James Curran
Australia, like many U.S. allies, is struggling to deal with President Donald Trump. At issue is the country’s national security. Although China is by far Australia’s most important trade partner, it is also the country that Australia’s national security establishment perceives as its greatest threat. Australia’s fear of China is more than a century old and runs deep through every defense strategy that Australia has developed since the signing of the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) in 1951 and the resolution of its postwar relationship with Japan later that decade. The same fear drives Australia to keep the United States close today, even as tensions rise over the Trump administration’s economic and defense policies.
The glue now holding Australia and the United States together is AUKUS, a security arrangement that also includes the United Kingdom, formed in 2021. Parts of the agreement—including cooperation in quantum computing; artificial intelligence; cyber-, hypersonic, and undersea technology; and more—are moving ahead more or less as planned. But a key component of AUKUS could be in serious trouble. Australia is supposed to begin receiving a small fleet of nuclear-powered submarines from the United States in 2032, and then the three countries are supposed to jointly design and produce a new class of submarine. Practical and strategic concerns, however, have put the submarine purchase and the design project in jeopardy; in June, the Pentagon commissioned a review to determine whether the entire AUKUS arrangement is in line with Trump’s “America first” agenda. Its findings are expected later this October, coinciding with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit to Washington for his first substantive meeting with Trump.
At stake is more than the fate of a handful of submarines. AUKUS has become emblematic of the U.S.-Australian alliance as a whole, and it is now at risk of being weighed down by unfulfilled expectations on both sides. Whereas Australia wants constant reassurance from the U.S. administration that the agreement is moving ahead as planned, the United States wants firm pledges that any submarines it transfers to Australia will participate in a potential conflict with China. Neither country may be able to offer the other the confidence it seeks. Even if they choose to honor their original agreement, the uncertainty about the future of AUKUS has revealed a larger discrepancy between U.S. and Australian security strategies that the two allies will have to contend with in the years ahead.
Off The Fence
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