s “full steam ahead” approach, Joe Kelly reports, is partly due to the work of Mr Marles, our ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd and AUKUS co-founder Scott Morrison, who used his contacts behind the scenes – not at the behest of the Albanese government – to make the case for AUKUS and steer the review in the right direction. The pact is Mr Morrison’s main legacy and will stand the test of history. The views of critics such as Paul Keating, Gareth Evans, Bob Carr and Malcolm Turnbull, who believe Australia should not have signed up to AUKUS, are misguided.

After the AUSMIN meetings, Mr Marles was notably taciturn about revealing the proposed changes contained in the Pentagon review and whether Australia agreed with them. He would not say if Mr Hegseth and Mr Rubio had called for Australia to increase defence spending or if it was a theme in the review. But with Australia due to deliver an additional payment to help expand US submarine production capacity, bringing Australia’s contribution to $US2bn ($3bn) so far, the Albanese government cannot sustain the fiction indefinitely that current defence spending, of just over 2 per cent of GDP, is adequate. More is needed to cover AUKUS and build up other Australian Defence Force capacities.

But the promise of what Mr Marles described as a “seamless defence-industrial base between our two countries” is welcome. Australia would move ahead with more infrastructure, he said, to support increased rotations of US military aircraft including fighter planes, bombers and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft.

He and Senator Wong also agreed to the “pre-positioning of significant American assets in Australia”, including US MV-22 Ospreys, cargo aircraft typically used for transporting troops, equipment and supplies.

The developments will be watched closely by Beijing, whose UN delegate, Sun Lei, reasserted China’s “territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea” to the UN General Assembly on Monday. Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece the Global Times, with typical myopia, claimed US military deployments in the region were “the greatest security challenge in the South China Sea”. That shows why AUKUS matters.