The Australian government has announced a landmark deal with the US and UK for Australia’s submarine program to “go nuclear” amid the growing threat of China in the Pacific.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that the Australian Navy is going nuclear and this defense pact has been described as “China’s worst nightmare”.
This new grouping will be known as AUUKUS, Australia, the UK, and the US and it will help Australia on how to identify the best way to acquire nuclear-powered submarine capability and share advanced technologies involving artificial intelligence. AUUKUS will facilitate sharing of AI, cyber, underwater systems & long-range strike capabilities for the Indo-Pacific.
The pact was announced on Thursday (September 16) in a joint press conference with Prime Minister Scott Morrison, US President Joe Biden, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Speaking to reporters Morrison said Australia had entered a new era, with “new challenges. The relatively benign environment we have enjoyed in many decades in our region is behind us,”. We have entered, no doubt, a new era, with new challenges for Australia and for our partners and friends and countries right across our region. “This challenge will require more of us in Australia and all of us who share a common vision about peace and stability and security in our region so all nations can enjoy the fellowship of our region, the trade and the opportunities for our peoples so they can realise what they want for their countries just as we want for our country.”
Morrison described the AUUKUS grouping as a “forever partnership between the oldest and most trusted of friends”. It must be noted that Australia is still under the rule of the British Empire and the Queen is the sovereign and have taken part in all the wars starting from the first world war to the recently concluded war in Afghanistan initiated by the US and supported by the UK
He said the partnership would “enable Australia to protect our national security interests to keep Australians safe and to work with our partners across the region to achieve the stability and security of our region”.
The first major initiative of AUUKUS will be to have a nuclear-powered submarine fleet for Australia, and these three English speaking nations in the next 18 months will determine “the best way forward to achieve this.”
The submarines are to be built in Adelaide, with technical support from the United Kingdom and the United States.
According to Morrison, Australia was “not seeking to establish nuclear weapons or establish a civil nuclear capability” and his country will all of its nuclear non-proliferation obligations.
At this morning’s announcement, alongside President Biden PM Johnson, Morrison called this partnership a “safer and more secure Indo-Pacific region. Our world is becoming more complex, especially here in our region – the Indo-Pacific. This affects us all. The future of the Indo-Pacific will impact all our futures,”.
“To meet these challenges, to help deliver the security and stability our region needs, we must now take our partnership to a new level. A partnership that seeks to engage – not to exclude. To contribute, not take. And to enable and empower – not to control coerce.
“So AUUKUS is born, a new trilateral relationship between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. AUUKUS – a partnership where our technology, our scientists, our industry, our Defence Forces, are all working together to deliver a safer and more secure region that ultimately benefits all.”
Biden called the creation of AUUKUS as a “historic step to deepen and formalise co-operation among all three of our nations that would bring long term peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region,”.
“Because the future of each of our nation, and indeed, the world, depends on a free and open Indo-Pacific, enduring and flourishing in the decades ahead. This is about investing in our greatest source of strength. Our alliances and updating them to better meet the threats of today and tomorrow,”Biden said
The UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson called this a new chapter in the “friendship” between the three nations and, “This will be one of the most complex and technically demanding projects in the world that will last for decades and requiring the most advanced technology. It will draw on the expertise that the UK has acquired over generations dating back to the launch of the Royal Navy’s first nuclear submarine over 60 years ago.”
Later this month, leaders of the QUAD group of nations will be meeting in Washington to further the agenda in the Indo-Pacific and China has already called Quad, a “regional cooperation cliques formed to target a third country will not be popular and have no future,” and described the Quad, or the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, as a clique based on a cold war ideology and “detrimental to the international order.”
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