Nato is in tatters – Britain's security pact with the US and Australia could be next

Telegraph

07-03-2025

For a brief moment, Donald Trump looked uncharacteristically stumped.
During a press conference with Sir Keir Starmer in the Oval Office, a reporter asked the US president whether the pair would be discussing Aukus.
'What does that mean?' Trump said, pulling a quizzical face.
Aukus, the journalist explained, is the acronym for the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the UK and the US.
'We will be discussing that,' Trump said, suddenly nodding.
'We've had another great relationship – and you have, too – with Australia,' the president said, gesturing over to Starmer.
Things moved swiftly on.
Depending on one's viewpoint, the exchange was either a moment of confusion or something more revealing – possibly, some in London and Canberra fear, a sign of disinterest.
Whatever the truth, Trump's lapse and separate comments from advisers have triggered nervousness and fresh scrutiny of the groundbreaking Aukus deal, which was struck in 2021 under Joe Biden.
'The question is whether that initial diplomatic coup can now be made into something that's stable in the long run,' says Sidharth Kaushal, a sea power expert at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) in London.
When it was announced, Aukus was described as a historic step to counter China's growing military presence in the Indo-Pacific.
Beijing has thrust itself deep into the South China Sea over the past decade, constructing military outposts on the Spratly Islands.
In recent days, its warships have brazenly sailed around Australia and conducted live-fire exercises just off its territorial waters.
Aukus was meant to demonstrate Washington's rock-solid support for Canberra. It involves the US and UK sharing perhaps the most closely guarded secret of the transatlantic alliance: how to build, operate and maintain a fleet of nuclear-powered attack submarines.
These boats – including UK Astute-class and US Virginia-class subs – are the most advanced of their kind in the world, with capabilities allowing them to traverse the globe, undetected, without ever needing to surface.
In a conflict, they can lie in wait underwater before launching devastating surprise attacks on land targets or enemy ships and submarines.
Australia initially agreed to acquire at least three Virginia-class subs from the US, then to build a new generation of its own boats, the SSN-Aukus class, based on British designs.
Striking the deal required Australia to rip up a signed agreement to buy diesel-electric subs from France – infuriating Paris – and hand Washington down payments worth hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade US shipyards.
But there are now reasons to think that the deal is not yet as solid as it sounds.
Trump's recent humiliation of Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president, and long-running antipathy towards European Nato allies has sparked fears that his support for Canberra may be just as shallow.
In fact, there are already murmurings within Trump's circle that the Aukus pact may not be compatible with his 'America first' approach.
A key concern, and the reason Australia has already paid $500m (£390m) to Washington, is that the US is already struggling to build enough submarines for its own navy, let alone enough to give some to an ally.
Elbridge Colby, a national security expert and Trump's pick for under-secretary of defence for policy at the Pentagon, said the US should 'do everything possible' to make the deal work but raised doubts about whether it would be practical.
'The problem is, there's a very real threat of a conflict ... God forbid, and our attack submarines are absolutely essential for making the defence of Taiwan or otherwise a viable or practical option,' he told American senators in a hearing this week.
'So if we can produce the attack submarine at sufficient number and sufficient speed, then great. But if we can't, it becomes a very difficult problem because we don't want our servicemen and women to be in a weaker position'.
Against this backdrop, some Australian politicians have suggested that to keep Trump happy, Australia could sweeten the deal by offering access to its mineral deposits – as Kyiv could be forced to do to secure Washington's continued support against Russia.
'We've seen in [Trump's] exchange with President Zelensky that America is keen on rare earths,' said Andrew Hastie, the Australian opposition's defence spokesman.
Britain, meanwhile, is keeping calm publicly while lobbying privately in support of Aukus.
Lord Mandelson, the Labour peer who took over as Sir Keir's ambassador to Washington last month, is understood to regard preserving the pact as a priority.
The UK's involvement, secured by Boris Johnson, is regarded as a diplomatic triumph with big domestic benefits.
It will beef up the pipeline of defence work for companies including BAE Systems (which will build the British Aukus subs) and Rolls-Royce (which will supply reactors for the British and Australian boats), helping to provide long-term certainty for investment.
It will also boost Britain's submarine-building capabilities at home, with the programme requiring major upgrades at BAE's shipyard in Barrow-on-Furness, in Cumbria, says Sophia Gaston, a foreign policy expert for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
In Barrow, BAE is currently finishing the remaining Astute-class programme. It will go on to build the new generation of nuclear-armed Dreadnought submarines and then the SSN-Aukus attack subs.
The less-discussed 'pillar two' of Aukus is also seen as crucial because it involves the Aukus partners sharing the development of critical future technologies, including artificial intelligence, hypersonic missiles and quantum technologies.
'The UK stands to gain an enormous amount from Aukus,' Gaston says. But she stresses that London must not forget to demonstrate how America benefits too.
'The Trump administration will want to ground Aukus in a frame of American self-interest.'
On the face of it, Rusi's Kaushal says Aukus should be attractive to Trump because – unlike Nato in Europe – it fits with America's pivot towards Asia and the Pacific.
'The Trump administration's ambivalence to Nato has multiple sources, but one justification has always been the idea that the Indo-Pacific is now the theatre of priority and Europe is drawing resources away from that,' he explains.
Bolstering the naval capabilities of Australia, a key ally, will ultimately strengthen America's presence in the region and provide an potential alternative base to the US territory Guam, in the North Pacific – which is seen as highly vulnerable to long-range Chinese missile strikes.
This is because, under Aukus, the western Australian port HMAS Stirling, near Perth, will host rotating US Navy and Royal Navy submarines from 2027.
However, a simmering point of tension has been the question of how much operational control Australia would have over the American submarines it purchases in the event of a US-China conflict.
Anthony Albanese, Australia's prime minister, has repeatedly stressed that the deal does not pre-commit Australia to join the Americans and that deployment would be 'a decision for Australia' – yet that is something US officials have conspicuously refused to confirm.
There are other reasons that Trump may conclude that the security pact is a 'bad deal' for the US as well, warns Kaushal.
One risk is that the US president decides he doesn't need Britain's help and cuts London out of the deal.
'There's a question of whether at some future point, the Trump administration will see the UK as the odd man out and try to supplant the idea of co-production with Australia,' says Kaushal. 'And then instead try to directly sell them US submarines.'
The UK's position in the partnership could also be put at risk if the Royal Navy cannot meet the commitments it has signed up to, such as deploying an Astute-class sub to Western Australia later this decade.
Of the five Astute boats in service, the Royal Navy has struggled to keep more than two or three at sea simultaneously due to constrained maintenance capacity, Kaushal says.
One is always required to protect the nuclear-armed Vanguard-class boat that provides Britain's continuous at-sea deterrent, typically leaving just one or two for operations in the High North where Russia must be contained.
'Maintaining a deployment in Australia as well could strain a very limited force to breaking point,' Kaushal warns.
There is a separate question about whether BAE can deliver the first Aukus sub on time, by the late 2030s. That will require it to deliver the final two Astute boats and then all four Dreadnoughts that are on order first.
On top of this, the first-in-class for Aukus is likely to throw up potential design and engineering challenges that could cause delays and potentially push back the completion date of the first sister ship in Australia – pencilled in for the early 2040s – which will rely heavily on learnings from Barrow.
Kaushal notes that Aukus may actually help on this front, however, by bringing an influx of skills and investment that ultimately speeds up delivery.
For now, the UK's diplomatic approach to Aukus during the second Trump presidency is still being calibrated.
Within the Washington embassy, there are 'live discussions' about whether Britain should lead from the front and seek to trumpet the agreement's value, or stay quiet during the administration's first 100 days as Trump takes a 'a battle posture on foreign policy', says one person briefed on the matter.
Last week, Sir Keir sought to impress the president with a pledge to boost the UK's defence spending to 2.5pc of GDP by 2027 and as much as 3pc within the next parliament.
The Ministry of Defence, meanwhile, says the Royal Navy has already begun providing training to Australian submariners.
'The UK's contribution to Aukus is fundamental – the submarines are based upon our world-leading design and all the nuclear reactors for the UK and Australian SSN-Aukus submarines will be made in the UK by Rolls Royce in Derby,' a government spokesman adds.
But to keep the Aukus deal on the road, Gaston argues the Government will have to 'sharpen its approach' and 'show [the UK] can really deliver value'.