Prime minister Anthony Albanese is set to commit Australia to the biggest national industrial redevelopment project since the Snowy Hydro electricity scheme and the British-Australian nuclear weapons research collaboration of the 1950s.
The project involves considerable risk. Spanning three nations (each with multiple jurisdictions) over two or more decades, including the governments of multiple presidents and prime ministers in three countries. This seems inconceivably difficult on one level – were it not for the galvanising effects of:
the rise of an increasingly authoritarian and adversarial China;
the fallout from Brexit, which has helped focus UK government officials on finding new trading partners in the Indo-Pacific and new ways of validating the “special relationship” with the United States;
advanced artificial intelligence, persistent satellite surveillance and drones, which make detection of diesel-electric submarines traversing long distances much easier (therefore making Australia’s existing submarines more vulnerable and less stealthy).
The project risks consuming vast resources, distracting the Australian government and its Aukus partners from addressing pressing environmental and governance concerns in the Pacific and beyond.
Australia, with a long history of struggling to reconcile its history (with its Anglosphere inclinations) with its geography (a sparsely populated island continent on the edge of Asia), has shown signs of being eager to be on good terms with south-east Asian and Pacific neighbours, but Aukus leaves less bandwidth for governments to respond to such issues.
Recruiting, training and keeping a workforce with specialist skills in the fields of nuclear science (notably physics and engineering), coupled with a significant expansion in specialist trades, will stretch the ability of the already taxed Australian education sector.
Having spent decades shifting from just-in-case to just-in-time supply chains, Australia is less resilient now than most realise. Existing capabilities exist to threaten and disrupt Australia’s numerous supply chain vulnerabilities. The nuclear propulsion submarine complicates a potential adversary’s planning options with the knowledge that they would not be able to act with impunity.
Australia has long had a fear of abandonment.
In the first half of the 20th century Australia relied on British martial prowess to supplement its own (not inconsequential) military forces and, from 1942 onwards has relied more on the United States. In the 72 years since the signing of the Anzus treaty in 1951 (itself only an 800-word essay lacking mutual security guarantees) the ties that bind have deepened and broadened.
For a boutique defence force like Australia’s, which proudly stresses its sovereignty, militarily it has become increasingly enmeshed and reliant on US systems – ironically enough with a view to bolster its own self-reliance.
Beyond this already quite dependent level of integration with US forces and systems, Albanese has strenuously asserted that the Aukus submarine acquisition will not dilute Australian sovereignty.
The calculus is that in the face of sanctions, wolf-warrior diplomacy, an increasingly authoritarian and pushy China that has been expanding its land, sea, air, cyber, space and strategic missile forces at an alarming rate, prudence dictates circumspect public engagement and a more muscular approach – speaking more softly and carrying a bigger stick.
Some critics suggest the United States will eventually leave the Pacific or will be pushed out so we should be cautious about doubling down on our security ties. But its presence geographically is not temporary and its friends are more eager than ever for it to stay.
Others point to domestic political uncertainty in the US. But even Trump as president doubled down on the alliance with Australia and made a concerted effort to reduce the prospect of war – including on the Korean peninsula.
The view that America should back off defies the will of many in the region (notably Japan, Korea, the Philippines and many (albeit more quietly spoken) in south-east Asia and the Pacific. If anything, Aukus looks set to provide greater US resolve to stay engaged in Australia’s neighbourhood.
Critics also suggest the submarines will only exacerbate tensions. I beg to differ. If handled with discretion and with neighbours treated respectfully and briefed in as best as possible, the new arrangements can be expected to bolster security and stability in the region, not undermine them.
Weakness invites adventurism, it is said. This high-stakes and high-risk plan is about reducing the prospects of adventurism.
Others say we will be dragged into a war over Taiwan. But what we want is the status quo maintained, not overturned. And it’s not just us. While most regional neighbours are reluctant to say so publicly, privately they are eager for the US presence to remain and for the status quo to continue. The best way to ensure that, in the face of a more assertive and muscular China, it appears, is to muscle up in response.
Some would respond saying the US can’t be trusted. Look at Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011. They miss the changed dynamics of today.
American strategists have a clear-eyed appreciation of the diminution of American martial prowess and of the high risk of failure in any Indo-Pacific confrontation.
The unduly cocky confidence of 2003 and 2011 is a thing of the past. In my estimation, the chastened Americans can be trusted to do the right thing, having “tried everything else”, as Winston Churchill once said.
John Blaxland is professor of international security and intelligence studies at the ANU’s Strategic & Defence Studies Centre
