Professor White, a former Deputy Secretary of the [Australian] Defence Department, said Australia was not only going to “hand over some serious dollars” to the US but also pay with “a promise” to enter any future conflict with China.
“This is a very serious transformation of the nature of our alliance with the United States,” Professor White said.
“The US don’t really care about our submarine capability — they care deeply about tying Australia into their containment strategy against China.”
Professor White said he couldn’t see why the US would sell its own submarines – of which they have fewer than they need – unless it was absolutely sure Australia’s submarines would be available to it in the event of a major conflict in Asia.
He said a war between America and China over Taiwan would be “World War III” and have a “very good chance” of being a nuclear conflict.
“Australia’s experience of war shaped by the fact that we’ve tended to be on the winning side, but there is no reason to expect America to win in a war with China over Taiwan,” Professor White warned.
Professor White suggested there was also a high chance the AUKUS deal could fall over under a future American administration and a worsening strategic environment.
Professor White said there were cheaper, quicker, less risky and less demanding ways for Australia to get the submarines it needed, labelling the AUKUS plan a waste of money that “doesn’t make sense”.
“There’s going to be no actual net increase in the number of submarines available until well into the 2040s, even if it goes to plan – which it probably won’t,” he said.
PETE COMMENT
Australia's Defence Minister Richard Marles, in the same report, unconvincingly dismissed seven decades of Australian-US defense alliance doctrine, a doctrine that would place Australia alongside the US if the US decided to fight China. This would adhere to the 1951 ANZUS Treaty triggered by a Chinese attack on even one US warship in a "Gulf of Tonkin" style exchange of fire over Taiwan.
The US always assumes Australia will support the US. This has ALWAYS seen Australian Prime Ministers in full agreement with US expectations, when going to war, in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan. the "War on Terror" and Iraq. Traces of this is even seen in Australia sending Bushmaster armoured vehicles to Ukraine now - a war in the US's European NATO region, not in Australia's.
The US routinely talks of the US and its Australian ally standing "shoulder to shoulder" fighting together in alliance - an expectation expressed many times by US Presidents, Defense Secretaries and Secretaries of State.
Lately a US specialist on AUKUS submarine issues, senior US Defense Department official Dr Mara E. Karlin days ago on March 15, 2023 expressed these US expectations of Australia. See the assumption of alliance coordination and Virginia interoperability, implicitly led by the strongest AUKUS partner and submarine supplier, the US. Dr Karlin speaks of joint Australia-US policy and strategy in the Indo-Pacific being a "shoulder to shoulder" relationship here.
Australia's current Collins submarines simply do not have the range to reach and then operate in the Taiwan Strait, but Australian Virginias will have those capabilities "shoulder to shoulder" with US Virginias.