Will US blackmail us over AUKUS?

Written by: Nick G. on 14 April 2025

 

Kites are being flown in the US about tying the sale of second-hand Virginia class nuclear-powered submarines to Australia’s stand on a conflict between China and its off-shore province of Taiwan.

Scott Morrison’s original AUKUS arrangement was for the sharing of technology that would enable Australia to build its own nuclear-powered submarines.

After sleeping on the matter overnight, and not consulting his Cabinet colleagues, new Labor PM Anthony Albanese was persuaded to incorporate into the AUKUS agreement a plan to purchase three and possibly five Virginia-class submarines. 

This, however, was conditional on the US President of the day certifying that the sale of these submarines, half-way through their operational life, would not compromise US submarine strength.

This was confirmed on March 6 by Elbridge Colby, who has been tapped to serve as under-secretary of Defense for policy, who said that the US commitment to the AUKUS arrangements was “conditional on U.S. industry building enough attack boats to meet domestic needs first”.

The issue at stake is Taiwan.  The whole point of moving to the long-range nuclear-powered boats is to have them sitting alongside US subs off the coast of China. This was in preference to having much cheaper, conventionally-powered submarines deployed for Australian coastal defence.

However, US shipyards cannot produce enough new Virginia class subs to replace those earmarked for sale to Australia.  They don’t have the skilled labour and can’t hold on to those they do have. Trump’s tariffs on overseas steel and aluminium will only complicate the timeline for the replacements.
Which is why policy makers for the US military are threatening to block the sales unless Australia formally commits to placing its AUKUS subs at the disposal of the US (under the guise of “interoperability” and “interchangeability”) in the event of war with China over Taiwan.

Former U.S. Navy strategist Bryan Clark, director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute recently ran a previously unreported multilateral war game simulating a response by U.S. allies to a Chinese blockade of Taiwan. Australian Defence Force commanders did not use nuclear-powered submarines in the South China Sea to attack Chinese targets, instead focusing on protecting Australia’s northern approaches with airpower, drones and missiles.

According to US reports, “consternation is growing in Washington that Australia’s reluctance to even discuss using the attack submarines against China means that transferring them out of the U.S. fleet to Australia would hurt deterrence efforts in the Indo Pacific.”

These concerns were echoed in a U.S. Congressional Budget Office report in February and testimony on Navy shipbuilding delays in March, in which officials said selling Virginia-class subs out of the fleet to Australia without replacements was risky because Canberra had not made it clear whether its military would join the U.S. in a conflict over Taiwan.

Obviously, this is all heading in the direction of using the threat of blocking the submarine sales to Australia to force Albanese, Wong and Marles to agree to a commitment to join the US in a war with China. There is already such a commitment from super-sellout Dutton who has said that it is “inconceivable” that Australia would not be there with the US.

And then there is the financial blackmail. We have already handed over many millions of non-refundable dollars to help pump-prime the struggling US shipyards.

On October 10 last year, the US online InsideDefense.com reported: “Australia plans to transfer US $2 billion to the United States before the end of 2025 to bolster the U.S. submarine industrial base as part of the AUKUS partnership and fund long-lead items for the Virginia-class submarine program, a senior Navy official said today. This initial transfer will be followed by $100 million every year for the next 10 years, AUKUS Integration and Acquisition Program Manager Rear Adm. Lincoln Reifsteck told reporters.”

But even this is not enough. Reporter Kirsty Needham wrote in a Reuters despatch on April 10, “The Trump administration has asked for more funding, Marles said in March.”

How much more was not revealed.

Strategic Analysis Australia’s Michael Shoebridge, writing in the Australian Financial Review in February described AUKUS as having changed from a strategic partnership to a “deal kept on the road by Aussie cash”.  

He was commenting on Marles’s meeting with Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth in Washington with “a suitcase chock-full of $800 million to “invest” in US submarine production. It came with a promise of $4 billion more in future suitcases even before Australia starts to get the bills for its first US submarine.”

In a nutshell, we can expect US imperialism to blackmail its servants in Australia to deepen their compliancy and further undermine any pretence at sovereignty by agreeing to go to war with China over Taiwan, and keep paying through the nose for the privilege.

 

 

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