AUKUS News, Views, Analysis.

Lethe

Captain
Paul Keating is a fighter until the end. Today at the National Press Club he delivered prepared remarks lambasting the AUKUS pact and answered questions on the same subject.

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Paul Keating has labelled the $368bn Aukus nuclear submarine plan as the “worst deal in all history” and “the worst international decision” by a Labor government since Billy Hughes tried to introduce conscription.

The former Labor prime minister launched an extraordinary broadside against the Albanese government at the National Press Club on Wednesday, blasting the “incompetence” of Labor backing the decision to sign up to Aukus while in opposition and when it had “no mandate” to do so.

Keating also singled out the defence and foreign affairs ministers, Richard Marles and Penny Wong, as “seriously unwise”, arguing Wong had run the “smallest of small-target” strategies by backing Liberal strategic policies to win government, allowing defence interests to trump diplomacy.

Keating is a noted dove towards China. He has previously labelled Taiwan “not a vital Australian interest” but rather a “civil matter” for China. China sees Taiwan, a self-governed democracy of 24 million people, as a wayward province and has not ruled out taking it by force.

On Wednesday Keating said China “is not the Soviet Union” because it is involved in international institutions and would “fall over themselves to have a proper relationship” with Australia, except that Australia has “manufactured a problem” through its increasing alignment with US.

Keating argued that China is “not going to attack us and have never threatened to attack us”, suggesting that the Aukus trilateral partnership is instead about preserving US “hegemony” in east Asia by seeking to contain China.

“What Anthony Albanese has done this week, he’s screwed into place the last shackle in the long chain which the Americans have laid out to contain China,” he said.

Keating said the “great sin” China had committed in the eyes of the west was developing its economy to equal the size of the US, suggesting the Americans “would have preferred” 20% of the world population remains in poverty.

He also mocked aligning with the UK, which he said is “looking around for suckers” to create “global Britain … after that fool [Boris] Johnson destroyed their place in Europe”.

Keating accused Albanese of “dropping the word ‘sovereignty’ into every sentence” about Aukus and warning this does not make it real.

When Scott Morrison approached Labor seeking bipartisan support for Aukus in 2021, Keating claimed the opposition was briefed at 4pm and agreed within 24 hours despite having “no mandate” from Labor members.

“How would you do this in 24 hours? You can only do it if you have no perceptive ability to understand the weight of the decisions you’re being asked to make,” he said. “It’s what other people call incompetence.”

When asked about apparent improvements in Australia’s relationship with China since the election, Keating labelled this view “naive”.

He warned that “no mealy mouthed talk of stabilisation … or the resort to soft language will disguise from the Chinese the extent and intent of the commitment to the United States hegemony”.

 
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Lethe

Captain
Hugh White has made a bold prediction: that
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.

So here is my prediction. The multiple points of failure built into this Heath Robinson program, coupled with the deep flaws in its underlying strategic logic, make it a very fair bet that Australia will never operate nuclear-powered submarines, while AUKUS will become an embarrassing memory, if it is remembered at all. And if Australia is to retain a submarine capability, it will have to go back to square one and look for a conventionally powered successor to Collins.

As some folks know, I'm a big fan of Professor White. I can't say I agree with this, however. The costs and risks are indeed enormous, and any one of the three players could, in theory, deal a crippling blow to the enterprise. But I can see this program stumbling on, zombie style, well beyond the point where its folly has become obvious, carried on institutional and diplomatic inertia alone.

I do think that Professor White is on point
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, however:

"The idea [the U.S.] would be selling us Virginia class submarines if they didn't absolutely believe we would support them in any war with China is simply absurd," White said. "That's what [AUKUS] is all about from America's point of view -- it is about locking us in."

The Virginia-class submarines to be delivered in the 2030s were the surprise in this AUKUS announcement. It was a surprise because we know that the US Navy has no submarines to spare, nor spare production capacity. Hence, superficially, selling Australia scarce Virginia-class submarines is an act of great generosity on the part of the United States. Yet we well know that in international affairs, no country is going to degrade its own capabilities to bolster those of another. To put it another way, the only reason the United States is willing to sell us these submarines is because they don't actually regard the RAN as distinct from its own forces. That is to say, the United States is assuming that where it leads, we will follow and do as we are told, no matter the potentially calamitous consequences.

That is what Washington believes, and it is evidently what Canberra has allowed Washington to believe. What Canberra has not done is articulate this to the Australian people. If it is indeed the position of the Australian government that we will go to war if and when Washington tells us to, then the government needs to inform the Australian people of this so that they may can be judged at the ballot box accordingly. Anything less is a grotesque betrayal of the Australian people.

And tell me again how many SSN and SSBN China will have in 2040s? ... probably will have many SSN Type 99 and SSBN Type 100

And Chinese GDP will be much higher than the US or AUKUS

China can build SSN and SSBN a lot cheaper and faster

I'm no fan of AUKUS but I don't see how the number of Chinese SSNs is relevant to the question of how suitable SSNs are for Australia.
 
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HighGround

Junior Member
Registered Member
That is what Washington believes, and it is evidently what Canberra has allowed Washington to believe. What Canberra has not done is articulate this to the Australian people. If it is indeed the position of the Australian government that we will go to war if and when Washington tells us to, then the government needs to inform the Australian people of this so that they may can be judged at the ballot box accordingly. Anything less is a grotesque betrayal of the Australian people.

This is not how foreign policy has been historically conducted and it is unlikely to ever be conducted that way in Western countries. More importantly, as I've seen from my own country, domestic audiences pay little attention to various intricacies of foreign policy. They tend to go along with whatever the government consensus is.
 

Overbom

Brigadier
Registered Member
That is what Washington believes, and it is evidently what Canberra has allowed Washington to believe. What Canberra has not done is articulate this to the Australian people. If it is indeed the position of the Australian government that we will go to war if and when Washington tells us to, then the government needs to inform the Australian people of this so that they may can be judged at the ballot box accordingly. Anything less is a grotesque betrayal of the Australian people.
Who cares about the people? Irrelevant.

The center has sent the diktat, its now the imperial territory's duty to implement it. That's the basic structure of the American Empire.

Australian people are at the bottom tier of the American Empire's policy making and as such they don't need to know anything. Their only duty is to faithfully implement the center's commands
 

MarKoz81

Junior Member
Registered Member
And tell me again how many SSN and SSBN China will have in 2040s? ... probably will have many SSN Type 99 and SSBN Type 100

And Chinese GDP will be much higher than the US or AUKUS

China can build SSN and SSBN a lot cheaper and faster

First of all the idea that there needs to be an arms race is a misconception.

The US could afford to build up its military only because of Bretton Woods which means that in real terms it could be thought as the entire world paying for the navy. In reality the world paid for the army and the air force because the navy would always be the foundation of strategy but it's not important for this argument. WW2 allowed for expansion of the fleet, reductions took some of it but during the Cold War a previously unsustainable fleet was maintained due to US Dollar's position in the global financial system.

This expansion however came at cost to domestic economy or social programs. Look at US and EU and compare defense expenditures. Most EU Countries don't cross 2% not because they don't want to but because they can't. They have to make a political choice and because most EU countries are more democratic than the US it is impossible to fund military spending at the expense of social programs and the alternative is debt or inflation which affect social programs in the long run. Those few that spend more like Greece do it at even greater cost to themselves.

The US achieves its military expenditure through aggressive suppression of any policy that could establish a welfare program unless it has absolutely no alternative. The idea of "states can do it" is a deception because states can't do it due to competitive race to the bottom in a single market. You need harmonization which is what happens in EU with tremendous difficulties because of the advantage that lack of expansive social policy provides for capital owners. But the EU has states which have such policy and push to harmonize to protect themselves. In the US the states that don't have such policy are the majority and prevent federal government from harmonizing.

As soon as expanding welfare becomes a necessity US military expenditures will plummet to 2-2,5% at best. China keeps its spending at that level precisely because it understands that internal stability is more important than external power projection. China won't spend more unless it is forced to. It's an issue of ecology rather than economics. The level of (approximately) 2% is sustainable if and if your economy is on a long-term growth trend then 2% will be sufficient. It's the US that is spending itself into problems and needs an increasingly aggressive foreign policy to maintain what is an unbalanced ecological calculus.

In other words China is playing the US' role in the Cold War when USSR exceeded its natural threshold for military spending at the cost of welfare and prosperity. That's always the correct play if you're not threatened directly. Fundamentally China may simply plan its expansion with the assumption that US will have to reduce its own fleet due to inability to sustain it. The US can maintain oversized fleet at the expense of army or air force but that has to be compensated by others which needs to be arranged politically. The US is in a position to influence its vassals to play along as long as the population understands Washington interest as their own. This is for example the case in my country where Russia is perceived as a fundamental threat. But at the same time support for Ukraine isn't natural and the extent to which propaganda has to be employed to maintain it is unprecedented. Poles support Ukrainian refugees because they see that as a preferable cost of weakening Russia compared to direct involvement. But anything that doesn't align with national interest is problematic. For example anti-Chinese rhetoric has been growing in recent years due to US influence and control of media but it's far from what the US needs. Rhetoric is matched by rhetoric because words cost nothing. EU will do the minimum that it needs to get Washington off its back and only as much as it sees in its own self-interest. No more.

And that means that US needs to maintain full-spectrum capability. It can't rely on naval power or even naval and air power because it can't be sure that vassals or allies or partners will compensate land power. Also land power is the single largest constituency in political terms due to size and most important for internal stability. It is impossible to cut the land power below certain threshold.

China might simply assume that parity is more beneficial because while it comes from lower numbers and with a positive balance the US comes to it from higher numbers and a negative balance. US will be degenerated. China will be regenerated.

The idea that there must be a race to match or outmatch each other is repeating of Cold War but Cold War had two new superpowers competing for position. US-China contest is an old superpower vs new superpower. It's Britain vs America. (Britain vs Germany is not ideal due to Germany's unique need for land power). That contest looked very differently from Cold War and ended with a number of naval treaties.

Secondly I just realized something that is obvious in retrospect: AUKUS base is near Perth in Western Australia.

SSNs are bad for littoral operations for many reasons that I won't get into here. SSKs are used because they're cheaper despite limited mobility and endurance because in littorals submarines will increasingly have a very limited role.

Everywhere else the seas are an obstacle and SSNs will have to cross it. It also makes no sense for AUKUS to be about South China Seas or even the West Pacific because there are potential problems everywhere. If not now then in the near future.
Australia Indian and Pacific.jpg

However in open seas where depth and terrain don't limit dynamic maneuvering to evade detection SSNs have an advantage.

This makes perfect sense:
Indian Ocean.jpg

If you think about SEA archipelagos as GIUK then Indian Ocean can become the Atlantic. It's not about the SSNs it's about the infrastructure for SSNs. That infrastructure will be ready before Virginias enter service in 2030s and will be ensured by rotation of USN and RN SSNs.

Prediction: AUKUS is preparation for inevitable ceding of territory. It is about providing the pivot point for shifting of strategy toward one that won't need US to force Australia against its perceived national interest. No point in pushing a country into war if war can be brought to it. Again - think Ukraine and Poland/EU. Australians won't matter because they will never have to make the decision.

And as for why France had to be cut out of it.

France d'Outre-Mer
France in the world.png
British Overseas Territories:
UK in the world.png

French territories in the Indian Ocean have a population of over 1 million (Reunion, Mayotte) and the French Southern and Antarctic Land are open to military infrastructure if necessary.

It's about ensuring a physical foothold in a crucial waterway. UK has a leash. France for all that we may think of it has a much larger degree of independence which is why it's kept out of Five Eyes for example. And France has influence in the EU which brings in comparable economic potential.

Think about the 42 Rafales that Indonesia bought. That's a sign where many countries in SEA see themselves - not party to either US or China. And that can't be allowed. Therefore any actor that can bring in additional options must be eliminated.
 

TK3600

Captain
Registered Member
This is worse than I mocked in past. I was mocking "8 subs in 20 years". It turned out it is 8 subs in 30 years for an outrageous price. I don't care if it includes sustainment, training, and development of the SSN construction industry. 250 billion USD is a LOT
If they paid 250 billion USD worth to China they can buy themselves a whole navy. It is more than a full year of Chinese military budget.
 

Lethe

Captain
Australia's Defence Minister, Richard Marles, has rejected the contention that Australia receiving nuclear submarines from Australia is conditional upon a commitment to join the United States in a potential conflict with China:

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Speaking on the ABC's Insiders, Mr Marles was asked if access to the three subs came with a commitment from Australia to support the US in any potential future conflict with China over Taiwan.

"The answer to that is of course not. Of course not. And nor was one sought," he said.

"I've listened to that conjecture from a number of commentators. It is plain wrong … I couldn't be more unequivocal than that."

Let us say for the sake of argument that Marles is right: that no such assurance was given, nor was one sought. This says nothing about Washington's perceptions of Canberra's position, or what Canberra has allowed Washington to assume. If Canberra were to clearly state that it makes no commitment to support the United States in hypothetical combat operations against China, I suspect that Washington's enthusiasm for this submarine enterprise would markedly diminish, if not evaporate entirely.

I would also ask Marles if current and envisioned basing arrangements for US forces in Australia will operate under agreements specifying either that (a) US forces cannot conduct combat operations from bases in Australia without approval from Canberra or (b) that US forces can be evicted from Australian bases at a moment's notice. In the absence of either of these conditions, Washington can effectively commit Australia to war without Canberra's consent, making the above considerations moot.
 
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