Look into America’s soul to see lethal dangers of AUKUS
Nuclear submarines may be the tip of the Pacific spear, but the Albanese' government's reliance on them is a dereliction of sovereign duty
In 2022 I founded the Australian-American leadership forum, hosted at the Australian Embassy in Washington DC, and dedicated to the study of modern statesmanship. Sourcing the views of retired and active-duty US Naval officers, civilian leaders, and most importantly, everyday Americans, was, I felt, an imperative in developing a coherent view of the strengths and weaknesses of the ANZUS, and now AUKUS, alliance system. Important too, is understanding domestic influences on international affairs. America’s foreign affairs establishment is at a critical point in its dereliction of domestic responsibility, and my reflections below countenance the consequences of this circumstance for Australia. David Reaboi, fellow at the Claremont Institute, has an excellent succinct summation of the junction between abstraction and reality which America’s foreign policy now faces;
Most of the decision makers behind the AUKUS deal are not intimately acquainted with United States domestic politics. In the age of modern statesmanship, responsibilities are siloed, and expertise divided. Governments are huge, and staffed by subject-matter experts. Politicians themselves seldom ever have the broad base of knowledge, or personal time to afford themselves a true interdisciplinary grasp on government.
In particular, the fields of defence and foreign affairs demand increasing specialisation. Inside and outside government, they are populated by theorists who seldom pay much attention to political life and socio-political history in its totality. Defence specialists do not give adequate weight to the domestic antecedents of international actions. Likewise, the name ‘foreign affairs’ itself denotes a preoccupation with the vicissitudes between states, not within them. In the case of AUKUS, this presents a potentially disastrous miscalculation for Australia.
AUKUS is first and foremost, a defence deal. It is an agreement between nation states, signed off on by civilian leaders who will act as wartime military commanders - absolutely in America’s case, and practically in Australia and Britain’s case.
Because AUKUS is a defence deal, it does not investigate the national circumstances of each country beyond conventional military-strategic assessments. This sets up a deal predicated on the fundamental continuation of those national circumstances.
Of these predicates, none can be more consequential than the circumstances of the ‘Alpha’ partner – in this case, the United States. The circumstantial base of the AUKUS deal is American power. The predicate of American power forms the entire plausibility and functionality of the agreement. This means that as the fundamental construct of American power changes, so too may the real-world outcome of the deal.
Paul Keating, notwithstanding his appalling blindness to Australia’s strategic peril, and his delusional apathy toward Chinese belligerence, is in this regard absolutely correct on the deepest, most fundamental nature of AUKUS. The AUKUS deal, despite the now near manic proliferation of the word ‘sovereign’ in public reportage, does not secure Australia’s sovereign interest. Whilst it may eventually procure Australian independence in submarine manufacture and command, AUKUS welds Australia to America with the unyielding strength of a Virginia-class bulkhead.
This is why: