The problem is that the foreign minister, nor any political figure or official in the Australian government, will speak frankly about the US alliance.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong gave some conflicting messages at The Australian Financial Review Business Summit last week.
Challenged as to how the government can preserve sympathetic support for ASEAN non-alignment in the competition between China and the US, “stabilisation” with China and deep integration with US armed forces, Wong said that “plan A” – namely nuclear-powered submarines – simply had to work. Because Trump is coming, Biden isn’t spending on defence in the Pacific, and Xi Jinping is more wilful and obsessive in his desire for authoritarian control, and increasingly opaque in his policy choices.
As defence expert Marcus Hellyer notes, the problem is not so much in the US procurement of one Virginia-class submarine this year instead of two, it is that the planned handover of a vessel to Australia in the early 2030s “will, by definition, reduce US capability, and that is something the US Congress cannot accept.”In any case, a capacity for adaptability may well not be sufficient for the US to avoid adverse change. And it is in further doubt given the state of America’s domestic politics.
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