AUKUS in the Age of Trump 2.0 – The Diplomat

This week Australia Minister of Defense and Deputy Government Richard Marles had its first a phone call with the newly renovated Minister of Defense of the United States of Peta Hegsetth. The call was a conventional formal exchange of comfortable and attempting to build relationships with a colleague of a new government.

In the past, such an invitation to the Australian Defense Minister would be one of the easier tasks that the Minister would have to do. Friendly relationships between the two countries, the long and intimate history of defense cooperation and broad common worldviews would create an occasional and congratulatory conversation. But with the return of Donald Trump to the White House and eccentric choice From Hegsetth as his defense minister, such a call comes with some fear. The placement of Australia in the form of a new administration carries the risk of an unpredictable and potentially inaccessible answer.

Like the current European Union Strategic silence About Greenland – hoping that if they don’t mention it, Trump will forget about it – in ideal case, Canberra may hope that if Trump and his team do not know that there is Australia, then for the next four years they could be a little smooth. However, unfortunately there is a $ 230 billion problem that prevents the implementation of this strategy: Victim.

Australian a glittering approach For the acquisition of a new submarine fleet, it placed the land in further cucumbers. After rejecting both Japanese and French submarines, Australia made A huge strategic bet In the United States to acquire a nuclear energy submarine. Betting assumed that Trump’s first term in The White House was an aberration: that after it disappeared, it would not return and that the US public – would flirt with Trump’s chaotic style – to return to a sober and more pronounced form of politics.

In a wide strategic sense, the acquisition of nuclear energy submarines makes sense of Australia. It is an island continent, with a huge shore for defense – the larger part is underdeveloped. Australia is also a trade nation that relies very much on sea lines of communication, especially through the South Kine Sea and all the way to northeast Asia. An Active ability of blue water To distract threats to himself and his trading routes logical.

Still, the procedure to get such hardware now relies on the US that is capricious and vindictive, now that he now depicts extraordinary hostility according to their allies and friends. Will Australia suffer the same fate as Canada, Denmark, Mexico and Colombia?

Trump may consider Aukus the job is financially favorable for the US, but his American first agenda can see the first shipping component of three submarines “Off the Shelf” in Australia in Australia as an ability that might otherwise be American. While Trump will go to the moment of expected delivery (ban a greater attack on the American Constitution), that would be good in his mafia style Management to shine Australia for more money to complete the construction. Any canberre attempt to point to the contract about the contract can risk Trump to grow completely contracts.

Does it leave Australia with another four years of walking on the egg shell? Or Australia follows the advice of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbulla and Get up with Trump – How is that the only thing that respects? Trump is already The signs shown That he is willing to escape the threats of friends to get what he wants. What is the Apetite Australia for the risk of Trump’s wrath to be directed toward Canberra?

Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton told David A. Graham from Atlantic Recently, instead of Trump’s actions to focus on American national security, “Trump is the only thing he is interested in.” This global ego and lust is that the world falls to its feet that will blow at the seams of the American Alliance networks and the order after the Second World War, which the USA created the US and Australia have been shaken by both the US and Australia of so strong.

After a call with Hegseth, Marles stated that “The US leadership supported a global order based on the rules since the end of World War II. It is absolutely clear to me that we will see the sequel under Trump’s administration. “

This seems to be more desirable to think than reality. It is a line that the Australian government will use to encourage Trump administration to see this way, but the one that is increasingly difficult to deliver with a straight face. Despite the attempt to claim that the relationship is “as usual”, in Canberra he will not smile much in the next four years, only more and more frowning eyebrows.