Was the alliance between Australia and the United States inevitable?

Marek Kobryń

On the 15th of September 2021, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States announced the creation of AUKUS: a new alliance of these powers in the Indo-Pacific region. This event caused international turmoil because of one of the coalition’s points – the Australian purchase of U.S. submarines, which meant breaking the contract for the sale of 12 submarines signed with France back in 2016.

From the European point of view, the alliance between Australia and the United States is hardly surprising and should not be the cause for breaking a contract with one NATO member in favor of another. But from the perspective of Australia’s foreign policy history, forming AUKUS was its most crucial decision in this field since the end of World War II, and one that has already sparked a reaction from the People’s Republic of China (PCR). This summer, China announced a new agreement with the Solomon Islands, according to which the Solomons allowed China to build a military base on its territory. The signing of the agreement raised concerns in Australia, with the Solomon Islands being situated around 2,000 kilometers (not all that far on the Pacific scale) from the Australian coast. Some politicians from the Land Down Under have put forward similar arguments concerning this new alliance to those presented by Russia before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, namely that China is threatening Australian national security by creating a close alliance with the country in the immediate vicinity of Australia.

The situation wasn’t always so grim. In the 90s, Prime Minister Paul Keating wanted Australia to become an Asian country focusing its energies on both its immediate neighborhood and the Indo-Pacific region on the whole. Since its opening to the international market, Australia has been very keen on doing business with China, which is the source of a certain paradox in Australian foreign policy. On principle, China is not opposed to doing business with Australia – mainly because, contrary to the United States, the PRC is not blessed with rich deposits of energy resources. For the last thirty years, it has been importing Australian gas and coal in large quantities, building a solid foundation for good relations between the two countries. In the early 2000s Australia even announced a partial withdrawal from the QUAD alliance with the United States, India, and Japan. Currently, about a million citizens of Chinese descent live in Australia, and Chinese students have been welcomed into Australian universities with open arms for several years. Everything was pointing toward the loosening of the relationship between the U.S. and Australia.

So what convinced Australia to restrengthen its relations with the U.S.instead of China? Severe problems occurred in the relations between China and Australia during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Both countries accused each other of unfair business practices and breaking pandemic restrictions. Tariffs imposed by China on Australian products were an additional nail in the coffin, causing the Australian Treasury to lose billions of dollars.

In his speech announcing the creation of AUKUS, Scott Morrison invoked common values between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Common values they might have, but another reason for Australia to sign up for the alliance was to protect its trade routes. Here comes the aforementioned paradox: despite the deterioration of their relations, China remains the most considerable Australian trade partner, so Australia’s deal with the U.S., and against China, is meant to protect its trade routes with the PCR.

But why is forming AUKUS seen as challenging China’s position in the region? It is, after all, not a military alliance like NATO, whose primary purpose was to thwart the position of the second superpower in the world at that time. The devil, as always, is in the details. The AUKUS agreement specifiesthat Australia will buy 12 American submarines with atomic drive and the technology to construct them, which will take place in Australia rather than in the U.S. This means that Australia will have the capability of venturing into Chinese waters unopposed, both due to the atomic drive technology, enabling the submarines to be submerged indefinitely, and China’s poor submarine detection technology, leaving much to be desired in comparison to the American equivalent.

These circumstances make the situation particularly humiliating for France, which built the submarines ordered by Australia based on a submarine with atomic drive specially altered for conventional diesel-electric drive according to Australian specifications. Neither Australia, the U.S., nor the United Kingdom tried to notify France in advance about the submarine contract’s cancellation. The truth is that France no longer has a position comparable to the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific region. This does not mean, however, that it should be treated with disregard. Especially with China striking back, Australia and the U.S. will soon need all the help they can get.