Defence Minister Richard Marles  said in June that if war broke out between the US and China, Australia would inevitably be involved.

This is an unacceptable situation for any sovereign nation to be in. It exposes a dangerous inconsistency within Australia’s strategic policy,  identified by former Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Peter Varghese:

On the one hand, our foreign policy embraces  a multipolar future where no country dominates. Our defence policy, on the other hand … is increasingly fixed around doing what we can to ensure the retention of US strategic primacy.

This focus on US primacy is the basis of the AUKUS agreement, Pillar One of which provides for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs). John Lee, of the US Studies Centre,  says “AUKUS was forged as a joint agreement to confront and deter China.” This is consistent with the detailed agreement negotiated between the Morrison Government and the Biden administration in April 2021. It reflected the administration’s strategic objective of maintaining US primacy by containing China to the first island chain, which would require sustaining the autonomy of Taiwan. Former prime minister Scott Morrison indicated in an interview in 2024 that Australia and the US were agreed on this objective.

There are four major problems with AUKUS Pillar One from Australia’s perspective.

The first is that Australia’s strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific are different from those of the United States. Despite Morrison’s assertion, Australia has no essential national interest in containing China in defence of US primacy. In economic terms, China is Australia’s major partner, buying a third of our exports. As for strategic containment, while Morrison’s defence minister, Peter Dutton, said it was “inconceivable” that Australia would not support the US if it “took action” over Taiwan, the present government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has made no such commitment.

Nevertheless, with the US’ bases in Guam, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines now threatened by China’s medium- and intermediate-range missiles, Australia has seen a major influx of US forces rotating through Australian bases. With no apparent assertion of any Australian control over how these forces may be used, this signifies a substantial change in Australia’s strategic posture.

As  Michael Pezzullo said, “never before in peacetime has Australia been prepared to allow foreign combat forces to be able to launch military operations from Australian soil. … [The US] would have a brutally realist strategic view of Australia: it would be a key operating base for US forces in any conflict with China”.

Some experts consider that America’s large military footprint in Australia will enhance our security. This surely reflects a flawed understanding of military strategy. The strategic objective for US forces in Australia will remain the same as when they were based elsewhere: to deter an attack on Taiwan. US forces are not here to defend Australia. Indeed, their presence gives China more reason to launch strikes on this country, beyond its likely desire to eliminate some long-established joint US-Australian facilities.

As well as acting as a platform for offensive operations, an operations base across the Pacific gives the US a deep protective buffer. In a conflict, Australian bases would absorb the initial attacks, but could be readily abandoned by the US should enemy forces prevail. Elbridge Colby, who is conducting the Trump administration’s review of AUKUS, may have had this in mind when he told the US Senate he was examining how “to conduct a local defence of Taiwan at a cost and level of risk that the American people are prepared to tolerate”.

The second problem with AUKUS is that its associated strategy of integrated deterrence requires a significant surrender of Australia’s sovereignty. In 2023, the Albanese Government agreed as part of the AUKUS agreement that the RAN submarine base at HMAS Stirling, near Perth, would be expanded to provide facilities to accommodate a new allied submarine force. Australia’s SSNs will be committed to this US-led force. US National Security council member Kurt Campbell said in June 2023, “when submarines are provided from the United States to Australia, it’s not like they’re lost. They will just be deployed by the closest possible allied force”.

Colby, in 2024, before he became under secretary of defence for policy this year, said the delivery of US Virginia class submarines to Australia from US resources would be highly imprudent without “an iron-clad guarantee they can be employed at the will of the United States”.

This statement, while understandable from a US standpoint, suggests that Australia’s SSN force will not provide a sovereign capability. It will be deployed not at the discretion of the Australian Government but to undertake operations under US control against China. With Royal Australian Navy SSNs integrated into ongoing operations with the US, Australia would be under great pressure not to withdraw them if the US went to war.

It is also not cost-effective to acquire a highly sophisticated defence capability at a very great price only to commit it to forward operations in defence of US primacy. The expenditure can surely only be justified for a capability dedicated to the defence of Australia.

The third problem with AUKUS is that RAN submarines would be required to undertake combined operations with the US in a great power strategy of deterrence by punishment. This would bring a grave risk to Australia’s security.

Ministers may believe that Australia’s SSN missions will be comparable to the combined intelligence gathering operations currently undertaken by our diesel submarines. But because RAN SSNs will displace US submarines, Washington will also want them to replicate US undersea missions. These are far more potent.

A primary strategic objective of US SSNs is to eliminate a great power adversary’s nuclear second-strike capability early in any war. Their operations are therefore directed towards detecting and trailing an adversary’s ballistic-missile submarines and then marking them for destruction in the event of war.

Also, wargame results suggest the US may prevail in a maritime conflict with China only by recourse to tactical nuclear weapons. By the time Australian SSNs enter service, they will be operating alongside US submarines carrying nuclear-armed missiles aimed at military targets in China.

It would be very unwise for any non-nuclear weapons power to participate in these operations. How might China respond to attacks on its ballistic-missile submarines by SSNs based in Australia or even by Australian SSNs that our government felt compelled to put at US disposal?

If the US did resort to using nuclear weapons tactically to avoid losing a war over Taiwan, China could retaliate with nuclear attacks on US facilities in Australia. This would bring a much lower risk of escalation than striking the US mainland. This is one example of how America’s security is better served by locating its first line of defence in Australia rather than at home.

The final problem with AUKUS is that Australia is procuring the wrong designs of SSN. The selection of designs for Australia’s SSNs was clearly based on US and British interests rather than our own. Britain’s SSN-AUKUS class will be much too big for the RAN. Virginias need crews as large as 145, well over twice the size of the crew of an Australian Collins-class diesel submarine. Using Virginias, with their especially high and sensitive technical dependence on the US, would not provide a sovereign capability. Both the US and British programs are also bedevilled with unacceptable risks around delivery.

So, what should the government do?

No doubt Australia’s fear of abandonment will cause some to argue that AUKUS must be preserved unchanged to avoid undermining the alliance. But our interests in the Indo-Pacific are not the same as the US, and, anyway, we cannot rely on any other nation, including America, for defence. In any renegotiation of AUKUS, Australia possesses substantial agency because of America’s need for secure bases.

We need urgently to reorganise our affairs to reduce the possibility of being attacked in a conflict not of our choosing. We should remove the inconsistency in Australia’s strategic posture by harmonising our defence policy with our existing foreign policy and focus on building partnerships in a multipolar Indo-Pacific. Australia should abandon integrated deterrence in the defence of US primacy. Instead, we should extend further into our strategic policy what James Curran calls the “ Australian straddle” between the US and China.

Our security policy should be based on the self-reliant defence of Australia by means of a strategy of denial. This would require much more powerful maritime forces and, consequently, a higher defence budget. With a whole continent and the third largest exclusive economic zone in the world to defend, there is a strong strategic case for Australia to acquire an SSN capability.

We should cancel our plans for Virginia and SSN-AUKUS class submarines and instead seek to acquire a sovereign, independent force of 12 French  Suffren-class submarines. The Suffren design is smaller, well-suited to the RAN’s operational requirements, with a crew of 65. It meets NATO standards of interoperability, allowing ongoing operations with the US. Compared to the 95% enriched, weapons-grade uranium used in US and British submarines, Suffren’s fuel is enriched only to the civil standard of 5%. This has several advantages, not least in terms of the security challenges around transporting reactors halfway round the world to a shipyard in Adelaide.

Benefits to the US would include retention of its Virginia-class submarines within an expanded allied SSN fleet. America should also see benefit in greater Australian self-reliance with a larger defence budget. The training of Australian submariners on US SSNs should continue, to the benefit of both nations. RAN submarines should continue undertaking combined intelligence and surveillance operations at Australia’s discretion and under Australian rules of engagement.

The US could maintain its basing facilities in Australia, but on similar terms to those offered by other sovereign states. Japan, South Korea and the Philippines all have legislation that requires the US to obtain host government approval before launching offensive operations from their territory. Further, their treaties with the US also include a security guarantee with extended nuclear deterrence. Finally, as a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, we should not allow the storage of nuclear weapons on Australian territory.

Republished from Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 22 August 2025

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.