US ‘faces challenges’ to build AUKUS subs: key senator
The chair of a powerful US Senate committee says America faces ‘barriers’ in providing nuclear subs to Australia, with Kevin Rudd framing AUKUS as a key response to Xi Jinping’s China.
The chair of the powerful US Senate armed services committee says “barriers” must be overcome in order to provide Australia with Virginia-class submarines under AUKUS, with Kevin Rudd framing the agreement as a natural response to China’s President Xi Jinping’s challenge to the status quo in the Indo-Pacific.
Under the AUKUS arrangements, the US has agreed to sell Australia up to five Virginia-class submarines but faces challenges in ramping up production to the 2.33 boats per annum needed to replace the vessels that are to be sold to Australia.
Speaking with Democratic senator Jack Reed in his home state at the Salve Regina University in Rhode Island, Dr Rudd said there was a “basis for confidence” that by the late 2020s and early 2030s US production would have ramped up to “north” of two Virginia class vessels a year.
Senator Reed on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) said there were “absolutely barriers” that needed to be overcome by American shipbuilders in order to meet their obligations, including to Australia. “Some of the barriers go to this industrial base,” he said.
“The policy of invading Iraq after invading Afghanistan put us into 20 years of building equipment, which now is completely useless and obsolete, big Humvees and M-tracks … So we gave essentially the Chinese and the Russians 20 years to catch up and go beyond us.
“So all these factors have come to a point where we’re looking at a very constrained base, and that translates into weak production numbers … They should produce 2.0 attack submarines, Virginia-class, a year. They’re producing 1.2. And they’re also, at the same time, challenged to produce the Colombia on time.”
Dr Rudd, Australia’s ambassador to Washington, said Senator Reed was correct in saying there had been “challenges in the submarine industrial base in this country, not least because of the peace dividend following the end of the Cold War”.
“What I see, though, in the US submarine industrial base is the beginnings of this – which is a turning of the corner,” he said. “We are ourselves investing $US3bn directly into the US submarine industrial base.
“You’ve got to continue to rebuild your submarine industrial base. And to be fair to your administration, they have now … brought forward or added an additional $3bn plus to the industrial base themselves.”
Dr Rudd, who has just released a book on Mr Xi’s ideological world view as a Marxist-Leninist nationalist, said the AUKUS security framework was a natural response to China having changed the status quo under the Xi leadership.
“Why are all these countries acting in the region?” he asked. “China under Xi Jinping is changing the status quo, and as a result, when you seek to change the balance of power, other countries will respond in order to re-establish the balance.”
Dr Rudd said Mr Xi was seeking to “create an alternative international system by creating institutions beyond the UN and Bretton Woods system, by challenging the continued validity of US military alliances in the world, and by seeking to change territorial status quo with a large number of its neighbours”.
“It requires us to be very laser focused on the core questions of deterrence. How do you deter Xi Jinping or the Chinese military leadership from believing that they can successfully move unilaterally, militarily, to change the map in East Asia – whether it’s with Japan or The Philippines or across the Taiwan Straits?”
He said “if we fail, and we trip into crisis, conflict and war … the consequences for the world would be truly catastrophic.”
Dr Rudd said this would likely throw the global economy into a recession or possible depression and would be accompanied by an “enormous loss of life”.
More Coverage
‘I’m challenging you’: Brad Battin’s Boxing Day phone call to Pesutto
In a major development, the shadow police minister has told the Opposition leader he will challenge him for the leadership at Friday’s high-stakes meeting of Victorian Liberal MPs.
Prodigious Boxing Day aid cemented key partnership
John Howard knew he had to act quickly to help Indonesia after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami unleashed destruction and terror on Australia’s most important neighbour.