Is the new Australia-UK-US alliance a geopolitical revolution, or a PR gimmick?

The creation of a new, United States-led coalition against China strengthens India’s position. But it also raises questions about the importance of the Quad—the four-nation alliance of the US, Australia, Japan and India.

“Each new fashion had been hailed as a panacea,” George Smiley wearily recalled. “Lateralism, parallelism, separatism,” each had come and gone. Smiley “had been the witness, or victim—or even reluctant prophet—of such spurious cults.” These were, the writer and spy John Le Carre’s character had come to understand, “verbal antics signalling supposedly great changes in Whitehall doctrine; signalling restraint, self-denial, always another reason for doing nothing.”

This week has seen the first evidence that US President Joe Biden’s administration is in fact serious about pushing back against the growing might of China: the creation of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States alliance, or AUKUS. AUKUS  promises to bring hard military power to support the order built by the United States in Asia, and “sustain peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region”.

Is AUKUS, in fact, a significant step in the struggle of Asian states against looming Chinese hegemony—or just another alphabet-soup of excuses to dodge actual action?

There is good reason to suspect that the timing of AUKUS has something to do with public relations (PR): Battered by the fallout from its defeat in Afghanistan, President Biden’s administration has good reason to change the topic, as it were. There is, notably, no actual AUKUS treaty, at least in the public realm. All that has been released is a White House statement promising “an enhanced trilateral security partnership” that “will strengthen the ability of each to support our security and defence interests”.

For now, AUKUS has just one real-world consequence: Allowing Australia to licence-manufacture the United States’ under-development next-generation nuclear attack submarine, or SSN-X. These high-speed nuclear submarines can effectively hunt down the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN's) ballistic-missile submarines, and attack its surface platforms. SSN-X submarines are expected to incorporate advanced stealth features, have robust defences against underwater drones, and be able to act as motherships for autonomous, unmanned vessels.

Australia’s nuclear attack submarines will plug a small, but not insignificant, hole in the United States’ strategic needs in the Pacific. Former US president Donald Trump’s administration had proposed building a fleet of 72-78 attack submarines by 2050. The administration of President Joseph Biden had cut that number, in June, to 66-72 vessels—a gap the Australian acquisitions will now make up.

The wider strategic rationale of AUKUS, though, is less straightforward. America, notably, is already bound into treaty partnerships with both its AUKUS allies—part of a wider hub-and-spoke system of alliances that underpin global American power.

America’s oldest alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty of April 4, 1949, binds the United States to several European partners, including the United Kingdom. It states that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all; and each of them will assist the attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force”.

In 1951, the United States, Australia and New Zealand signed a similar treaty—from which the last has since withdrawn—stating that all acknowledge “an armed attack in the Pacific Area on any of the Parties would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes”.

There are also treaties, with near-identical language, binding the United States to South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and partner-states across South-East Asia.

In addition, the five English-speaking democracies—the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand—have an enduring intelligence partnership, widely called the “Five Eyes”. Five Eyes allows for the near-seamless sharing of intelligence collected by all its members, and, controversially, a means for them to circumvent domestic laws forbidding espionage against their own citizens.

Together, these treaties signalled faith in the deterrent capacity of the United States’ globally-deployed conventional forces—and, more important, in the protection afforded by the umbrella of its nuclear weapons.

AUKUS, though, is remarkable for the message it sends about the seriousness with which President Biden sees the challenge from China: three partners who have fought together in two World Wars are joining again to fight a new, epoch-shaping geopolitical contestation.

For the United Kingdom, the new posture is the most dramatic. In 1968, Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s government had responded to financial constraints by ending its military commitments east of Suez—a moment that some historians regard to be the end of the British empire. Since 2019, though, the post-Brexit United Kingdom has started basing military assets in Asia again. This expansion eastwards supports the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy, positioning London as a partner against China.

The British case, however, also illustrates the problems hovering over AUKUS. The United Kingdom’s public-spending watchdog has reported that the military’s current procurement plans, short of a projected £15-20 billion over the next decade, are “unrealistic”. There are persistent problems, moreover, with resourcing. Since 2010, manpower dropped by 30,000 and the army was forced to cut one brigade and a third of its tanks and artillery. With a historic low of 19 surface combat ships, the Royal Navy was said by Britain’s Parliament to be “way below the critical mass required for its mission”.

Today’s United States military budgets, adjusted for inflation, exceed those seen at the height of the Cold War, but force capacities have declined. The Air Force’s inventory, for example, is at all-time lows, while the Navy has had to walk back on its ambitious plans for a 355-ship fleet. Although the PLAN’s fleet has expanded dramatically, the United States Navy has not kept pace—and is, moreover, spread over a far larger geographical area.

For many United States allies, the development of AUKUS has raised disturbing questions about the superpower’s strategy, rather than quelling doubts. France—which has lost a $10 billion submarine contract to the United States’ SSN-X—is irate not just at the loss of business, but its apparent exclusion from the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy. The French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, described the AUKUS deal as a “brutal, unilateral and unpredictable decision”. “I am angry and bitter. This isn’t done between allies.”

AUKUS, moreover, will strengthen forces in the European Union calling for greater strategic autonomy in managing the region’s relationship with China and Russia.

For New Delhi, AUKUS isn’t uncomplicated good news, either. The creation of a new, United States-led coalition against China strengthens India’s position. At the same time, the new bloc raises questions about the importance of the Quad—the four-nation alliance of the United States, Australia, Japan and India. In particular, New Delhi will worry that the United States is concerned only with pushing back against China, leaving its concerns about Pakistan and the western Indian ocean unaddressed.

Washington’s inability—or unwillingness—to repair its relationship with Russia and Iran further complicates the picture, from India’s point of view. The frayed United States relationship with the two countries has sundered India from traditional allies in the region, making it difficult to find regional support for New Delhi’s objectives on Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In coming years, then, the success of AUKUS will depend on two key issues: the ability of the United States to carry along allies, from India to Europe, as well as how much hard cash it proves to bring to the table for the military effort to contain China.