US Congress Chaos Could Derail AUKUS Deal

The removal of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has thrown the US Congress into chaos, and experts warn that the AUKUS deal could be caught up in the fray.

Leszek Buszynski, an honorary professor at the ANU Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, said that the AUKUS deal could be "sidelined or could get lost in the process" of congressional chaos.

A 25 September 2023 research paper published by the Congressional Research Service raised the prospect of postponing the decision on the sale of the submarines until 2024 or later. This would delay the sending of a "signal of alliance solidarity and deterrence to China," the paper noted. The ability of the US to build replacement submarines for Virginia-class boats sold to Australia was “uncertain”, according to the paper

The paper also suggested that the costs for Australia to acquire, operate and maintain Virginia-class submarines “could reduce, perhaps significantly, funding within Australia’s military budget for other Australian military capabilities” – especially if the figures “turn out to be higher than expected”.

 “If this were to occur, there could be a net negative impact on Australia’s overall military capabilities for deterring potential Chinese aggression.”

But the new paper suggested it might be “more cost-effective to pursue a US-Australian division of labor” under which US submarines would perform both American and Australian missions “while Australia invests in other types of military forces”. It pointed to such arrangements between the US and its Nato allies.

Some Republicans have also expressed concerns about the sale of the submarines, arguing that it would weaken the US fleet. In a letter to President Biden in July, 25 Republicans urged him to increase funding for the US submarine fleet before selling submarines to Australia. 

“We support the vision of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) partnership and its potential to change the strategic landscape in the Indo-Pacific. The AUKUS agreement is vitally important, but we must simultaneously protect US national security,” the politicians said in the letter. The Republicans added that selling three attack submarines to Australia would “unacceptably weaken” the US fleet.

To recap some of the previous major concerns about AUKUS - and lack of public consultation - from within Australia:

• Labor is extending the AUKUS military pact with Britain and the US, the explicit purpose of which is to militarise the Indo-Pacific region. In March, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese suddenly announced that Australia would purchase US nuclear-powered attack submarines, at a cost of $368 billion. That announcement was made in San Diego, before the issue had been raised in a single public forum in Australia.
  
  
• Last October, it was revealed that the Labor government had given the US permission to station its nuclear-capable B-52 bombers in Northern Australia. The US never confirms or denies which of its nuclear-capable assets are carrying a payload at any given time, so it must be assumed that the B-52 bombers are armed with nuclear weapons. The Labor government has thus overturned Australia’s nominal status as a nuclear-free power. It did that without so much as a public announcement, with the stationing of the B-52 bombers only being discovered via US Congressional documents.
  
  
• The Labor government has also agreed to the “rotation” of US nuclear-powered submarines through Australian ports. American fighter jets and naval warships have a virtual carte blanche to access Australian facilities.
  
  
• In April, the Labor government endorsed a Defence Strategic Review (DSR) that it had commissioned. The DSR ends decades of official defence doctrine, nominally based on the defence of the Australian continent. Instead, it calls for “impactful projection” throughout the Indo-Pacific, centred on the acquisition of major missile capabilities. The DSR declares that this war drive must be a “whole-of-nation” effort, involving every aspect of society.

Today, the US-based  Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) -  a non-partisan Washington, D.C.-based think tank promoting a better understanding of strategic weapons proliferation - reports on a workshop on September 13th held with the Hudson Institute -  an American conservative think tank also based in Washington, D.C. (noted for work with governments and industries including defence). The workshop considered the 2 questions: 

1. how sustainable is the nuclear submarine program for Australia? 
2. Is it Australia’s best defense option? 

The workshop featured Admiral (Ret.) Robert Thomas, former commander of the 7th fleet based in Japan, and Mark Gunzinger, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Transformation and Resources. Their answer to the two questions was “no.” Instead, they recommended Australia buy non-nuclear submarines from Japan or South Korea. They also recommended working with Australia to build a large arsenal of long-range stand-off munitions that Bombers could deliver against as many as 100,000 Chinese military targets 

Now that the AUKUS deal is in itself a tenuous prospect not the least because of the current US Congress chaos and likely deals eventually being struck with Republicans, the NPEC's radical views  may well fill the void.

The war machine - dominated by Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and BAE Systems - won't lose its profits, however. Indeed the profit margins to the arms industry (and their major investors such as Vanguard and BlackRock) may well be enhanced. They'll just shift from long-lasting SSNs (nuclear-powered general-purpose attack submarine)  to (far more expendable) conventional weaponry and of course be available much sooner  than the post-2040 SSN plans.