The AUKUS Truth

AUKUS is falling apart, just as the world slips further into chaos under Trump’s America. 

Weeks after being told to lift our defence budget into another arbitrary measure of GDP by morning-drinking US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Richard Marles was fumbling through his words in the usual manner, trying to defend AUKUS now the Trump Administration is reviewing the contentious agreement under an America First lens. An agreement that has barely been given any recognition by Washington whatsoever.

From a program fraught with omnishambolic foundations since it was scribbled on the back of a napkin by Scott Morrison, the latest King’s Birthday hero, a full-term US President with cognitive decline, and Boris Johnson, the news from Washington stood as no surprise to the Australian people. AUKUS has been dead on arrival for all who care to snap out of their daydreams and look at the stark facts in front of them.

What is the truth? They can’t give us the submarines, they never could, and now ask for more money from Canberra while telling us this. 

We knew early on that there were issues from the get-go surrounding the outputs of US shipbuilding facilities, which were nowhere near what would be required to produce AUKUS submarines. 

Then there was a bipartisan security committee that urged against the idea of parting with valuable nuclear submarine technology, followed by report after recommendation coming out of Washington about the lack of viability of the program.

So, after all this, it is interesting to observe that the US is reviewing AUKUS, the UK is shuffling a few things around, but Australia, buying a Lamborghini on finance with a Camry budget, is ruling out a review? Why? Because it is embarrassing? Or because those ruling it out are looking to profit from the arrangement, and can’t fathom doing something like canning it in the national interest? 

It’s hard to see the writing on the wall when you try so hard to will something out of the sky and fail – especially so for the hawkish bipartisan cohort who squeezed out Morrison’s unflushable floating porous turd, but less so for the Australian public, and anyone, including preeminent strategic analysts to former PMs, who chose to open their eyes from the start.

The global media sees it as it is: “Pentagon considers ripping up submarine pact with UK and Australia,” but Richard Marles downplayed concerns the United States will tank the hole-ridden agreement, insisting with his mumbling confidence it is a ‘natural step.’ Marles says this like a natural step has ever been taken in the dissonant tune of AUKUS, like he has conducted its discombobulated symphony with any clue of what he is actually doing, and that he has an audience receptive to the half-a-trillion dollar wall of bullshit.

There are true believers here, those who see the link between Canberra and Washington as indivisible. For the senior major party prefects like Marles, Christopher Pyne, and Joe Hockey, who were simmered in the soup of the military adventurism of the global war on terror in the Howard Era, there is a belief that Australia’s destiny stands under this bleak strategic umbrella. 

But as the yays slowly become nays, and the inevitability of Trump’s unpredictability and zero-fucks-given diplomacy merges with the embarrassing realities of this generation-sized bipartisan strategic error, it will be interesting to see who will be the last people standing in the strategic musical chairs of this national disaster. They will be the only ones that stand to profit from it.

The AUKUS review is designed to tantalise Australians into lifting defence spending, dangling a submarine-shaped carrot in front of our heads, while flogging us on the arse till it’s red, or until we relent and give them more money. These nuanced details were not communicated in the press. By the way David Speers conducted a long-form interview with his preeminent subject matter expert, Scott Morrison, complementing the balance of Joe Hockey and Angus Taylor, who were brought on the national broadcaster to educate Australians of these complex emerging challenges of the AUKUS they created. By the way they call it, you would be reasonable to think that we should hand over the keys to the joint along with our concept of sovereign agency. But that is not a reasonable take, and no one is listening, and three compromised men and their little baby will never convince a nation in terminal doubt.

The United States, the one that our collective hive mind in the press sees as an indivisible beacon on the hill, is the benefactor and financier of Israel’s genocide, and the enabler of its bombing of Iran. It speaks in a lexicon of war with China, it has gutted the industrial base of Europe, and now it stands over us like a New Jersey mafia boss selling dodgy second-hand Lincolns. Where is this analysis from Jane Norman, James Massola, and the journalists who write odes to Mike Pompeo’s AUKUS? Where are the subject matter experts aside from the former Coalition pariahs that have secured lucrative futures in the transnational military-industrial complex?

As the AUKUS truth becomes unavoidable, as its interlocutors become the axis of evil, only lies can prop it up, and Australia is faced with a glaring reality. The media are acting like Trump’s announcement is a bombshell, but it hasn’t been to the public who have been critical of it since it was conceived, and with evidence of this situation being an inevitability, can Richard Marles act surprised? 

As Washington becomes a cudgel, supporting and enabling war and genocide on multiple continents with room to grow, former PM Malcolm Turnbull, who plotted the last known course of sovereign-minded military acquisition, says it quite simply, “The United States can stick to the AUKUS deal, comply with the letter of the deal, AND not transfer any submarines to Australia.” This is a simple and important observation—the US security umbrella offers no more sanctuary to our island continent nation—with or without AUKUS. 

Anyone who speaks to the contrary despite all of these glaring and catastrophic details is more than a misguided subjective fool piping misinformation, they are a traitor to our country.