The AUKUS Debate in Australia: The Trump Catalyst
As President Donald Trump’s tariffs and demands for higher defense spending roil America’s Pacific allies, there is a growing chorus of foreign policy experts in Australia who are beginning to question if the US can be counted on — and whether the submarine program known as AUKUS is still in Canberra’s best interests.
The unpredictability the Trump administration has shown in announcing and then postponing tariffs and imposing them on close allies and partners has raised hackles in Australia, Japan, Vietnam and other Pacific powers. Adding to that, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called for Australia at this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue to raise its defense spending to 3.5 percent, which would be a huge increase from its current 2 percent.
But the topper has come from reports that the Trump administration is considering requiring Australia, as part of AUKUS, to commit to fighting China in the event of an attack on Taiwan. The news broke just before Prime Minister Anthony Albanese headed to China for a six-day trip that included a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinpeng.
Publicly, Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles remains sanguine about AUKUS, a sense reiterated in the last few days by Australia’s ambassador to the US. Albanese has been careful to restate Australia’s policy on Taiwan, while Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy said flatly on July 13 that no firm commitment on defending Taiwan would be coming.
But the new set off a number of opinion pieces from influential voices who are now calling for a reexamination of the AUKUS agreement.
“The idea that a government today would lock in a future government to committing Australian military forces to a war that may or may not occur is ludicrous,” Andrew O’Neil wrote in the Lowy Institute’s publication, The Interpreter, on July 14.
When added to the other pressures from the US, such a requirement may propel Australia to do the opposite of what America wants, O’Neil, an expert on deterrence and professor at Australian Catholic University, wrote.
“Conscious of the deep unpopularity of the Trump administration in Australia, domestic pressures for Australia to demonstrate its sovereignty within the alliance, anxieties over the future of AUKUS, and questions about how Canberra is balancing the economically critical relationship with China, the Albanese government will now need to avoid being seen to kowtow to Washington,” he wrote
A day later, Peter Varghese, a longtime Australian diplomat who ended his career in 2016 running the foreign ministry as permanent secretary, joined in.
In a July 15 op-ed for the Australian Financial Review, Varghese put his case simply: “I hope Elbridge Colby sinks AUKUS for Australia,” he wrote, referring to the US undersecretary of defense for policy who launched the AUKUS review. “The US might yet save us from ourselves by adding conditions to the nuclear submarine agreement that no Australian government could accept.”
Currently the chancellor of Queensland University, Varghese offered a carefully calibrated argument that Trump’s “naked transactionalism is a salutary reminder that the US, like all countries, will only ever act in its own interests and that does not include guaranteeing the security of an ally in all circumstances.”
That means, he argued, that Australia must increase its own defense spending to be more self-sufficient of the US — even if, he acknowledged, the Australian military needs to be “buttressed by the technology, intelligence and deterrent value of an alliance with the United States.”
‘The Salad Days’ Are Over
Australia and the US have been treaty allies since the ANZUS treaty came into force in 1952, and both sides make much of what both sides they call “mateship,” reflecting the close personal and historic ties between the two countries.
But, as Varghese and other experts are arguing, the dangerous balance between China, the United States and its allies will require recognition that in the former diplomat’s words, “the salad days of Australian foreign policy are over.”
China’s economic and military rise, coupled with the Trump Administration’s actions, mean that navigating this new bipolar world “while holding on to both the US alliance and the Chinese market will test Australian policy as never before,” Varghese wrote.
The fundamental military problem for Australia with AUKUS, which is meant to include the purchase of at least three US Virginia-class submarines and the eventual production of a small fleet of nuclear-powered SSN AUKUS attack subs, is, Verghese argues, that the $368 billion AUD which AUKUS is estimated to cost the Lucky Country “distorts” the conventional military Australia should build.
Australia, he says, sees “in the Trump administration a very different and worrying America.” (While it may not be an indicator of his politics, it is worth noting that Vargehse served as Liberal Party Prime Minister John Howard’s foreign advisor; the Liberal party is now in opposition to Albanese’s Labor party.)
One of the most respected national security experts in Australia, John Blaxland, said these demands of allies are “the likes of which have not been seen in living memory.
“This spans not just tariffs, but also increased defense spending. American policymakers appear oblivious or unconcerned about the blowback they are generating,” said Blaxland, the head of the DC office of the Australian National University. “It is this context which makes the US demands for a broad-ranging and largely open-ended commitment over the defense of Taiwan, in advance of any conflict, so extraordinary and unhelpful.”
While Blaxland does not call for Australia to pull out of AUKUS, he cautions that “the overt and confronting nature of Washington’s demands means Prime Minister Anthony Albanese effectively has no option but to push back” against Washington’s demands.
Taking the argument a step further, Albert Palazzo, who was the longtime director of war studies for the Australian Army, argued in a mid-June discussion of AUKUS that Colby’s review, “should be welcomed by all Australians as an opportunity for the Albanese government to scrap the agreement and wean itself off US dependency.”
Palazzo, now an adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales in Canberra, believes the review is a chance “for our political leaders to exercise their most important responsibility: asserting the nation’s sovereignty and equipping Australia to provide for its national security on its own.” Palazzo concluded his recent piece saying that, “AUKUS remains an affront to Australian sovereignty.”
While many experts in Australia have questioned AUKUS or raised concerns about Australia’s long and close relationship with the United States in recent weeks. Jennifer Parker, a career naval officer now at the University of New South Wales, says that “quitting [AUKUS] would be reckless. A capable navy, centered on nuclear-powered submarines, underwrites our security and economy.”
Instead of Varghese’s argument that AUKUS’ costs will distort the Australian Defense Force, with much of the money going to nuclear-powered attack boats instead of conventional military needs, Parker argues “that view ignores the blunt military facts of defending an island continent. This is precisely the moment to steady the course on AUKUS, not abandon it.”
Even AUKUS supporters say the recent moves by the United States have helped highlight the perils of the current situation, which Albanese has said repeatedly are the most dangerous strategically since World War II.
Ian Langford, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, wrote recently that “clinging to AUKUS without confronting the deeper risks it now exposes would be a strategic mistake. From an Australian perspective, the submarine pathway is on a slow fuse: first deliveries are not expected until the early 2030s. Meanwhile, the risk of major power conflict in the Indo-Pacific is accelerating, with a potential flashpoint involving China and the US as early as 2027.”
While policy and political elites debate the fate of AUKUS and Australian defense spending, support for AUKUS remains solid among the Aussie public, according to Lowy’s annual poll on national security and foreign policy issues.
“As the geopolitical landscape rapidly shifts, half the population (51%) say Australia should increase defence spending, while a minority (37%) say spending should remain at about the same level as now. Majority support for acquiring nuclear-powered submarines under AUKUS has held firm (67%),” the report on the poll says.
However, that poll was conducted between March 3 and 16, before reports about the AUKUS review became public, so it is unclear if the tide is turning.