U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth meets with Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles at the Pentagon in Washington in February. | REUTERS
By Gabriel Dominguez
STAFF WRITER
The future of the AUKUS security partnership between Australia, Britain and the U.S. — and with it Canberra’s plans to acquire American nuclear-powered submarines — could be at stake as Washington reviews the initiative to ensure it aligns with U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America first” agenda.
Announced late Wednesday by a Pentagon spokesperson, the decision, likely to raise eyebrows among U.S. allies and partners, was swiftly criticized by congressional Democrats but downplayed by Canberra.
“The Department is reviewing AUKUS as part of ensuring that this initiative of the previous (Joe Biden) administration is aligned with the president’s America First agenda,” the spokesperson told The Japan Times in an emailed statement.
“This means ensuring the highest readiness of our servicemembers, that allies step up fully to do their part for collective defense, and that the defense-industrial base is meeting our needs,” the official added.
The remarks suggest that Washington is not only concerned about meeting its own submarine needs as it doubles down on deterring China, but also that it might want to use the review to increase pressure on Canberra to hike defense spending to 3.5% of its gross domestic product "as soon as possible."
Asked about the review and whether he still thinks Canberra will get submarines out of AUKUS, Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said, “I'm very confident this is going to happen,” calling the deal a “treaty-level agreement” between the three countries.
“I think the review that's been announced is not a surprise,” Marles told ABC Melbourne Radio. “We welcome it. It's something which is perfectly natural for an incoming administration to do,” he said, pointing out that Britain recently conducted its own defense review in which AUKUS was “very” positively assessed.
In terms of whether Canberra should consider a Plan B, Marles said that “chopping and changing” would guarantee that Australia “will never have the capability.”
“You just need to look at the map to understand that Australia absolutely needs to have a long‑range submarine capability,” he added. “So, there is a plan here, we are sticking to it and we're going to deliver it.”
The review will be led by Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy.
While Colby has described AUKUS as a “model” of the cooperation type Washington needs to meet 21st-century challenges, he has expressed skepticism over the benefits of the submarine sales element of the initiative, arguing before the U.S. Senate’s Armed Service Committee in March that his country wasn’t producing enough submarines to meet its own requirements in the Indo-Pacific region.
“It would be crazy” to have fewer U.S. nuclear-powered submarines in the right place and time, he tweeted last year, when referring to a potential conflict with China over democratic Taiwan.
But Colby also said during his confirmation hearing in March that it “should be the policy of the United States government to do everything we can to make this (AUKUS) work."
Launched in 2021, AUKUS is Australia's biggest-ever defense project and arguably also its most geopolitically consequential.
Canberra wants to acquire up to eight nuclear-powered submarines, including three Virginia-class subs from the United States from 2032, with the potential to acquire up to two more if needed. The remaining boats for the Royal Australian Navy, called “SSN-AUKUS,” would then incorporate Australian, British and U.S. technologies.
Regarded as a key element of the Biden administration’s “integrated deterrence strategy” against China, the trilateral program, which includes the establishment of a rotational presence of British and U.S. submarines at an Australian naval base near Perth, is forecast to cost between $268 billion and $368 billion Australian dollars ($174 billion to $239 billion) between now and the mid 2050s.
But AUKUS is not merely a submarine program.
Under the initiative’s second pillar, the partners also want to step up research cooperation in advanced areas, such as quantum computing, artificial intelligence, electronic warfare and hypersonic missile capabilities. For these projects, the members have said they would be open to cooperating with close partners such as Japan, South Korea, Canada and New Zealand.
The review comes as Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is set to meet Trump next week on the sidelines of the Group of Seven meeting in Canada, where the two sides are expected to discuss U.S. tariffs as well as Washington’s demand that Canberra boost military spending to 3.5%.
Albanese has said Canberra would not be dictated to by its ally, noting that the country is already planning to pour a significant amount of cash into defense coffers. Australia aims to increase its defense budget to about AU$67.4 billion in 2027-28 and AU$100 billion by 2033-34, putting it at 2.3% of GDP.
The review also triggered a swift response from Democrats, with Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine calling on the president to “work expeditiously” with Canberra and London to strengthen the agreement and further boost the U.S. submarine industrial base if he is “serious about countering the threat from China.”
Anything less, Kaine warned, “would play directly into China’s hand.”
Analysts such as John Blaxland, from the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, argue that while Trump may try and use the review to strike a deal — potentially on a slower submarine delivery schedule or Canberra hiking military spending — he is unlikely to spike AUKUS entirely.
Writing in an analysis after the announcement, Blaxland noted several reasons why Trump might not scrap it. AUKUS is already several years in and over 100 Australian sailors are already operating in the U.S. system, he said. Perhaps more crucially, he also pointed to Canberra’s potential contribution to the United States’ submarine production line and the strategic value of the sub base near Perth, which is widely viewed as key in pushing back against Chinese military assertiveness in the region.
