Royal Australian Navy submarine HMAS Rankin is seen during AUSINDEX 21, a biennial maritime exercise between the Royal Australian Navy and the Indian Navy in Darwin, Australia, September 5, 2021. [Photo/Agencies]
by Muhammad Usama Khalid 26 March 2023
AUKUS is an acronym for the trilateral security pact signed between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The said security pact was discussed and launched in September, 2021 with an objective of providing nuclear powered submarines to Australia. Eventually, on Monday 13th March 2023, the US along with the heads of other two states UK and Australia, announced the official embarkation of the project.
Under this deal, Australia will become the first non-nuclear weapon state to acquire nuclear powered submarines from the US in six decades and the second state in history after the United Kingdom which received the same nuclear propulsion technology from the US in the 1950s. However, currently there are six states already equipped with nuclear subs, Australia will join the groups of these states and become the seventh state to possess nuclear powered submarines by the stated time period of 2030s.
The deal is fundamentally based on four phases. In the initial phase Australian naval personnel and civilian staff will receive the onboard knowledge and training from the US Navy. In the second phase both the UK and US will begin the rotation of their nuclear powered submarines to the Australian ports in order to increase the number of submarine ports there. The third phase US will sell three US-Virginia Class nuclear powered submarines to Australia by the 2030s. Eventually, the future advanced phase is about the joint venture between UK and Australia for indigenously manufacturing the nuclear powered submarine entitled, ‘SSN-AUKUS’ by the end of 2040s. The future prospect of this deal is to assist Australia to develop infrastructure, resources and human capital needed to produce and maintain indigenously built nuclear powered submarines in the long run.
But everything is not right about this deal, instead there are looming uncertainties following the development of the AUKUS officials’ meet-up on Monday. Some of the pertinent questions need not only answers but explanations; why is it only Australia to be blessed with such sophisticated technology? What is the actual need to equip Aussies with this naval prowess? And most importantly there must be any strategic motive behind this historic move, otherwise the US would not have negotiated such a risky and strategically dangerous program even with its closest ally. Lastly, skepticism is there among the strategic community on the future prospect of this deal and questions that how these developments will jeopardize the global strategic stability regime.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, especially after 9/11, the United States’ priorities have significantly changed in the global perspective. The new alliance politics in the Indo-Pacific region and signing of a strategic partnership deal with India was startlingly a blunt move that indicated the strategic shift in Washington’s political and strategic circles. Primary motive was to counter the Peaceful Chinese rise. However, on the other hand China, being cynical of these developments, introduced the Belt and Road initiative (BRI) in 2013 to counter the global influence of the US through economic power projection. As well as embarked on modernizing its military posture that is quite visible in the contentiously disputed maritime region of South China Sea where Chinese naval influence is increasing with each year passing by because China is not only claiming the islands there, instead heavily militarizing them with disruptive military technology.
The United States sees these offensive Chinese activities with grave concerns to its interests in the region because other regional claimant states enjoy the status of close US allies, but the direct involvement of Washington would make the already hostile situation worse. Therefore, the US needed someone to do the job for them and Australia, being the closest ally of the United States, can serve as strategic security guardian for the US to oversee the Chinese belligerent activities in the region.
AUKUS is sort of a means to counter rising Chinese maritime influence. Whereas, the agreement’s stated objective is to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific maritime region for other states, but the transfer of nuclear related technology to the non-nuclear weapon state in essence makes it a destabilizing deal. The agreement is also threatening the strategic stability regime that stands on the pillars of crisis stability and arms race stability.
Though the AUKUS members have urged that this deal is only for defensive purposes and not pose threat to any sovereign state – silently referring to China-, but one cannot deny the strategic implication of this deal on the crisis stability as Australia shares direct maritime boundary with China through a contentious maritime region of South China Sea. Moreover, the transfer of nuclear powered submarines whose indefinite period of underwater resistance and undetected mechanism makes them a source of threat to the Chinese Naval prowess present in the South China Sea. Eventually, providing an incentive to regional players to initiate a crisis.
The conventional US mentality to counter China’s peaceful rise through offensive means would eventually risk an arms race stability as this deal threatens the nonproliferation regimes such as Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and International Atomic Energy Agency’s Comprehensive Safeguard Agreements (IAEA CSA). The first three Articles of the NPT clearly prohibits both Nuclear Weapon States and Non-Nuclear Weapon States from sharing and acquiring any sort of nuclear weapon material and technology, only nuclear material for peaceful purposes can be shared and acquired that is also under the strict compliance of IAEA safeguards. However, the recent development of AUKUS has raised a lot of concerns on the legality of the deal with reference to these basic NPT articles. Though, the IAEA’s Chief issued a statement of satisfaction over the deal, but states such as China and Russia are doubting the scope of the deal.
China’s diplomatic response, in 2021 by its diplomatic mission present in Vienna, was the most comprehensive and calculated statement that raised some serious yet pertinent questions on the technicality and legality of submarine deal with reference to the current non-proliferation regimes. China accuses the AUKUS trilateral coalition of setting up an arms race and also points out that it violates the very essence of NPT. Strategic experts are also skeptical of the future outcome of the deal and raise their concerns. James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said there was “real and concrete harm done” to the non-proliferation regime. “My fear was never that Australia would misuse that fuel, but that other countries would invoke AUKUS as a precedent for removing nuclear fuel from safeguards.”
Subsequently, the deal is not limited to the transfer of just nuclear powered submarines, rather future working scope of the alliance is to cooperate on building Artificial Intelligence capabilities, hypersonic weapons and advanced cyber technologies that sounds further destabilizing for the global peace and security.