US threats to Aukus pact put united front against China at risk

Times

3 days ago

In Taiwan, troops are training to fight off a potential Chinese invasion in the island's biggest military exercises to date. In northeastern Australia 30,000 military personnel from 19 countries, including the crew of a British aircraft carrier, are gathering for three weeks of war games. But even as western allies unite in a show of deterrence against Beijing, a defence pact between Britain, Australia and the United States is under a shadow.
Aukus, the security agreement between the three countries, is under review by the US defence department after doubts about its value were expressed by one of President Trump's most influential security advisers.
Although the Pentagon's conclusions have not yet been made public, there are fears in Canberra and London that Trump's government could walk away from the deal, or demand changes that would increase the cost to Australia and Britain.
Aukus was unveiled four years ago by Boris Johnson, President Biden, and Scott Morrison, the Australian prime minister at the time. Its primary goal is to build nuclear-powered, but conventionally armed, submarines for Australia to deter Chinese aggression in east Asia including any attempt to invade self-ruling Taiwan, which Beijing regards as its own territory.
Johnson called it 'one of the most complex and technically demanding projects in the world' and promised that it would create jobs and prosperity at home and bring Britain closer to its allies. His national security adviser at the time, Sir Stephen Lovegrove, who is now Britain's Aukus envoy, insisted that it was a 'profound, strategic shift'.
The pact has been consistently criticised by Beijing, which regards it as a pretext for encircling China and suppressing its ambitions to become a regional and world power.
Under the agreement, Britain will use US nuclear propulsion technology to build up to 12 submarines known as SSN-Aukus, to be delivered to Australia in the 2030s. The deal is worth £4 billion to British defence companies.
The problem is that Australia's existing Collins-class submarines will reach retirement age before the new ones are ready to be deployed. To fill the gap, the US promised to supply as many as five new Virginia-class submarines to Canberra.
However, Elbridge Colby, Trump's undersecretary of defence, has questioned whether the US can afford to sell submarines, even to an ally, at a time when it needs them itself to face Chinese ambitions involving Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Last year, before entering government, Colby asked: 'Why are we giving away this crown jewel asset when we most need it?' He later said: 'My problem is very clear, which is that we don't want to diminish our material war fighting capability in the near term.'
If Colby does not change his mind, the US could potentially walk away from Aukus, leaving Australia either to abandon the project or find a way to fill the submarine gap — either by buying 'off-the-peg' diesel-powered boats from suppliers such as Germany or Japan, or by investing in air and navy missile systems that could perform some of the functions of submarines.
Even if this could be achieved, the costs of the project would increase for Britain and Australia without US investment.
Alternatively, Trump's government might use the threat of withdrawal to get more out of its allies. 'One way would be to say that Australia needs to line up with the new Nato standards, spending 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence,' Sam Roggeveen of the Australian think tank, the Lowy Institute, said. 'The other way to do it is to say Australia needs to contribute more to the shipbuilding industrial base in America so that they can speed up production.'
The tension underlines the distinct approach to engaging with Trump being taken by the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, who is maintaining a cool and tactical distance from the US president, in contrast with the fraught and anxious engagement by Nato leaders.
Beginning on Sunday, Australia and the US will lead the multi-nation Talisman Sabre military exercises in Queensland, in which the British aircraft carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, will participate. Taiwan will continue with the second week of Han Kuang, a series of exercises that include civil defence drills, tank manoeuvres and defence against simulated Chinese cyberattacks.
On Sunday Albanese flies to Beijing for his fourth meeting with President Xi. Six months into Trump's second term, he has still not met the US president, Australia's most important treaty ally.
At a speech this week, Albanese espoused what he called 'the Australian way'.
'We do not seek our inspiration overseas,' he said. 'We find it right here in our people. And we carry it with us, in the way we engage with the world.'
After a call by Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, to increase defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP, he pointedly responded: 'We'll determine our defence policy.'
All this suggests that Albanese would reject a third possible concession that the Americans might seek — a promise from Australia that it would send its Virginia-class submarines to fight off any Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
It is hard to imagine a circumstance in which an Australian prime minister would refuse such a call for help but to make a binding commitment in advance would be a sacrifice of sovereignty at odds with Albanese's insistence on independent choice.
'If the Pentagon's review really is designed to leverage higher defence spending out of Australia, the prime minister will either have to perform a humiliating backdown or stand his ground, thereby threatening the submarine sale,' Roggeveen said.
Lovegrove, who has been in Australia this week, has been at pains to play down the possibility of an Aukus crisis.
'The US Navy is right behind it,' he told Australian television. 'The state department is very much behind it [and] many players in the defence department are completely engaged in Aukus and everything it brings to the US. So I'm pretty comfortable that we'll end up with the right answer for the US, Australia and the UK — this is a critical, critical programme.'