The August 2024 AUSMIN talks in Annapolis, Maryland, will go down in the chronicles of the US-Australian relationship as momentous – and, from an Australian perspective, not in a good way. As has become customary, the high-level ministerial talks between the two countries were conducted between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Australia’s own Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong.
The US Department of Defense has provided a jargon-heavy overview of some of the discussion points and undertakings. In the description there is one overwhelming theme: the complete and utter subordination of Australian defence to the US military complex. Much of this is captured by the deceptively worded ‘Enhanced Force Posture Cooperation’, which involves both countries pursuing ‘key priorities across an ambitious range of force posture cooperation efforts’. More accurately, this posture entails the incorporation of US forces into every realm of Australia’s military posture: land, sea, air and space.
The Annapolis discussions further affirm the US role in Australia’s defence through ongoing ‘infrastructure investments at key Australian bases in the norther, including RAAF Bases Darwin and Tindal’ and with the prospect for further site surveys and potential upgrades to the RAAF Bases at Curtin, Learmonth, and Scherger. In terms of numbers, rotational deployments of US forces to Australia are to increase, including ‘bombers, fighter aircraft, and Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Aircraft’.
Coded terms on cooperative collaboration between the powers are constantly used, leaving the false impression that Washington and Canberra are somehow on an equal footing. Both, for example, are to engage in ‘co-production’ in developing Guided Multiple Rocket Systems (GLRMRS). Ditto the development of the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), which is to be produced as a cooperative endeavour.
In what has been billed as AUKUS 2.0, Canberra’s future acquisition of nuclear submarines as part of the ‘Optimal Pathway’ is to be governed by new arrangements that supersede the November 22, 2021 agreement between the three powers on the Exchange of Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information (ENNPIA).
The ENNPIA as it stands permits the AUKUS parties to discuss and exchange relevant Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information (NNPI), including officially Restricted Data (RD). As President Joe Biden’s letter to the US House Speaker and President of the Senate explains, the new arrangements feature an Agreement between the three powers for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion. The new agreement ‘would permit the continued communication and exchange of NNPI, including certain RD, and would also expand the cooperation between the governments by enabling the transfer of naval nuclear propulsion plants of conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines, including component parts and spare parts thereof, and other related equipment.’
The Agreement further allows the sale of special nuclear material in the welded power units connected to the submarines, and other relevant ‘material as needed’ for the nuclear reactors. Transferrable equipment will also include that necessary for research, development, or design of the reactors that will be used in the Australian fleet, including the logistics of manufacture, development, design, manufacture, operation, maintenance, regulation and disposal of the plants. The issue of disposal remains highly contentious, given the Commonwealth’s continuing inability to secure and develop a site for low-level to medium-level nuclear waste, let alone one dedicated to the sort of high-level waste produced by such reactors.
'While rarely explicitly mentioning China as the primary target, Albanese, Marles and Wong insist that nuclear-powered submarines are modernising agents to contain it, glossing over the militarisation of Australia under US stewardship.'
Biden’s letter goes on to claim that the AUKUS parties were wedded to ‘setting the highest nonproliferation standard’. What the president fails to consider is that Australia has become an enlisted member of the nuclear proliferation club, effectively contributing to it through providing funding for US and UK shipyards dedicated to nuclear submarine construction. Furthermore, the fact that vessels in the Royal Australian Navy will have floating nuclear reactors assures proliferation.
How, then, to justify this? Albanese describes AUKUS as an act of ‘clear-eyed pragmatism that works in the context of our national interest and in the context of the greater good.’ Anodyne terms such as the ‘rules-based order’ and ‘regional competition’ are regularly used. While rarely explicitly mentioning China as the primary target, Albanese, Marles and Wong insist that nuclear-powered submarines are modernising agents to contain it, glossing over the militarisation of Australia under US stewardship.
The Australian Greens spokesperson on Defence, Senator David Shoebridge, has also warned that AUKUS 2.0 vests enormous discretion and advantages with the US and UK at the expense of Australian sovereignty. Both can avail themselves of generous exit clauses ‘to withdraw from the deal with menial notice and no compensation to Australia.’ Australia is also obligated to indemnify both powers for ‘liability, loss, costs, damage or injury’ arising from the use of nuclear submarines. Both powers are also allowed to determine the price of highly enriched uranium being sold to Australia.
Shoebridge also wonders whether various ‘additional related political commitments’ that are as yet undisclosed covers clandestine ‘commitments binding us to the US in the event they go to war with China in return for getting nuclear submarines.’ This is certainly the view of former Australian Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating, who warns that Australia has been coopted into a dangerous play of power between the United States and China, notably over the defence of Taiwan.
Even more profoundly, and potentially devastating to Australian security, the recent arrangements reveal a country locked up ‘for 40 years with American bases all around … not Australian bases.’ From the US perspective, it meant Washington’s ‘military control of Australia. I mean, what’s happened … is likely to turn Australia into the 51st state of the United States.’ Such a process has been an ongoing one, be it doctrinally, politically and militarily. AUKUS 2.0 has merely brought it to its hideous apotheosis.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University.
Main image: Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defense Richard Marles, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin hold a joint news conference during the Australia-U.S. Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) at the U.S. Naval Academy on August 06, 2024 in Annapolis, Maryland. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)