07/03/2024
AUKUS- time to make a RUcKUS
6 February 2024
The decision to buy Australia nuclear submarines was one of the worst military decisions ever taken in Australia, not to mention the opportunity cost of $360 billion in terms of the useful things it could do to improve Australian society.
Nick Deane of the Marrickville Peace Group punches well above his weight because of the dire state of peace activism in Australia. He writes excellent material in a very understudied area.
He makes the point that a few submarines cannot defend Australia if it were in danger of a serious attack. But of course that much money could buy a lot of other military material, so we are actually a lot weaker for having the subs.
The other reason given is ‘deterrence’. Presumably this relates to China, but given the huge arsenal the US already has, whether a few submarines are Australian-flagged or US-flagged will not change their thinking one iota. China is a power that is going to rise whether we like it or not, their current economic problems notwithstanding. Anwar Ibrahim, the excellent Malaysian Prime Minister has pointed this out at the ASEAN meeting in Melbourne.
We are not going to stop China’s rise and we should try to get the US to accommodate this as they will not be able to stop it either. We should simply deal with China as a trading partner, not sell them our strategic assets and get a fair price for our wares. Their interest in the Eurasian continental mass will be far greater than invading a farm and a quarry of far less economic significance.
My own view is that it quite dubious whether a nuclear submarine will be of any use in any case. The battleships that fought in WW1 were rendered totally obsolete by their vulnerability to seaplane attacks in WW2. Submarines can currently hide because changes in water temperature make them hard to detect. Conventional submarines get found when they come up for air, but nuclear submarines can stay submerged for very long periods. But nuclear submarines produce a lot of hot water from their reactors, which they cannot turn off. If they stay in the same place quite a plume of hot water goes up from them. It is hard to believe that satellites will not be able to notice this temperature difference. The Russian Black Sea fleet is being sunk by numerous relatively cheap drones, and it is difficult to believe that a pattern of surface drones guided by a satellite would not be able to locate and then destroy a submarine twenty years hence.
The UK wants to sell us submarines and wants to lock us in on their side in a confrontation with China. But the US has other objectives. Apart from selling us submarines at vast profit, we will have to have a base capable of supporting them. Then they will be able to use that base, presumably at minimal cost, so we are locked into having US nuclear warships in our ports at our cost and becoming targets for China in the confrontation.
The pro-nuclear lobby has also pointed out that Australia will also have to hugely expand our nuclear knowledge capability with at least another reactor larger than our modest one at Lucas Heights. We cannot just have submarines and not be able to operate and maintain them.
The defence procurement has been an a mess for years, one suspects because some of our strategic planners want us to ‘operate seamlessly’ with the US, which assumes that our military policy is in total lockstep with theirs, and other planners want an independent Australian capability, fearing the US under Trump might go into isolationism as it did just before both world wars. What do you procure if you have not solved this internal wrangle?
So along comes Morrison whose popularity is sagging just before an election and makes a big decision that allows him to pretend he is a big statesman with a US President and a UK Prime Minister. Photo op a bargain at $360 billion!
Labor, ever-fearful of being criticised by the Liberals for being ‘weak on defence’ (or border security or tax cuts) has just gone along with this. And of course decades of dithering for the reasons above have meant that there is no properly thought out and costed alternative.
We need to recognise that the US will always act in its own interest as it did in delaying its entry to WW1 and WW2 and in selling arms now. We need our own defence policy and to recognise that the US may help us, but only if it has the resources available at the time and there are not other priorities. Once we have a defence policy, we can fix the muddled thinking and get a defence procurement strategy. But we will have to make enough noise to get rid of the AUKUS deal, which will tie up so much money that nothing else will get a look in.
Here is Nick Deane’s article from John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations:
