September 17, 2021 - 5:27pm
The announcement of the new Pacific AUKUS security triad has naturally given rise to a great deal of technical speculation: on whether the Australians will choose a British or American SSN design, what degree of nuclear infrastructure the Australians will acquire, and what timeframe the partnership will take to materalise. Fundamentally, though, the AUKUS alliance is a political one: a statement not just of Australia’s desire to maintain its autonomy in the face of China — by far its largest single trading partner — but also of its commitment to an American-led international order.
The United States is the greatest single beneficiary of the announcement, in that AUKUS is a major vote of confidence in its ability to win the coming challenge. It is, as a senior Biden administration official announced:
Whether or not binding yourself to the US will pay off in the long term is another question. As veteran Australian strategist Allan Gyngell observes: “the agreement is a big Australian bet on the future of the United States, and at a more uncertain time in American politics than at almost any point in the history of the alliance,” in which “American expectations of Australian support in almost any contingency, whether it involves China or not, will grow.” As he notes, Australia’s PM Scott Morrison asserts that “This is a “forever partnership”… assuming a perpetual alignment of interests between our three countries and forgetting chunks of Australian diplomatic history,” when “even America’s “forever wars” lasted only 20 years.”
As Australian defence analyst Sam Roggeveen suggests elsewhere,
The outcome of a potential conflict is not predetermined: perhaps China will shrink from open confrontation, and even if it doesn’t, America could potentially emerge victorious from the contest.
But in either case, it would be reassuring to know what exactly Britain is committing itself to in the Pacific: there is a strong moral and political case for committing ourselves to Australia’s defence, whatever the risks involved. Taking on a subordinate role in defending America’s increasingly contested military hegemony in the wider region is another matter entirely, especially when there is little clarity from the United States over whether or not it intends to defend Taiwan.
These questions are unanswered in Washington, let alone Canberra or London. Before signing open-ended commitments to unknown goals, we should demand some clarity from the government over what we are committing ourselves to, and what precisely our desired aims are.
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