Since Australia, the United States and Britain announced details of the plan for Australia to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines almost 18 months ago, the nation’s AUKUS debate has existed in two parallel universes, Matthew Knott argues in The Sydney Morning Herald.
In one, the three partners have been making steady progress towards turning the submarine plan into a reality, albeit with complications along the way. In the other, the project is failing catastrophically and is set to collapse in a heap at any moment.
The thing about these duelling realities is that only one of them – the first – is real. The second is conjecture, driven by a pessimistic view of the future that has morphed from understandable scepticism into overblown fatalism.
The White House this week revealed the AUKUS nations had reached a significant milestone in the signing of a new agreement to allow for the transfer of naval nuclear technology to Australia. This follows the US Congress passing landmark legislation last December authorising Australia to acquire three Virginia-class submarines from the US Navy. Australian submariners have been receiving nuclear training in the US and Britain, and US submarine visits to Australian ports are ramping up.
Defence expert and longtime AUKUS sceptic Hugh White argued earlier this year that the submarine plan would “almost certainly fail”, predicting that its demise was “perhaps most likely to come in Washington, where a number of hurdles could prove fatal to America’s willingness to sell us Virginia-class subs”.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull – the architect of Australia’s plan to acquire conventional diesel submarines from France – is similarly gloomy.
“The reality is the Americans will not part with the Virginia-class submarines,” Turnbull told an Australia Institute event last month.
“The American legislation says that before any submarine can be sold to Australia, the US president has to certify that their navy doesn’t need it.”
Indeed, legislation passed by Congress last year requires the US president to certify that the transfer of submarines “will not degrade the United States’ undersea capabilities” and is conditional on the US “making sufficient submarine production and maintenance investments” to meet its own needs.
The full article is here.
