Powerful display of military deterrence as UK steps up

In challenging strategic times, old alliances between nations that share bedrock values matter, which is why Britain’s sending 3000 armed forces personnel and the $6bn-plus aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales halfway around the world for Exercise Talisman Sabre matters, to Australia and to the region.

The British contingent – with one of its carrier groups docking in Australia for the first time in decades for exercises with Australian and US defence personnel and pilots – joined 35,000 troops from 19 countries in the largest-ever Australia-US-led defence exercise in Australia and for the first time in Papua New Guinea. Participants included France, Germany, Canada, India, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, The Philippines, Fiji, Singapore, Thailand, The Netherlands, New Zealand and Norway. Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei were observers. The exercise is monitored closely by China’s People’s Liberation Army.

As British Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Defence Secretary John Healey write in these pages, “conflicts and aggressive autocracies” are on the rise, making partnerships between like-minded democracies vital for protecting “our shared values and way of life” and demanding a new era of Australian-British partnership: “Through AUKUS, through our Carrier Strike Group deployment and through strengthened military co-operation, our nations are leading efforts to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific and uphold the international laws that protect our way of life.”

Mr Lammy and Mr Healey, who were junior ministers when John Howard and Tony Blair established AUKMIN in 2006, were in Darwin with Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles after holding formal AUKMIN talks in Sydney on Friday. They agreed to “deepen co-operation on industrial policy, global free trade, AI and cyber security to further boost and protect our economies”.

Amid concerns over rising Chinese aggression and military expansion, Mr Healey said the high volume of British trade going through the Pacific and his belief that the British military should be “NATO first, but not NATO only” were key factors in Britain’s increasing focus on the region. The ministers’ meeting in Darwin reinforced the message of a key US think tank urging the Albanese government to transform and fortify northern Australia into an allied military stronghold, reported by Cameron Stewart on Saturday.

The study, by former US deputy assistant secretary of defence Thomas Mahnken for Washington’s Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, said more air bases, ports and a long-range strike arsenal were needed to respond to the “growing possibility” of ­conflict with China.

Britain’s commitment to AUKUS, concerns about Asia-Pacific security and the Albanese government’s making the second instalment of $800m to the US under the AUKUS framework coincide with US Democrats raising questions about the current Pentagon review of AUKUS. Australia has paid $1.6bn so far, in the expectation that the US will provide three Virginia-class submarines from the early 2030s.

Joe Courtney, a Democrat from Connecticut who co-chairs the Congressional Friends of Australia Caucus, said there was a “systemic issue” with a “dearth of communication” as information was coming out in small “dribbles” about the review, Joe Kelly writes from Washington.

Mr Courtney told The Australian US Navy leaders had briefed the Pentagon as part of the review but he did not know “what the questions were that were asked or the answers that were given”. The AUKUS partnership with the US, Mr Healey and Mr Lammy write, is Britain’s most significant defence agreement in generations, with the nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines to be the “largest, most advanced, most powerful attack submarines ever operated by Australia or the UK”.

As Mr Healey said in Darwin: “We secure peace through strength.”