Gareth Evans: AUKUS is terrible for Australian national interests – but we’re probably stuck with it
as Paul Keating continues to put it so articulately, that we need to find our security in Asia, not from Asia.
The Conversation, Gareth Evans, Distinguished Honorary Professor, Australian National University, August 16, 2024
This is an edited extract of a presentation by Gareth Evans, Distinguished Honorary Professor at ANU and former Australian foreign minister, to the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia Conference.
Politics played a significant part in the birth of AUKUS in Australia, and politics both here and in the United States will play a crucial role in determining whether it lives or dies. That is so at least for its core submarine component. The second pillar of the agreement, relating to technical cooperation on multiple new fronts, is both much less clear in its scope and less obviously politically fraught.
On the Australian side, partisan political opportunism was a factor in the initiation of the submarine deal, bipartisan political support was a condition of US agreement to it, and maintenance of that bipartisan support into the future presumably will be a precondition of its continuance, at least when it comes to highly sensitive elements like the handover of three Virginia class submarines.
On the American side, it was perception of US strategic advantage that drove Washington’s agreement to the deal, rather than any domestic political considerations. But strong cross-party support in Congress will remain necessary for its complete delivery. And, at the even more critical executive level, it cannot be assumed the deal is now Trump-proof.
It is only in the United Kingdom that we can reasonably regard domestic politics to be irrelevant to AUKUS’s future. The deal is so obviously a gift to the national Treasury, and has so little impact on national defence and security interests, that no one on any side of politics is ever likely to find it unpalatable.
In Australia, domestic politics have been a factor from the outset. While for the Morrison government the primary driver of the AUKUS decision was, no doubt, the ideological passion of senior Coalition ministers for all things American, it is hard to deny political opportunism came a close second.
Morrison was deeply conscious of the opportunity the deal presented to wedge the Labor opposition in the defence and security space, where the Labor Party has long been perceived, rightly or wrongly, as electorally vulnerable. That the nuclear dimension of the deal was bound to ruffle some feathers in Labor ranks was an added political attraction…………………………………………..
What I am now critical of, is that when Labor did come into office in May 2022, it is clear no such serious review of the whole AUKUS deal ever took place. Crucial questions were never seriously addressed; clearly articulated answers to them have never been given by the prime minister, defence minister or anyone else. The answers that are in fact emerging as further time passes are deeply troubling…………………………………..
……..there is zero certainty of the timely delivery of the eight AUKUS boats. We now know that both the US and UK have explicit opt-out rights. And even in the wholly unlikely event that everything falls smoothly into place in the whole vastly complex enterprise, we will be waiting 40 years for the last boat to arrive, posing real capability gap issues.
………………, the final fleet size – if its purpose really is the defence of Australia – appears hardly fit for that purpose. ………………..
…….the eye-watering cost of the AUKUS submarine program, up to $368 billion, will make it very difficult, short of a dramatic increase in the defence share of GDP, to acquire the other capabilities we will need if we are to have any kind of self-reliant capacity in meeting an invasion threat. Those capabilities include, in particular, state-of-the-art missiles, aircraft and drones, that are arguably even more critical than submarines for our defence in the event of such a crisis.
..the price now being demanded by the US for giving us access to its nuclear propulsion technology is extraordinarily high.
……… The notion that we will retain any kind of sovereign agency in determining how all these assets are used, should serious tensions erupt, is a joke in bad taste.
…….the purchase price we are now paying, for all its exorbitance, will never be enough to guarantee the absolute protective insurance that supporters of AUKUS think they are buying. ANZUS, it cannot be said too often, does not bind the US to defend us, even in the event of existential attack. And extended nuclear deterrence is as illusory for us as for ever other ally or partner believing itself to be sheltering under a US nuclear umbrella. The notion that the US would ever be prepared to run the risk of sacrificing Los Angeles for Tokyo or Seoul, let alone Perth, is and always has been nonsense.
We can rely on military support if the US sees it in its own national interest to offer it, but not otherwise.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………..as Paul Keating continues to put it so articulately, that we need to find our security in Asia, not from Asia.
Australia’s no-holds-barred embrace of AUKUS is more likely than not to prove one of the worst defence and foreign policy decisions our country has made, not only putting at profound risk our sovereign independence, but generating more risk than reward for the very national security it promises to protect. I cannot imagine this decision being made by any of the Hawke-Keating governments of which I was part. Times have changed. https://theconversation.com/gareth-evans-aukus-is-terrible-for-australian-national-interests-but-were-probably-stuck-with-it-236938
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