Donald Trump's huge AUKUS call could change everything

News.com.au

2 days ago

ANALYSIS
It is Australia's most ambitious construction project ever.
It was never going to be easy.
Just four years after the AUKUS agreement to share the production of a new generation of nuclear-powered submarines was signed to much fanfare in the presence of then Prime Ministers Scott Morrison, Boris Johnson and President Joe Biden, it's facing its first existential crisis.
US President Donald Trump has launched a review to ensure the partnership conforms with his Make America Great Again (MAGA) dogma.
His expectations are high. AUKUS, however, is already a big ask.
Australia must produce nuclear engineers out of nowhere.
It must reinvent its industrial base after abandoning any pretence of being a manufacturing nation with the cancelling of the car industry two decades ago.
This must be capable of scaling the pinnacle of manufacturing technology, naval submarine building, before the 2040s.
And Australia must somehow stump up the cash to do so.
AUKUS is a rare example of long term thinking from Canberra.
It was always going to take an even rarer commitment for cross-government continuity.
But it was never going to be solely Australia's problem.
Britain has to be on board. And it has yet to overcome its own budgetary, workforce, and industry hurdles.
The United States is central to the plan's success. But it's also struggling with decades of shipbuilding neglect. Not to mention intensely polarised party politics.
And now its 47th President is applying his trademark volatility to the fragile agreement.
'The Department is reviewing AUKUS as part of ensuring that this initiative of the previous Administration is aligned with the President's America First agenda,' a US Defence Department spokesperson said this morning.
'As Secretary Hegseth has made clear, this means ensuring the highest readiness of our servicemembers, that allies step up fully to do their part for collective defence, and that the defence industrial base is meeting our needs.
'This review will ensure the initiative meets these common sense, America First criteria.'
Art of the deal
'THE GOLDEN RULE OF NEGOTIATING AND SUCCESS: HE WHO HAS THE GOLD MAKES THE RULES,' Trump posted to his personal social media service Truth Social in April.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles made Australia's first $US500 million down payment on a $US3 billion contribution to upgrading US shipbuilding capacity in a February visit to the Pentagon.
It's just a drop in the ocean of the $368 billion needed to deliver eight submarines by the 2050s.
But Defence Secretary Peter Hegseth last month relayed a demand that Australia up its defence spending to 3.5 per cent of the national budget 'as soon as possible'.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declined, pointing to the massive AUKUS outlay as evidence of Canberra's commitment to do its bit.
But is it enough to satisfy Trump?
His administration is reviewing every decision of the past President, Joe Biden, as a matter of partisan principle.
AUKUS has not escaped its attention.
Trump wants allied defence money spent on US-designed and manufactured military equipment. Even if it comes with significant strategic, resilience and alliance benefits, outsourcing construction to Australia is not his style.
So, the appointment of AUKUS sceptic and Under Secretary of Defence Elbridge Colby to lead the review has raised fears about his true intentions.
Last year, Colby called the idea of selling US submarines to Australia 'crazy'.
He stated the move would weaken the US Navy's ability to put powerful assets where needed in times of crisis.
He softened this tone a little during his confirmation hearing earlier this year. 'If we can produce the attack submarines in sufficient number and sufficient speed, then great,' he said. 'But if we can't, that becomes a very difficult problem.
'Because we don't want our servicemen and women to be in a weaker position and more vulnerable, and, God forbid, worse because they are not in the right place in the right time.'
Australia faces precisely the same problem.
John Bolton survived as Trump's former national security advisor for more than a year.
He believes the move is about scaling back, or abandoning, the pact.
'It's more a question of how much of a downsize they are looking at, including potentially total cancellation — which would be catastrophic, a huge mistake for the US with enormous consequences for Australia and the UK.'
Clear and present danger
Defence Secretary Hegseth last month told the Shangri-la Dialogue of defence ministers in Singapore that war with China was 'imminent'.
Beijing was openly practising its invasion plans for Taiwan, he said.
The US - and Australia - aren't ready.
Decades of on-again, off-again defence procurement plans have thrown navies, air forces and armies into disarray. And all the while, their ships, aircraft, tanks and equipment were approaching - and passing - their useful lives.
Beijing, however, has been building big. It now has the world's largest navy. Its air force is both significant in size and technological capability. Its army has been reformed and retrained.
And there's a new spanner in the works.
Donald Trump.
He wants to annex ally and next-door neighbour Canada.
He wants to seize NATO partner Denmark's self-governed protectorate of Greenland.
He wants to send in his troops to take control of the Panama Canal.
Mostly, though, he wants his allies to do what he says.
Overnight, his Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned Canberra, London, Ottawa and Oslo for daring to impose sanctions on Israel's far-right coalition government partners Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
'We reject any notion of equivalence: Hamas is a terrorist organisation that committed unspeakable atrocities, continues to hold innocent civilians hostage, and prevents the people of Gaza from living in peace,' Rubio said in a statement.
Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, however, have repeatedly called for the weaponization of starvation, the occupation of Palestinian land, and the forced deportation of Arabs from Gaza and the West Bank.
Calling out this behaviour is a sovereign geopolitical stand taken by Canberra.
It's bound to generate pushback from the White House.
'If AUKUS falls over it is Australia that pays the price,' Shadow Defence Minister Angus Taylor said this morning. 'We would face a dangerous gap in capability at a time when we lack the capacity to go it alone.'
With friends like these...
'When the AUKUS submarine deal was agreed to in 2021, an understandably angry French foreign minister said, 'Australia has sacrificed sovereignty for the sake of security. It is likely to lose both',' former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull stated in an essay published last week.
'AUKUS may be a cautionary tale for other allies. Sovereignty and autonomy are more important than ever. Compromise them at your peril.'
Trump's America First agenda is not just economic.
It's strategic. And personal.
He's launched a global trade war against friends and enemies (except Russia and North Korea). He's dismantling international trade, corruption, climate and humanitarian agreements. He's lambasted Europe and the NATO alliance for failing to carry its weight. He's threatened to 'leave them to Russia' in the face of looming conflict.
'The reality of Trump's administration—the contempt for law both at home and abroad, the bullying, the abrogation of agreements and treaties, the threats against allies, and the cuddling up to tyrants—is plain to see. But it still seems incredible,' Turnbull writes.
However, like NATO, Australia is totally dependent on US military support.
Without it, it doesn't have an air force, an army, or a navy.
For example, US-built F-35 stealth fighters are reliant on ongoing US support. Computer services, software patches, spare parts, and rare materials… are all subject to Washington's whims.
Then there's satellite surveillance, navigation and communications. The Albanese Government has abandoned plans to build up a sovereign satellite manufacturing and launch capability. That leaves the military and emergency services totally reliant on US and other foreign suppliers.
They're powerful coercion cards Trump is clearly willing to play.
'In recent years, Australia has become more dependent on the United States even as the United States has become less dependable,' Turnbull adds. 'This dynamic is most glaring when it comes to the formation of AUKUS.'
But former Australian Prime Minister and Chinese state-run China Development Bank board member Paul Keating says any move by Trump to terminate the AUKUS deal would 'save Australia from itself'.
'AUKUS will be shown for what it always has been: a deal hurriedly scribbled on the back of an envelope by Scott Morrison, along with the vacuous British blowhard Boris Jhonson and the confused President, Joe Biden.'
Heart of the matter
Under the AUKUS agreement, Australia would receive its first second-hand Block IV US Virginia-class attack boat no sooner than 2032. Australia has committed to purchasing another old Block IV and a new Block VII by 2038. And it holds an option on a further two.
Delivery of new, collaborative next-generation designs - from both the UK and a new submarine assembly facility in Adelaide - is not expected until well into the 2040s.
Secretary Hegseth, however, believes Beijing will be ready to move on Taiwan by 2027.
On Tuesday, Hegseth sought to reassure London and Canberra that he was committed to honouring the AUKUS deal despite a growing US shipbuilding crisis.
He told the US House of Representatives that the Pentagon was talking 'every day' to US shipbuilders to ensure 'their needs are being met and their shortfalls are being addressed so we can close that gap in real-time.'
Critics argue that the US should not sell even second-hand submarines to Australia while its fleet is struggling to make up its numbers.
'There is a gap,' Hegseth admitted, 'but we believe we are closing it.'
But the Pentagon has moved to further delay construction by pushing $US3.1 billion worth of work on new Columbia-class nuclear ballistic missile carrying submarines back by one year.
And US attack submarine shipbuilders are already working near maximum capacity while struggling against workforce shortages and supply chain challenges brought about by growing international trade tensions.
Australia, however, has put itself in a position where it faces a future without submarines.
'If you don't stick to a plan, you will never acquire the capability,' Defence Minister Marles said this morning.
Canberra should know. Successive Liberal and Labor governments have handballed, delayed, and abandoned every plan for a Collins-class replacement for the past two decades.
'So our focus is on sticking to this plan and on seeing it through … because chopping and changing guarantees, you will never have the capability,' he added.
But that's not his call. London has a say. As does Washington.
Meanwhile, the implications for defence remain stark:
'You just need to look at the map to understand that Australia absolutely needs to have a long-range submarine capability,' Marles concluded.