AUKUS – Here and there

Will America use the AUKUS ‘get-out’ clauses?

16 August 2024 Mike Scrafton AUKUS, Australian focus

By 2028, the next US administration may need to decide between adherence to the AUKUS deal as structured, or ensuring the operational viability of America’s own nuclear submarine force. Is there potential for the US to withdraw from AUKUS?

Three compelling reasons to exit ANZUS

15 May 2024 Mike Scrafton AUKUS, Australian focus

How long can Australian politicians continue with the pretence that the American alliance aligns with the nation’s interests? Trump or Biden? It doesn’t really matter except for determining the path of America’s decline into illiberalism. ANZUS must be exited, but the impetus will have to come from voters.

Australia’s AUKUS Tributes

26 March 2024 Mike Scrafton AUKUS, Australian focus

At this time of rising living costs, economic uncertainty, and impending climate disaster, subsidising the US and UK submarine construction industrial bases is the obvious priority for the Australian government. With massive taxpayer funds flowing through the government’s hands on the basis of media releases, are there yet to be revealed details that will explain to the taxpayer how these contributions aren’t just tributes?

The new Pericles: Marles, master of the Seas

27 February 2024 Mike Scrafton AUKUS, Australian focus

Australia’s future maritime warfare capability is now to include the ‘Enhanced Lethality Surface Combatant Fleet’. Requiring, like the AUKUS submarines, ambitious naval acquisition and construction programs with long lead-times before delivery, serious questions are raised about how the ELSCF responds to assessments of Australia’s strategic circumstances – and of the extent to which it would be just another contribution by Australian taxpayers to US military forces.

AUKUS: Conroy’s justification of the “greatest industrial undertaking” falls short

13 December 2023 Mike Scrafton AUKUS, Australian focus

Extravagant claims are made about the capability that the proposed AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines will give to Australia. The latest from Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy are particularly puzzling.

Could Australia find the courage to end its alliance with America?

23 June 2023 Mike Scrafton Australian focus

A consensus is growing that the US alliance is no longer in Australia’s national interest and the AUKUS partnership should be abandoned. But while the argument for distancing Australian foreign policy from that of America is strong in theory, its practical implementation would be difficult and risky.

All over bar the shouting: the inevitability of a submarine farce

1 March 2023 Mike Scrafton AUKUS

All the signs point to there being no prospect of a sudden upwelling of responsible, considered, and prudent policymaking from Australia’s political class. Without a mature public debate, Australia’s AUKUS submarine farce has been scripted.

Time to talk about time and the AUKUS submarines

18 February 2023 Mike Scrafton AUKUS

The AUKUS submarines are not expected to get wet until more than 30 years from now, and then to operate until at least the late 21st century. Whatever the government’s thinking is, it cannot centre on a genuine belief that the project addresses Australia’s current pressing strategic needs.

An AUKUS ménage à trois

8 February 2023 Mike Scrafton AUKUS

The latest teaser from the Australian government is the suggestion that the AUKUS submarines could be a brand new common design delivered via ‘an integrated industrial capacity across the three countries’, with ‘the three countries…building different sections of the submarines’. Alarm bells should be ringing.

All pathways to AUKUS submarines sub-optimal

14 January 2023 Mike Scrafton AUKUS

AUKUS handed the US largely unfettered military access to Northern Australia. In return, Australia became entangled in an undefined process that may or may not deliver nuclear-powered submarines by mid-century. All roads ahead look hard for this project.

America’s shiny submarine lure reels in Australia’s sovereignty

10 December 2022 Mike Scrafton AUKUS

Arguably, the Americans have brilliantly played successive Australian governments by casting the shiny lure of nuclear submarines out somewhere in the distant future and reeling in control of Australia’s defence policy.

Extent of former US officials’ role in AUKUS submarines decision called into question

24 October 2022 Mike Scrafton AUKUS

Abandoning plans to buy French designed conventionally powered submarines in favour of US or UK supplied nuclear powered submarines has come under sustained criticism on the grounds of strategy, cost, and practicality. Now the involvement of former US officials with potential conflicts of interest gives rise to the possibility that the AUKUS submarines decision itself was tainted.