Elbridge Colby’s three key challenges for Australia

Elbridge Colby is examining whether the AUKUS agreement still aligns with the priorities being championed by the US President. 

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Elbridge Colby is issuing a challenge to the direction of Australian strategic policy, from defence spending levels and the future of the AUKUS agreement to the prospect of Australian involvement in a potential US conflict against China in the Taiwan Strait.

The US defence policy chief is swiftly emerging as one of the most important figures in the Trump administration and the intellectual engine behind the application of the “America First” agenda to US defence policy – including in the Indo-Pacific.

This makes the US Undersecretary of Defence for Policy one of the central people for Australia to engage with as Canberra navigates the relationship with the administration at a time of global uncertainty and turbulence.

But it may not be an easy road ahead. One of Colby’s key goals is to ensure more equal burden sharing when it comes to the management of America’s key alliance partnerships – and there are three key issues where he is presenting challenges.

The first is on AUKUS. As the leader of the Pentagon’s comprehensive review of the security partnership, Colby is examining whether the agreement still aligns with the priorities being championed by the US President.

While the review was not launched with the aim of killing off the agreement, there is an expectation there will be “tough” conversations. The prospect of modifications being proposed is clearly on the table.

There will be extensive engagement with both Australia and the UK over the future of AUKUS, but it would be wrong to assume that only champions of the agreement will be granted an audience with the Pentagon’s policy chief.

Colby will be listening to the full contest of ideas – and this means hearing the case presented by sceptics of the AUKUS agreement.

Nothing should be taken for granted.

The second challenge for Australia posed by Colby is his focus on how Canberra approaches China and, more specifically, whether it is willing to pre-commit US-supplied submarines to a potential American conflict with China over Taiwan.

It is true that Colby has asked this question of Australian officials, but this imposes an unreasonable demand on Canberra that, if accepted, would compromise sovereign Australian decision-making.

Even the US maintains a policy of strategic ambiguity in respect of Taiwan, and Donald Trump himself has made clear he will “never say” what course of action he would take.

Unless Washington drops this approach for a hard and fast security guarantee to Taiwan, no credible Australian government could provide an answer one way or the other.

This point has been reflected to the administration. Yet it is worth noting Colby’s statements to his confirmation hearing in March that one of his top priorities is preparing the US to mount a successful operation in defence of Taiwan if required.

“Taiwan’s fall would be a disaster for American interests,” he said. “It is vital for us to focus and enable our own forces for an effective and reasonable defence of Taiwan.

“We have to have the military capabilities in Asia or relevant to Asia to be able to conduct a local defence of Taiwan at a cost and level of risk that the American people are prepared to tolerate.”

The issue of how nuclear submarines could be used by Australia in the event of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait may well bleed into the AUKUS review. The Albanese government should expect more pressure to be applied on this front, with this debate already threatening to derail Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit to China.

However, it is defence spending that remains the obvious running sore in the relationship and perhaps the area where Albanese is most likely to run into trouble with Trump himself when they eventually meet.

Posting on social media on Monday morning local time, Colby declared that “central to President Trump’s commonsense, America First message is that our alliances have to be fair and equitable for them to be sustainable”.

“This is eminently reasonable but was treated for many years as heresy,” he said. “Yet now with the historic NATO commitment we see that it can work – and will leave not only Americans but our European allies better off. That’s the formula for success!”

The message was timed to coincide with Trump’s announcement that he will start to crack the whip much harder against Russia’s Vladimir Putin by imposing a 100 per cent tariff on Moscow if there is no ceasefire with Ukraine in 50 days.

Trump also signed off on another deal with NATO to provide Ukraine with defensive weapons to help the war-torn nation hold its position in the ongoing conflict with Russia.

This outcome suggests that the decision by Europe at the recent NATO summit to increase defence spending is starting to reap rewards and bringing about a more united front with Washington in resisting the Russian threat.

There are valuable lessons here for Australia. A commitment to lift defence spending is not only warranted to better serve Australian sovereign interests – it would help bring Canberra and Washington into greater alignment as both nations work to confront the pressing strategic challenges of the times.