To follow up from yesterday we have:
Donald Trump’s AUKUS embarrassment shows insignificance of deal to the US President
Donald Trump has placed the AUKUS deal under threat.
Updated 5:30PM February 28, 2025
Donald Trump’s failure to recognise the term “AUKUS” was an embarrassment which tells us a few home truths about where this deal - which is central to Australia’s defence planning - ranks in the president’s head.
Trump’s amnesia might have briefly caused hearts to skip in Canberra, but it also won’t matter because in the end Trump is still likely to strongly support the nuclear submarine deal.
Why? Because AUKUS is a very Trumpian deal. Australia pumps an astonishing $US3bn into US submarine production with an expectation – which Trump will never have to honour because it will be beyond his term – that the US eventually sells us three Virginia-class submarines.
Why wouldn’t a transactionally minded American president like that sort of lopsided deal? Yet Trump’s inability to recognise the acronym AUKUS when asked about it in the Oval Office does tell us something about the different weight given to the importance of AUKUS in the US compared to Australia.
Donald Trump has asked what the AUKUS trilateral security partnership is in an Oval Office press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, where both men talked about the prospects of securing a peace in Eastern Europe.
Yes, as Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton said, it is easy to trip over acronyms, and yes we shouldn’t read too much into it. But let’s be frank, any previous president would have done the basic preparation to understand the term AUKUS prior to meeting with British leader and AUKUS partner Keir Starmer. The fact that Trump didn’t even know the term suggests he has barely spent any time thinking about it or talking about it with his advisers.
That’s not great news for Australia. Yet that also will make no difference to whether or not Trump ultimately supports the deal. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth says that Trump is fully aware of AUKUS and fully supportive of it, while Secretary of State and China hawk Marco Rubio has said AUKUS is “almost a blueprint’’ for how allied nations can work together to confront security challenges.
The Americans will almost certainly love AUKUS during Trump’s four-year term because they don’t need to make any hard decisions in relation to it. Until the end of this decade they just have to accept pots of money from Australia, which last month handed over a cheque for $800m as the first instalment of the eventual $US3bn to speed up the production of the Virginia-class submarines.
US President Donald Trump has remarked on the AUKUS alliance during his meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
It is the president who succeeds Trump who will have to make the hard decisions on AUKUS and this is where the issue becomes murky for Australia. At that point the then-US president will have the power to halt the planned sale of Virginia-class submarines to Australia from 2032 if it is judged that the loss of those submarines from the US fleet will undermine the fighting capabilities of the US military.
Given that the production of Virginia-class submarines is currently way behind schedule and unlikely to catch up by the 2030s when the sale to Australia is supposed to take place, it would be an easy argument for a president – backed by a hawkish congress – to make. That is when the going gets tough for AUKUS and for Australia. But not for Trump, who just has to kick back in the Oval Office and watch Australian taxpayers pour a small fortune into the US shipbuilding industry. Given that, why wouldn’t he support AUKUS, or whatever it’s called?
Here is the link:
I will stop chatting about this topic now as I believe the point has been made! There is nothing tat Marles or Albanese can say can change the fact that basically we are on our own in a way not seen since the imminent Japanese invasion of OZ in 1940/1.
Time to change a few spending priorities and shore up a few real alliances – like those with Europe and Asia. With Trump in charge I would not trust Trump as far as I could throw him!
David.
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