Gareth Evans is the tip of the spear in Labor’s AUKUS rebellion:
…Our critique – much of which has either been misrepresented or ignored in these responses – has five basic elements.
One, there is zero certainty of the timely delivery of the eight AUKUS boats. Both the US and UK have explicit opt-out rights. Even in the wholly unlikely event that everything falls smoothly into place, we will be waiting 40 years for the last boat to arrive, posing real capability gap issues.
Two, even acknowledging the superior capability of nuclear-propelled submarines, making large assumptions about their continued detectability advantages, and accepting for the sake of argument the utility of “deterrence at a distance”, how useful will this eight-boat fleet actually be for Australia’s defence? When, given usual operating constraints, only two of them will be deployable across our vast maritime environment at any one time.
Third, even assuming the eye-watering cost of these boats is fiscally manageable, it will make much harder the acquisition of other capabilities – in particular, state-of-the-art missiles, aircraft and drones – arguably even more important than submarines for any kind of self-reliant capacity in meeting an invasion threat, were one ever to arise.
Four, the price now being demanded by the US for giving us access to its nuclear propulsion technology – achieving what is now described as fleet “interchangeability”, not just “interoperability” – has become indefensibly high.
The conversion of Stirling into a major base for a US Indian Ocean fleet will mean Perth now joining Pine Gap and the North West Cape, and probably the B-52 base Tindal, as a potential nuclear target. It is hard to conceive of Australia ever being a target of any kind of Chinese military attack, short of our being sucked into fighting alongside the US in a war not of our making, and manifestly not in our national interest. But that prospect is now very real, given the abdication of Australian sovereign agency inherent in the AUKUS decision as it has evolved.
Five, the purchase price we are now paying, for all its exorbitance, will never be enough to guarantee the absolute protective insurance that supporters of AUKUS think they are buying. ANZUS, it cannot be said too often, does not bind the US to defend Australia, even in the event of existential attack. We can rely on military support if the US sees it in its own national interest to offer it, but not otherwise.
Many of these points have tactical merit. What they lack, as always, is strategic nouse.
What is the counterfactual of Australia abandoning the US to deal with China in North Asia alone? If we get what Labor graybeards want—for the US to withdraw and give China space to dominate Asia—where does that lead?
We already know because China has told us the 14 conditions to end democracy:
In short, the alternative to deeper US engagement is to become a Chinese mini-me in which any criticism of Beijing is automatically censored, Chinese immigration soars, democracy is controlled from Beijing by 8-10 Chinese diaspora seats, bribery not national interest governs all policy, and those that find anything wrong with our new model of governance are shipped off to Pilbara labour camps.
Or should that be Labor camps?
The Cold War 2.0 struggle is not a conflict about submarines, nuclear propulsion, or interoperability; these are tactics.
Cold War 2.0 is a strategic battle for the very nature of Australia and its neighbouring states.
We can be a Chinese mini-me within its illiberal empire or a US mini-me within its liberal empire.
Within this framework, anything that more closely entangles the US into Australia is a plus and anything that doesn’t is a negative.
Labor’s graybeards are living in the eighties and it is dangerous in the new world order.
