A defence expert says a costly new AUKUS nuclear submarine deal directly benefits British and American governments but exposes Australia to strategic risk, as Anthony Albanese seeks to minimise the diplomatic fallout from the historic announcement.
Professor Hugh White told The New Daily the $368-billion plan announced in San Diego is built on a “huge cascade of risks” with a plan that suits allies’ defence bureaucracies but presents Australia with contingent benefits and new questions about its independence under the deal.
Defence Minister Richard Marles said members of the cabinet and other parts of government had placed more than 60 phone calls to friends and partners to ensure the San Diego announcement was received smoothly, including an offer to China.
In an interview on Singaporean television on Tuesday night Foreign Minister Penny Wong said stability, not conflict, would be the outcome of our greatest contest with China.
‘To help keep the peace’
“We seek to acquire this capability in order to help keep the peace. We want a peaceful, stable, prosperous region as Singapore, as Malaysia, as Indonesia does, and we want a region that is respectful of sovereignty,” Ms Wong said.
But Beijing (the target the AUKUS pact was established to frustrate) accused the three Western allies of inciting an arms race, saying the security deal was “a typical case of Cold War mentality”.
“The latest joint statement from the US, UK and Australia demonstrates that the three countries, for the sake of their own geopolitical interests, completely disregard the concerns of the international communities and are walking further and further down the path of error and danger,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said.
The deal announced by Mr Albanese brings nuclear submarines to Australia much sooner than expected in three parts, designed to leave the least gaps in the military:
- American submarines deployed in Australian waters will move to full “rotations” from next year
- Buying between three and five American Virginia-class boats – possibly second-hand – to begin use from 2032
- A fleet of eight submarines – SSN AUKUS – designed to order by Australia, making use of British design and American weapons and to be assembled in Adelaide arriving in the early 2040s.
The cost will run to between $268 billion and $368 billion over three decades.
Mr Albanese was pushing the economic dimensions of AUKUS at the announcement which he said was of a significance on par with the advent of the car industry to Australia.
Defence Minister Richard Marles said Australia could not afford the cost of the alternative to AUKUS.
Doesn’t cut it
But Australian National University defence and strategic studies analyst Hugh White – the main author of the Howard government’s defence white paper and an adviser to Bob Hawke – said the proposal for Australia to build its own submarine with Britain defied commercial logic.
“[For] all the bold words about an exciting national project … we’re trying to provide submarines as quickly and cheaply and cost-effectively as we can for ADF operational requirements. And I don’t think this begins to cut it.
“We’re starting with a blank sheet of paper (for a submarine design), so the chances of that submarine being delivered on anything like that schedule [delivery from early 2040s] seems to be very low,” Professor White said.
“We are now committing to buying in the AUKUS boat – a submarine without any idea of how much it’s going to cost us; how well it’s going to perform; what it is going to be able to do, if and when it’s going to be delivered.
“We are doing again what we did with the French […] committing ourselves to buy a submarine without being able to tie the people we’re going to buy it from to any hard contractual terms.
“The British will be up to skin us for everything they can get. I don’t blame them for that. I do blame us for imagining that somehow a sense of Anglospheric feeling was going to give us an easy ride on this.”
‘Frankenstein’ deal
Zack Cooper, a former Bush White House foreign policy adviser and AUKUS booster, said Australia had struck a “Frankenstein” deal for two kinds of subs when buying more from America would have saved time.
“Cancelling phase three would no doubt devastate the shipbuilding industry […] but budget constraints could still force a debate about doing so,” he said.
Mr Biden said the deal promised “good paying jobs” including “a lot of union jobs” across the three parties.
Diplomatic detour
Mr Albanese was on Tuesday evening flying home after the announcement made in San Diego, but still within its shadow – he will stop in Fiji to try to contain any diplomatic fallout from the deal.
Anti-nuclear sentiment runs deep in the Pacific islands – 10 of which are signatories to a treaty that prohibits nuclear weapons and one not signed by Australia – decades on from devastating tests by America, England and France.
Beijing and more recently Washington have focused on the Pacific where states are divided between those that recognise Taiwan and those that do not.
In South-East Asia, the other major focus of foreign policy for Labor so far, the initial AUKUS announcement was met with fears of an arms race in Indonesia.
Its opposition appears to have softened under a hawkish defence minister but Indonesia raised concerns again on Tuesday that nuclear material used in subs be controlled.
“Indonesia expects Australia to remain consistent in fulfilling its obligations,” a spokesman for the country’s Foreign Ministry said.
AUKUS is based on an exemption to non-proliferation laws for military purposes and it rejects a claim made by China in international forums that it would breach its terms.
Backers say nuclear capability and longer distances for submarines will lead to Australia playing a greater role in the region, such as intelligence gathering in the South China Sea.
Professor White says AUKUS’ surprise plan to bring nuclear-propelled subs to Australian waters much earlier by diverting boats from America’s own supplies leads to a question about whether an expanded regional military role for Australia was part of the deal.
“If we wanted to support the United States’ operations, and for that matter, anybody else in operations beyond our immediate neighbourhood, we could do that with conventional submarines,” he said.
“Going the nuclear option, the way we are now doing, it does not give us the option of doing it; it compels us to do that.
“America would not be providing us with the Virginia class unless it was actually sure we were committed to support the United States in a war with China,” Professor White said.
“If that’s what Labor is telling the Americans or that is what Labor is allowing the Americans to assume, then I think that’s a conversation we need to have. I don’t think it’s a judgment we should leap to.”
