Is AUKUS floundering?

Is the so-called AUKUS arrangement between close allies Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States losing its mojo? Were that the case, one of the Biden administration’s top two or three signature initiatives for pushing back with allies and partners against the threatening aspects of China’s rise could be lost. Yet the administration seems unaware of this risk. From the E ring of the Pentagon to the White House, it is time that people lose their complacency on the matter.

The initial AUKUS idea was counterintuitive in various ways. It was not clear why three countries that were already allies needed a new mechanism to collaborate. With Australia’s modest military budget of around $35 billion (about 1/20th America’s own) it was not obvious that that nation could really afford the submarines at the heart of the deal or that there were other, larger benefits for the United States to gain by collaborating with such a mid-sized partner on other areas of military technology development. Also, with some in the U.S. government predicting that China might attack Taiwan later this decade, it was not clear how a program that would only deliver submarines to Australia in the 2030s (at the earliest) would make any useful difference.

Worse, AUKUS’s unseemly 2021 rollout made a bit of a mockery of Biden’s argument that adults were back in charge in the White House, and that American allies would be respected again by the U.S. government. Negotiated secretly between Washington, Canberra and London, its centerpiece concept was a proposal to sell Australia eight American-designed nuclear-powered attack submarines for the Australian armed forces. Those submarines would complement America’s own fleet of more than 50 attack submarines in patrolling Indo-Pacific waters, even as China’s military buildup and assertive behaviors in the region continued.  They would also symbolize the collective resolve of the allies to work together to secure the region.  

But to make the deal affordable for Australia, Canberra had to cancel a pre-existing contract with French shipyards to build conventionally-powered submarines. Paris hit the roof — not unreasonably — and the Biden team, only recently humbled by the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, looked bad on national security matters as well as on basic diplomatic skills.  Reportedly, national security adviser Jake Sullivan offered his resignation in response, though Biden declined to accept it.

Leaving aside the merits of the original case, and the unbecoming behind-the-scenes maneuvering that produced the deal in the first place, the AUKUS arrangement has become a widely respected and distinctive element of U.S. grand strategy towards the Asia-Pacific. In addition to the gradual strengthening of the “Quad” — an informal security partnership involving Japan, the United States, Australia and India — as well as the gradual efforts to improve frosty relations between South Korea and Japan, it has been a centerpiece of U.S. efforts to work with others to push back proactively against China’s militarization of the South China Sea, autocratic behavior toward Hong Kong and Xinjiang province, and threats against Taiwan. 

By tightening relations between Washington and two of its allies who share America’s views about the potential China threat — yet who often do so with a calm and tempering attitude that can defuse our American tendency toward overreaction in such matters — AUKUS makes for a good element of grand strategy. That is true above and beyond any single technology or arms sale that its members seek to showcase.

But now, AUKUS appears to be in trouble. The United States cannot seem to figure out its mind on how to bring the sub deal to life. Bureaucratic politics, and a lack of any sense of strategic or political urgency, may explain the problem. To get the submarines to Australia as fast as possible, they will need to be built in the United States, where nuclear-powered submarine technology is well understood. Yet America’s shipyards do not have the capacity to build subs for Australia while also trying to expand this nation’s own attack submarine fleet from its current level of around 55 SSNs to 60 or more, as the Navy would like. 

One idea is to ask Australia to help fund an expansion of the U.S. shipbuilding base. That may make sense, if the price is reasonable — and if Australia then can be guaranteed delivery of its vessels by a certain date. But on both of these matters, it appears the U.S. Navy is balking and no one is overruling them.

The result is that AUKUS could wither on the vine. That would not be good politics for the Biden team at a time when its overall handling of the Russian and Chinese threats has been reasonably impressive through 2022, after a wobbly overall start to foreign policy in 2021. More importantly, it would not be good for American grand strategy at a time when Beijing already wonders if the United States has lost its sense of geopolitical purpose and resolve — as well as its ability to stick to any new strategy for more than a year or two at a time. 

Michael O’Hanlon is the Philip H. Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy at the Brookings Institution and the author of several books, including the forthcoming “Military History for the Modern Strategist.” Follow him on Twitter @MichaelEOHanlon.