Paul Keating, Bob Carr and I seem to have jangled a few security establishment nerves with our critique of the AUKUS submarine deal as having profound negative implications for Australia’s security and sovereignty.
Our former colleagues and advisers, Kim Beazley, Paul Dibb, Mike Pezzullo and the US Studies Centre’s Peter Dean, were in full war-cry mode in The Weekend Australian (“Blast for Labor elders over AUKUS”, 14-15/9).
They have now been joined by the Australian National University’s John Blaxland (“Australia can’t afford an AUKUS about-face: five things the critics are getting wrong”, The Conversation, 15/9), currently seconded to the Australian embassy in Washington.
Our critique – much of which has either been misrepresented or ignored in these responses – has five basic elements.
One, there is zero certainty of the timely delivery of the eight AUKUS boats. Both the US and UK have explicit opt-out rights. Even in the wholly unlikely event that everything falls smoothly into place, we will be waiting 40 years for the last boat to arrive, posing real capability gap issues.
Two, even acknowledging the superior capability of nuclear-propelled submarines, making large assumptions about their continued detectability advantages, and accepting for the sake of argument the utility of “deterrence at a distance”, how useful will this eight-boat fleet actually be for Australia’s defence? When, given usual operating constraints, only two of them will be deployable across our vast maritime environment at any one time.
Third, even assuming the eye-watering cost of these boats is fiscally manageable, it will make much harder the acquisition of other capabilities – in particular, state-of-the-art missiles, aircraft and drones – arguably even more important than submarines for any kind of self-reliant capacity in meeting an invasion threat, were one ever to arise.
Four, the price now being demanded by the US for giving us access to its nuclear propulsion technology – achieving what is now described as fleet “interchangeability”, not just “interoperability” – has become indefensibly high.
The conversion of Stirling into a major base for a US Indian Ocean fleet will mean Perth now joining Pine Gap and the North West Cape, and probably the B-52 base Tindal, as a potential nuclear target. It is hard to conceive of Australia ever being a target of any kind of Chinese military attack, short of our being sucked into fighting alongside the US in a war not of our making, and manifestly not in our national interest. But that prospect is now very real, given the abdication of Australian sovereign agency inherent in the AUKUS decision as it has evolved.
Five, 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 Australia, even in the event of existential attack. We can rely on military support if the US sees it in its own national interest to offer it, but not otherwise.
The issue that most troubles me, Keating and Carr in all of this – and which most seems to enrage AUKUS defenders – is what we see as the loss of Australian sovereign independence that’s necessarily involved. Those who deny this is even an issue, such as Dean, or ignore it entirely, such as Blaxland, are simply defying reality. And those who accept the reality of our loss of sovereign agency, but actually applaud it as a price worth paying for our protection – such as Beazley, Dibb and Pezzullo – seem to have lost not only any sense of national pride, but of Australia’s national interest.
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**Gareth Evans**
Paul Keating, Bob Carr and I seem to have jangled a few security establishment nerves with our critique of the AUKUS submarine deal as having profound negative implications for Australia’s security and sovereignty.
Our former colleagues and advisers, Kim Beazley, Paul Dibb, Mike Pezzullo and the US Studies Centre’s Peter Dean, were in full war-cry mode in The Weekend Australian (“Blast for Labor elders over AUKUS”, 14-15/9).
They have now been joined by the Australian National University’s John Blaxland (“Australia can’t afford an AUKUS about-face: five things the critics are getting wrong”, The Conversation, 15/9), currently seconded to the Australian embassy in Washington.
Our critique – much of which has either been misrepresented or ignored in these responses – has five basic elements.
One, there is zero certainty of the timely delivery of the eight AUKUS boats. Both the US and UK have explicit opt-out rights. Even in the wholly unlikely event that everything falls smoothly into place, we will be waiting 40 years for the last boat to arrive, posing real capability gap issues.
Two, even acknowledging the superior capability of nuclear-propelled submarines, making large assumptions about their continued detectability advantages, and accepting for the sake of argument the utility of “deterrence at a distance”, how useful will this eight-boat fleet actually be for Australia’s defence? When, given usual operating constraints, only two of them will be deployable across our vast maritime environment at any one time.
Third, even assuming the eye-watering cost of these boats is fiscally manageable, it will make much harder the acquisition of other capabilities – in particular, state-of-the-art missiles, aircraft and drones – arguably even more important than submarines for any kind of self-reliant capacity in meeting an invasion threat, were one ever to arise.
Four, the price now being demanded by the US for giving us access to its nuclear propulsion technology – achieving what is now described as fleet “interchangeability”, not just “interoperability” – has become indefensibly high.
The conversion of Stirling into a major base for a US Indian Ocean fleet will mean Perth now joining Pine Gap and the North West Cape, and probably the B-52 base Tindal, as a potential nuclear target. It is hard to conceive of Australia ever being a target of any kind of Chinese military attack, short of our being sucked into fighting alongside the US in a war not of our making, and manifestly not in our national interest. But that prospect is now very real, given the abdication of Australian sovereign agency inherent in the AUKUS decision as it has evolved.
Five, 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 Australia, even in the event of existential attack. We can rely on military support if the US sees it in its own national interest to offer it, but not otherwise.
The issue that most troubles me, Keating and Carr in all of this – and which most seems to enrage AUKUS defenders – is what we see as the loss of Australian sovereign independence that’s necessarily involved. Those who deny this is even an issue, such as Dean, or ignore it entirely, such as Blaxland, are simply defying reality. And those who accept the reality of our loss of sovereign agency, but actually applaud it as a price worth paying for our protection – such as Beazley, Dibb and Pezzullo – seem to have lost not only any sense of national pride, but of Australia’s national interest.