In the annals of policy, strategy and budgeting, the AUKUS pact comprising Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States will be seen as one of the most mindless, absurd projects of tiny, poorly furnished minds. Not for those in the UK and US, with both receiving Croesus-rich dollops of Australian cash for stuttering submarine programs. Not for flabby think tankers who repeatedly run out bills on the advisory circuit lauding the importance of costly boats and the China threat. It will be down to Australian government officials, elected and appointed, who seek the imaginary assurance of nuclear-powered submarines that they do not need, expending money they can scarce afford (AU$368 billion), while surrendering the country’s sovereignty in carefree, even treasonous manner.
It is for these reasons that Australian civil society has sprung into action. As the Australian government thinks it beneath them to conduct a review of the merits of the AUKUS pact at the official level (the United Kingdom and United States have, at the very least, done so), public representatives and citizens have seized the reins. The crowd founded AUKUS Public Inquiry, coordinated by the Australian Peace and Security Forum (APSF), is the result. At its helm is former federal environment minister and frontman for Midnight Oil, Peter Garrett. Former MPs, retired military and naval officers of such standing as former chief of the Australian Defence Force Chris Barrie, an assortment of strategists and academics, human rights lawyers and unions are all part of the scrutineering show.
The inquiry is pursuing a number of vital questions. Will Australia ever receive those lauded submarines, be they the Virginia-class from the US Navy or the specifically designed SSN-AUKUS model? Where and how will the toxic high-level nuclear waste be stored, given that Australia has no standing facility for such a function? How many actual jobs will be created in Australia, and how distorting will this prove to the rest of the economy? Why does Australia find itself in a situation where it will potentially join a foolish war, arm-in-arm with the United States against China, Canberra’s largest trading partner? The last two questions of the inquiry crucially consider whether Australia will essentially become a vassal outpost of the US imperium, and whether the pact will ripen Australia as an inviting nuclear target.
The first hearings in Melbourne, held on June 11, made compelling viewing. Former Labor Foreign Minister Gareth Evans was the first witness and uncompromisingly blunt in his submission: “The AUKUS Pillar I Submarine project was misconceived from the outset, and the passage of time since its announcement in 2021 has served only to make more compelling the conclusion that it is not in Australia’s national interest to continue our commitment to it.” Evans points to three fatal problems that neatly summarise some of the critical defects of AUKUS: the doomed prospects of deliverability, the sheer costliness of a project that “outweighs its benefits,” and the limits it would place on “Australia’s independent sovereign agency.”
On the deliverability of submarines, the verdict is damning: “every piece of evidence available on the public record reinforces the scepticism as to whether any of them [the eight promised AUKUS boats] will be delivered on time, or indeed, at all.” The Virginia-class boats, scheduled to arrive by 2032, are permanently subject to the “inventory requirements” of the Pentagon, which remain sluggish at an annual production rate of approximately 1.2 platforms. This is despite the contribution of $US2 billion from the Australian public purse to US shipyards. Delivery of such boats can only be assumed, given the promise by such mandarins as the Pentagon’s Undersecretary for Policy Elbridge Colby to expand the nuclear fleet, to take place on the proviso that the Royal Australian Navy will be an extension of US power.
As for the benefits accrued from such a vast bill, what were these boats really for? Evans was in no doubt: they were to serve as “supplementary assets, effectively embedded in US military command, for the task of finding, tracking, attacking and destroying Chinese submarines seen as a nuclear threat to the US mainland, as they move into and around West Pacific waters.” To also permit this capability for reasons of combating China was needless. “There is no reason to assume that, Taiwan apart, China would ever contemplate outright military aggression – Hitler, Tojo or Putin-style – against any of its regional neighbours, let alone the United States.”
The issue of trading sovereignty for boats was also brutally self-evident. Washington would never part with SSNs “in the absence of an undertaking that we will deploy these boats to join the US in any fight in which it chooses to engage anywhere in our region, particularly over Taiwan.” For confirmation, one need only look at statements by Colby, or the views of officials from the previous Biden administration such as former deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner, former assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs.
Other submissions were eclectic in scope and troubling in implications. Featured were academic contributions from public academic figures Joseph Camilleri, Tilman Ruff and Richard Tanter; Dave Sweeney, an anti-nuclear campaigner from the Australian Conservation Foundation; John Leslie Lander, Australia’s former Head of the China section at the Department of Trade of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Ambassador to China; and Barbara Jackson as a “concerned citizen.” The following is a discussion of some of the presentations and submissions. (A full list is available at the AUKUS Public Inquiry site.)
Speaking on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Ruff lamented the exacerbation of regional tensions by AUKUS, which increased “the risks of major power confrontation, including nuclear confrontation, particularly in Northeast Asia.” The provision of SSNs also offered the grim spectre of nuclear proliferation, given the highly enriched uranium that would be used as reactive fuel. Australia’s anticipated retention of such waste was contrary to US non-proliferation practices that have been in place for decades. Crucially, though, the highly nuclear-enriched waste can itself provide “weapons-usable material.”
Ruff was particularly aghast that Australia had not considered advancing “low-enriched uranium reactive fuel”, an alternative used by other nuclear-powered submarine fleets, and also drew the Inquiry to Canberra’s obligations under the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty. This had legal implications for boats or aircraft carrying nuclear weapons finding themselves on Australian soil. This could include “lengthy visits, visits on a permanent or semi-permanent basis”, “rolling visits” that would entail the swift replacement of one nuclear-weapons carrying platform with another, and visits with “the deliberative purpose or intention of permitting a nuclear-armed vessel or aircraft being located for military deployment directly from the location being visited.” All of these instances would violate, not only the Treaty, but Australian domestic law, and make efforts to join the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons problematic if not impossible.
Tanter expressed his concerns about “an extraordinary emphasis on interoperability” between Australian and US forces arising from strategic and defence reviews, including “integrated planning documents recently published by the Albanese government.” Relying on the British submarine industry to pull its weight to provide the SSN-AUKUS was also optimistic, given that it was “very close to dysfunctional.” The Virginia-class boats, which were now only going to be second hand variants, were likely, if ever to make it to Australian shores, fall under the command of the US Navy. Of particular concern to Tanter was the absence of any “policy or legal impediment to bringing nuclear weapons into Australia, as long as they are labelled transit or visit.” This risked a degree of “nuclear permissiveness that we should not be tolerating.”
Lander was bracing in offering a picture of China so frowned upon by the US-Australian alliance. “The strategic rationale for AUKUS is founded on the patently false premise that China presents a kinetic threat to Australia.” Over eight decades, China had never “evinced the slightest inclination to attack Australia, let alone expressed a policy of hostility towards Australia.” The fear that Australia’s sea lanes would be subjected to interdiction by China – hence the need for some bristling naval deterrent – ignored “the fact that China has an existential interest in keeping those same sea lanes open, because it is the largest trading partner of the vast majority of the world.”
Domestically, the Australian government was also running roughshod over constitutional arrangements requiring them to justify the vast expenditures and the surrender of its authority to a foreign power. Parliament had been utterly ignored by the executive in “granting a foreign nation operational control of Australian defence or intelligence facilities, or territory, or to committing Commonwealth expenditure in connection with such arrangements.”
Counting herself as a community member, Barbara Jackson proposed that Australia had “allowed its defence framework to be shaped substantially by American strategic priorities rather than its own.” This was much like permitting a dominant customer to dictate one’s operations. She instanced US signals intelligence facility at Pine Gap, located near Alice Springs. “Australia has almost no control over what it is used for, yet would bear the immediate consequences if conflict erupted.”
The northern and western regions of Australia also offered “ideal geography for [US] operational requirements.” AUKUS and the increasing presence of US forces in Australia also seemed at odds with the country’s official doctrine, the Strategy of Denial. According to that defensive doctrine, an adversary is denied the ability to project force against Australian territory. “Pine Gap, Darwin, AUKUS, and deep interoperability with the United States forces mean Australia functions as an operating base in American offensive operations.” You could not claim a denial strategy on the one hand and “host infrastructure” implicating you as “a frontline participant in someone else’s strategic competition.”
With such a list of ailments and threats posed by AUKUS, it is little wonder the creature still lives. Further efforts to put it down have already been made at Fremantle (June 29), with more to follow on July 16 (Adelaide), Adelaide First Nations Yarn (July 17), Sydney (August 11), Wollongong (August 12), and Canberra (September 1). The material marshalled at these gatherings promise to furnish us a hefty record of informed dissent in the face of folly for the ages.
Also by Dr Binoy
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Beached Arguments: Pete Hegseth, JD Vance and European Immigration
Caveat Canvas: ShinyHunters Hacks the Education Sector
The Travails of Noma: God Chefs, Brutal Kitchens and the Cult of Fine Dining
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Australia will NOT become a vassal to the US empire, as it already is and has been for decades such a vassal.
I know a number of past and present service personnel, and to a person they say that AUKUS is not needed and a complete waste of money – especially given what is happening with “drone warfare”.
When the AUKUS story broke, I observed in sicked up shock and revised all I’d learned over time of historical and other relevancies. This announcement was made by nematodal idiot superstitionist ungifted regressive S Morrison; I shuddered, laughed queasily, realised it was all wrong, just awful, and, considered all whys, ifs, buts, whens, costs. We must get out. A family in USA, China, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, anywhere, does not wish to be atomised, blistered to death, see the inevitable slaughter, agonies, pointlessness. We are a target now, and have been for decades. Why? Is death some consolation or “security? In fact, M A D, mutually assured destruction has been fully absorbed and comprehended by generations of experts everywhere, but new idiotic non experts have emerged, bacterial swamp reffos like D Dogshit, esq., to rethreaten.
@ Phil Pryor: Geez Phil, you are being very generous to Scummo. The imperialist ambitions of the USA (Undemocratic Swamp of Apartheid) have no place in Australian defence policy. The WWII ”saving” of Australia attributed to Macarthur ignores his Island Hopping Strategy that required a large area Form Up Place (FUP) to assemble his military assets. These were not required because the two atomic bombs dropped by the USAF did the jobs with fewer American casualties.
While Retched Mediocrity (Marles) sells the myth that ”Australia owes the USA” this is just propaganda for buying his post-politics career as a consultant adviser to a US NE military industrial complex industry as payback for favours delivered. This is the same strategy that Scummo used to escape from Parliament.
“We must get out – immediately or sooner!!”
This decision alone, puts the liar Morrison clearly on top of the pile of worst ever Prime Ministers, and it is unforgivable that Timid Tony cheered it through without a parliamentary inquisition.I look forward to the somersaults and sniping that will inevitably ensue from the weak Labor government, not to mention the lies from the garbage media and assorted vested interests.
While we observe the madness of America circling the drain, there’s every chance we will be sucked into that vortex of doom.
Over to you Albanese.
Whilst the US & UK crumble financially, ecologically and morally, why is it that Oz persists with a patently dysfunctional defense framework? Its record of disastrous incompetent massively costly defense procurements provides much evidence as to its dysfunction.
Oz has natural geographic defense attributes. Even where exposed in the far north, aerial and ground-based defense capabilities ought suffice. Who will come to traverse the vast inland – Indonesia, China? China, if it should choose, can already target any aggressive infrastructure in Oz.
AUKUS subs already espouses as a projection force (to where?). Either that or they’ll be jigged as undersea drone bases to protect high-speed comms cables or against renegade undersea mining. But either way, we’re not told. Seems we have to wait until Janes or Declassified gets the full lowdown and tells us.
It must be political. Now subservient to ‘Cyclops’ America, 5-eyes is well and truly on the rocks, so there must be other matters pressing. Perhaps being a snivelling Constitutional Monarchy, we opt not to rock the barely seaworthy boats, instead pay heed to the old Dart and its dead guru Dr Who, by finally fleecing ourselves for the imperia of UK & US to form stabilized three-legged fools.
Whilst we’re at it we should order a plane-load of sonic screwdrivers.
If Australia was to bail out on AUKUS, what would it cost the nation in contractual obligations that Morrison signed us up for? Bailling out of the French Submarine deal cost a great deal of money and affected our international reputation as a country to sign contract deals with. It has always been that when a ruling Australian Government signs a contract, subsequent Governments honour those contracts. If we don’t, who will want to sign contracts with Australia? It is easy to say, “Bail out of AUKUS” but what will that do to Australia’s reputation and finances?
It is extraordinary how bombing, shooting, rocketing, nuking people “over there” has become normalised and acceptable to our politicians and media. Phil Pryor is correct. Australians MUST rise up (don’t wait for an election) and tell this sycophantic spineless Labor government that any alliance with USA or UK is unacceptable. Irrational fear of invasion has emanated from American strategists into our media (n.b. Peter Hartcher’s Sinophobic rants) so that unthinking Australians are convinced that we can’t possibly defend ourselves unaided. WW2 was different and has passed – Australia’s co-operation with USA was answering the existential threat of Japanese Imperial expansion. Since then and starting with Harold Holt’s “all the way with LBJ” we have signed up to alliances that require military units from USA to be permanently residential on Australian Territory. This is allowing occupation without an invasion. China has not fought a war, except for a border skirmish in the 1970’s with Viet Nam in which China lost. Popping off a few live rounds in the Tasman Sea was no indication of Chinese aggressive intent and was an embarrassment for our security agencies. Any war with China with or without USA will end in annihilation of USA and Australia. Whilst we “host” US military and intelligence assets in Pine Gap, North West Cape, Tyndall and Sterling we remain in the cross hairs of Chinese (and Russian) ICBM’s. A nuclear powered submarine fleet will not defend Australia – AUKUS will be obsolete before it is operational. AUKUS only serves the hegemonic interests of a dysfunctional US Executive and the decayed colonial philosophy of UK.
For our grandchildren to survive and prosper Australia must seek co-operation, peace and prosperity within our Asian neighbours NOT security from Asia.
AUKUS was contrived by 3 very unpopular leaders who supported Zionist Israel. Now the new leaders who support AUKUS and Zionist Israel are the most unpopular leaders. It would be the case then that support for AUKUS and Zionist Israel are the kiss of death for democratic parties.
Every Australian is degraded and diminished by the Albanese government’s great submarine deception and sycophantic US/Israel appeasement obsession. Unlike South Korea who understands that US bases on their soil makes them a massive target, as the Gulf States have recently found out, Albanese Labor cannot wait to hand over sovereign Australian military bases to the US.
Now with the US House of Reprasentatives passing the NDAA bill with section 224 intact which ties US and Israel militarily together. AUKUS will not only have Australia joined at the hip with the US but also now Israel and all its illegal dirty wars.
Many words will be written. Many words will be spoken. End result? New carpet will be purchased for burying it under. Fuck all will be done about it.
@ Clakka: The USA has always been a ”Cyclops” only seeing the world that could be exploited, conned or invaded for the benefit of American multinational interests. Indeed, all that ”conspiracy theory”, published and demonised by MSM for 50+ years, has now been shown to be American policy.
@ Garry Bates: Simple solution; pass legislation that makes Scummo personally responsible for ALL costs of the USUKA sub debacle that he created to provide a post-politics career as a consultant to one or more of the beneficiary corporations composing the US NE Military Industrial Complex.
@ GL: Sadly too true. A former Navy friend was on the Australian Naval Board that ultimately recommended the Collins Class subs; not because they were the best, the Board found that US subs came second to European designs. The decision was a directive from Canberra Bubble politicians, ignoring the expertise of the Board. This also happened with the French subs and Scummo.
@ Mediocrates: While PRC China builds the Belt & Road economic linkages providing financial investment where former (European & US) colonial powers simply ripped off natural resources with as little payment as possible, preferably none, the USA (Undemocratic Sewer of Apartheid) conducts wars to support American ”rights” to take natural resources with the same impunity POTUS Bibi the Butcher bombards Gaza committing genocide. Which country creates the most fear??
@ ajogrady: This American s224 link ”engineered” by POTUS Butcher Bibi is indeed a further loss of Australian sovereignty.
Time to give up the cultural cringe, cut the apron strings to the most dysfunctional English family in Europe, and recognise that the myth ”the USA saved Australia from Japanese invasion during WWII” is a worn out American mantra to exploit any economic opportunities that can be discovered.
NEC:
Australians should be reminded of “the Brisbane line” scenario that there great allies,especially Macarthu,were prepared to do to Australia.
@ ajogrady: My mate studied the Brisbane line as his post-graduate thesis and wrote a published book on the topic. My colleague at one school had been a member of Curtin’s Cowboys for 2.5 years, riding around Northern Australia looking for Japanese, having only an Aboriginal tracker, a pack horse and a radio for company. There is a small exhibit in the Darwin Museum commemorating this campaign.
The Brisbane Line was an English temperate climate response because over 75% of Australia’s water falls north of the Tropic of Capricorn, while the Poms cannot tolerate high temperatures above 60 degF during their one day of English summer.
@ NEC:
“the myth the USA saved Australia from Japanese invasion during WWII”
Rather than ‘saving Oz’, the operations of the Coral Sea were a (Pearl Harbor) vengeance campaign by the Americans, and just so happened to involve Japan’s objective of capturing Port Moresby. And those operations were ramshackle disasters (by both Japan & USA). MacArthur’s self-aggrandising blather about saving Oz, and Japan’s continuing threat on Oz was trumped-up BS. The US was simply using Oz as a supply/staging post, as it did in Darwin, without contributing to its defense.
Typically, Oz punched back at Japan, well above its weight, with Oz manpower, at enormous cost. And as usual, Britain scarpered. And we seem to keep doing that in other theatres.
It is said, ultimately Japan opted to surrender to the US, as at home, in the alternative it would have to face the deadly madmen Russians along with the Chinese who were closing in on Japan fast.
It seems Oz along with much of the ‘west’ fails to recognize the hubris and actual history of the UK (English) & US imperia, despite their adventures causing them both now to crumble fast.
My understanding of the Brisbane Line is, that with American planning and infrastructure assistance, it was determined that should Australia be invaded by the Japanese Imperial Forces (JIF) our “last ditch” defences would be located south east of a line drawn between Brisbane and Adelaide. To support this many airfields were constructed or expanded in NSW and Victoria. Airfields In the Riverina district included Narrandera, Urana, Temora, Deniliquin and Tocumwal. Tocumwal, known as “MacIntyre Field” in war time, was the base for heavy bomber (B-24 Liberator) training and maintenance. It was constructed in early 1942 by over 7,000 American engineers and construction troops, together with Australian civilian workers in just over 3 months. MacIntyre Field was the one of the largest airfields in the Southern Hemisphere during WW2. The pre-war population was 1100 but in 6 months expanded to over 10,000 mostly with American Air Force personnel. That is where I grew up.
After the JIF were defeated in the Coral Sea and Kokoda the defence lines moved north and air defence and army operations were entered on Townsville, Qld. The Brisbane-Adelaide line was no longer needed.
@ Mediocrates,
Thanks. Interesting.. The Wikipedia page on the ‘Brisbane Line’ notes that it was controversial. It concludes with:
“In his memoir, Reminiscences, MacArthur claims that the Australian military had proposed designating a line roughly following the Darling River as the focus of defence during the expected Japanese invasion of Australia. MacArthur credits himself with the plan’s dismissal in favour of offensive operations to stop Japanese advancement in New Guinea.” [ie; Coral Sea battles]
Thanks everyone for the additional information.
“Bombs and trenches all in rows” is a much better option. Or, a few subs somewhere down below?
Clakka:
MacArthur claims many things in his memoirs. Contemporary documentation suggests that a good percentage of those claims are so much codswallop.
Leefe:
I agree, & not only in his memoirs. If you’d read my comments, you’d see that.
Garry Bates: I absolutely agree with you. That idiot Scummo & the LNP signed us up for the AUKUS catastrophe. There’s absolutely nothing that Albo & Labor can do about it. If we “bail out” of the contract, the US & probably the UK will likely sue the living shit out of us, potentially bankrupting Australia. I think sadly & infuriatingly, we’re left with making the best out of a very bad deal.
I have no doubt the public inquiry will show us just how bad that deal was.
Following is the first two paragraphs of a Biden administration fact sheet. Strangely, the Biden admin. is in no doubt that Albanese signed Australia up to AUKUS. By the way, Australia need only give a years notice to withdraw from the agreement.
“On March 13, 2023, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of the United Kingdom, and President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. of the United States announced an arrangement for Australia to acquire a conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarine (SSN) capability through the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) enhanced security partnership.
On September 15, 2021, our three nations embarked on an 18-month consultation period to identify the optimal pathway for Australia to acquire this capability, while setting the highest nuclear non-proliferation standard. The plan announced today will deliver on that commitment. Further, this plan will lift all three nations’ submarine industrial bases and undersea capabilities, enhancing deterrence and promoting stability in the Indo-Pacific.”
Several comments have erroneously made the assertion that Morrison is to blame for AUKUS. It was his brainfart but Albo, Marles and Wong, with no consultation with colleagues, agreed to support it during a meeting before the 2022 election. Morrison then progressed the agreement to an 18 month consultation phase during which the new Labor government could have exited without penalty. At the annual Labor conference in late 2023, despite many objections from the rank and file which were shut down by the executive, the AUKUS agreement was ratified. There was no contract signed ever and it is still an agreement which can be exited without penalty except losing funds already paid. Labor now owns this stinker lock, stock and barrel.
Is there no 20 minute editing feature any longer.
Sorry, here is the link to that factsheet I quoted from:
https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/13/fact-sheet-trilateral-australia-uk-us-partnership-on-nuclear-powered-submarines/
Paul Wittwer,
well said.