Warning from Washington: Speak out about Chinese threat or risk AUKUS subs
John Bolton, who served as Donald Trump's national security adviser in his first term, and held senior roles in other Republican administrations, said policymakers in Washington had noted the Albanese government was 'less vocal about what the problem is' compared with its predecessors.
'It is a little hard to get used to,' Bolton said in an interview. 'In the Cold War days, Labour governments in Great Britain were just as anti-communist as the Conservatives. When you see a leftist government that's not willing to talk as openly about what the real threat is, it does make some people nervous.
'I would be less than fully candid if I said it didn't make me a little nervous. Why the hell are we worried about talking about what the threat is? The struggle is on, and we ought to be candid about it.'
Naval operations expert Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute with close links to the administration, said the AUKUS review was about putting Australia on notice that the US expected Australia to use the submarines it bought.
'The Australians have been a little reticent to explicitly call out that they might use them against China,' he told this masthead. 'If you're not willing to say it in public, then you're not going to put the Chinese on notice. It has been privately conveyed in the past, but the US would like Australia to make it more public.'
Clark noted – as have other prominent defence experts in Washington – that AUKUS represented a significant portion of the Australian defence budget, especially at the current level of defence spending.
'That's the concern in the US – that you're spending 10 to 20 per cent of your procurement budget on this one system, yet you're not talking about how you might use it,' he said.
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