On U.S.-Australia Relations & AUKUS
What's at Stake for Asia in the 2024 U.S. Election
By: Dominique Fraser and Anthony Bubalo
The forthcoming U.S. presidential election comes at a time of great strategic uncertainty for Australia. Successive governments have said repeatedly that Australia now faces its most complex strategic environment since World War II. A key element of Australia’s response has been to embark on a fundamental re-shaping of the Australian Defence Force. AUKUS, the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, lies at the heart of this transformation.
AUKUS is groundbreaking for several reasons, but mainly because it involves the transfer of nuclear submarines to Australia. What also makes the pact remarkable is the length of time it covers — the end point has been set at 2075. This means that a succession of governments will need to sustain support for what is already a complex, ambitious, and expensive endeavor.
Every future U.S. election — and for that matter every Australian and UK election — will be highly consequential for AUKUS. However, two things make this November’s election particularly important. It will be the first political test of sustained U.S. political commitment to AUKUS. Whichever candidate wins will be inheriting an agreement they did not sign. Moreover, because President Trump is running there are fears that should he win, his “America First” focus might imperil the agreement.
For reasons mostly unrelated to Trump, these fears are probably overstated. Yet, because the next U.S. election will determine the personality and nature of U.S. global leadership, the election will shape Australian public attitudes to an agreement that is already going to entail tough fiscal choices for future Australian governments.
What Is Important to Australia?
In AUKUS, Australia has embarked on “the single biggest investment in [its] defence capability in [its] history.” At the heart of the pact — so-called Pillar One — is a plan for Australia to acquire eight nuclear-powered (but not armed) submarines. This will make Australia the only seventh country to operate such vessels.
There is also a second pillar to AUKUS — cooperation in the development of critical defense technologies in fields such as cyber warfare, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and hypersonic missiles. Combined, Pillars One and Two promise a fundamental reshaping of the Australian Defence Force and the nation’s defense industry.
Under the “optimal pathway,” Australia will initially buy three Virginia-class nuclear submarines from the U.S. Navy (two used and one new) in the 2030s, with the option to acquire two more. Around the same time, Australia and the UK will begin domestic construction of a new nuclear submarine, the SSN AUKUS. The UK will receive its first SSN AUKUS in the later 2030s, while Australia will receive its first in the early 2040s.
Long before any Australian nuclear submarines hit the water, the United States and the UK will establish a rotational presence of nuclear submarines in Western Australia beginning in 2027. Work has already commenced to ensure that the Australian navy’s Fleet Base West in Western Australia has the infrastructure and trained personnel to support such a presence, which will include providing maintenance to visiting submarines.
AUKUS currently enjoys bipartisan political support in Australia. It was announced and initiated under the conservative government led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison. It is now being developed and implemented by a progressive government led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Support for it runs deep in the Australian national security bureaucracy — so much so that the only articulated plan B is to make even more effort to make plan A, AUKUS, work.
AUKUS has its critics — both professional and political. When it comes to political critics this too is bipartisan. A former conservative Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and a former progressive Prime Minister, Paul Keating, have opposed the agreement publicly. Keating warns that AUKUS entails a loss of Australian sovereignty because, he claims, the submarines “will forever remain within the operational remit of the United States … with technology owned and dependent on U.S. management.” Turnbull, meanwhile, fears that the United States will determine that they do not have enough Virginia-class submarines in the 2030s to transfer three to Australia.
Despite these criticisms, AUKUS currently enjoys majority support in opinion polls; however, there is a softness to this support. It runs at lower levels than support for the alliance. In Australia’s most authoritative poll on public attitudes to international issues, the Lowy Poll, support for AUKUS slipped this year from 70% to 65%, while disapproval increased from 28% to 32%. It is also noteworthy, given the multigenerational nature of AUKUS, that support is weakest among 18-34-year-olds, only a third of whom agree that AUKUS is good for the country.
One reason for public reticence about AUKUS is its eyewatering cost. The Australian government has said publicly that over the next three decades, AUKUS will cost 0.15% of Australia’s GDP (between $183 and $251 billion). Given the tendency of governments to underestimate the cost of defense expenditure, it is likely that the bill will be a lot higher. As Shadow Minister for Defence Andrew Hastie has acknowledged, this will require some “hard choices” in federal budgets to come. In the 2023 Lowy Poll, almost half of Australians said the cost of AUKUS was not justified; only 27% said it was and just as many said they were not sure.
The other major issue that has come up in the public discussion of AUKUS is whether the agreement makes it more likely that Australia would follow the United States into any future war with China. While this is a mostly arcane question debated by national security wonks or academics at the moment, there are several ways that it could become a pertinent issue for the broader public in the future — one of these being the re-election of Donald Trump as U.S. president.
What Is Likely if Donald Trump Wins the Presidency?
A lot of discussion has already appeared in the Australian media — and no doubt privately within government circles — about what might happen to AUKUS should Trump win the election. A number of reports have quoted individuals from within the Trump camp who say the former president supports the agreement. Given that the mercurial former president does not have a reputation as a medium-term thinker, such assurances are not that comforting.
However, Trump’s attitude toward AUKUS may to some degree be academic. One of the most discussed and critical aspects of AUKUS is the sale of U.S. Virginia-class nuclear submarines to Australia. The 2024 U.S. National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) provides a framework for that transaction. A critical component of that legislation is that for the sale to proceed, the U.S. president will need to certify that the transfer will not negatively impact U.S. submarine capabilities.
Critics of AUKUS, in both Australia and the United States, have latched onto this important detail. They argue that given the current significant shortfalls in U.S. submarine construction, it is unlikely that a U.S. president will be able to make such a certification — especially if that president is Trump with his “America First” outlook. But while critics are right to point to this as a major risk to Australia’s acquisition of nuclear submarines, it is not an issue likely to come up in the next presidential term — at least not on the current, publicly available, AUKUS timeline.
The three Virginia-class submarines are scheduled to be sold in 2032 and 2035 for the second-hand submarines, and 2038 for the new build. According to the NDAA, a future U.S. president must certify the sale 270 days before the transfer happens. On the current publicly-available AUKUS timeline the first certification would need to occur in early 2031 — a full two years after a possible second Trump presidency will have ended.
In fact, a second Trump administration may help make the submarines transfer more likely. Trump has promised to increase defence spending. In his first term in office, spending for the domestic defense industry, including shipbuilding, rose from $606 billion to $723 billion — a nearly 20% increase. If a future Trump administration does manage to increase U.S. submarine production in its term, it makes it more likely that his successor would be able to certify a sale.
Moreover, many of the events scheduled to occur under AUKUS over the next four years will be highly advantageous to the United States. As already noted, the United States will gain a new basing infrastructure on the Australian west coast for its submarines. Even more appealing to a reelected President Trump would be that Australia would pay billions of dollars into the U.S. defence industry.
As part of the AUKUS agreement, Australia will invest $3 billion into the U.S. submarine industrial base. Australia will transfer $957 million in 2024-2025, $1.15 billion in 2025-2026, and another $1 billion over the remainder of the decade. These payments are solely to help ensure that the United States is able to sell submarines to Australia — they are not payments for the submarines themselves. It is entirely possible that Australia could make these investments in the U.S. submarine industrial base and not receive any submarines.
There is another way that a second Trump administration could impact AUKUS, and this relates to Australian public attitudes. Australia’s alliance with the United States enjoys overwhelming public support and has done so for many years. For example, in the Lowy Poll’s 20-year history, belief that the alliance makes Australia safer has never fallen below 62%. That dip came in 2007 during the presidency of George W. Bush. Another dip occurred in 2019 during the presidency of Donald Trump (72%). During the Obama and Biden presidencies, average support for the alliance was 81.5% and 82.5% respectively.
One can argue that a fall to 72% and even 62% is still very respectable, especially compared to support for the United States in other parts of the world. But it shows that who occupies the White House does, to some degree, shape Australian attitudes toward the alliance. Other polls suggest that Australians are far from sanguine about a second Trump administration. A recent U.S. Studies Centre Poll found that 45% of Australians believed a Trump win in November would be bad for Australia and 37% said they would want to withdraw from the alliance altogether if this occurred.
Given that support for AUKUS already runs softer than support for the U.S-Australia alliance, a second Trump administration could well erode what some observers have called AUKUS’s social license — public acceptance of the deal. A second Trump presidency that is perceived to be unreliable or protectionist, or that highlights the less appealing sides of American domestic politics, will make it difficult to sustain public support for sending billions of dollars into the U.S. industrial base (for potentially no return), or for hosting more frequent visits by U.S. nuclear-powered submarines.
A Trump administration that is seen to be reckless and irresponsible in its competition with China would also likely promote more public discussion of AUKUS’s impact on Australian sovereignty and the ability of Australian governments to resist being dragged into any U.S. war with China.
What Is Likely if Kamala Harris Wins the Presidency?
What if Kamala Harris is elected president in November? Harris is, to some degree, the continuity candidate when it comes to AUKUS. While she did not sign the deal, she was the vice president in the U.S. administration that did. Beyond that her views on AUKUS are somewhat of an unknown. A lot will also depend on her senior-level appointments, in particular whether Kurt Campbell — a major advocate of the agreement — continues to play a senior role in her administration. Similar to a future Trump administration, the main ways a Harris presidency would shape AUKUS will be with respect to the state of the U.S. submarine industrial base and the condition of AUKUS’s social license in Australia.
On the submarine industrial base, much will depend on a Harris presidency’s willingness to boost defense spending as well as the priorities it sets within the defense budget. Harris’s views on defense spending are still a little unclear. Back in 2020, she said, “I unequivocally agree with the goal of reducing the defense budget.” But in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, she stated that she will “ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
Nevertheless, under a Harris presidency Australia could expect there to be more competition for the defense budget coming from domestic and social programs. In that respect there is probably more risk that U.S. submarine production will not ramp up as quickly as needed under Harris; as a result, it will be harder for her successor (or for her in a second term) to certify the sale of submarines to Australia, at least on the current timeline.
In contrast to Trump, however, Harris may be able to contribute more positively to sustaining AUKUS’s social license in Australia. The vice president currently enjoys a favorable image in Australia. In a recent poll, Australians said they would overwhelmingly vote for Harris (48%) over Trump (27%) if they could vote. While her approach to foreign policy is still a bit unclear, she is more likely than Trump to retain Biden’s focus on strengthening alliances and partnerships, which would play well in Australia.
Australians would also probably be more at ease with her more orthodox approach to foreign policy than the unpredictability promised by Trump. Here, her approach to China could play a defining role in shaping Australian attitudes toward the alliance and AUKUS. These public attitudes toward China have hardened in recent years, but most Australians are still more pragmatic than hawkish. Australians would probably be reassured by Harris’s previous comments on China that while the United States does not “invite conflict … we absolutely are prepared to and engaged in what is necessary to compete.” A continuation of such an approach during a Harris presidency would calm concerns that AUKUS could potentially drag Australia into an unnecessary war with China.
What Is Likely to Stay the Same no Matter the U.S. Election Choice?
Despite some skepticism in Australia about whether AUKUS’s lofty ambitions can be realized, progress on the implementation of the agreement has been fairly impressive to date. Australians are training and, in some cases, already graduating from courses designed to ensure that Australia can operate and maintain nuclear submarines. Australian firms are already winning U.S. defense contracts related to AUKUS. Legislation has been tabled or passed in both countries providing the necessary legal framework for implementing the pact. In August this year, for example, the three AUKUS partners finalized the establishment of a defense export license-free environment. This will streamline what have often been complex and time-consuming processes for trade in defense goods and sensitive technologies.
What this underlines is that while U.S. elections may have an impact on the politics and public discussions, it will probably have little bearing on rapidly developing momentum at the working level. Short of some decision by the next administration to totally repudiate AUKUS — which seems highly unlikely — these working-level arrangements will continue to expand. It may well be that when it comes to AUKUS, what really matters is what happens below the surface.
Key Policy Recommendations
The two biggest risks to AUKUS over the term of the next U.S. president will be any inability to ramp-up U.S. submarine construction and any erosion in AUKUS’s social license in Australia. Neither is an easy problem for policymakers to manage.
In terms of submarine building, a lot will come down to how much a new administration spends on defense, and how it prioritizes that spending. Even with significant financial contributions from the Australian government, raising the productivity of the U.S. submarine industrial base is ultimately a matter for the U.S. government. In that regard, AUKUS’s fate — or at least its current timeline — really does rest in the hands of the next administration.
Where the two governments can work more closely together is on AUKUS’s social license in Australia. This is not a new suggestion. A number of observers have said that both governments need to do a better job of explaining AUKUS’s rationale and value. The problem is that to date too much of the focus has been on what are, for most people, relatively arcane topics: the tactical and strategic advantages of nuclear submarines and the future trajectory of the Chinese government’s regional and international policies.
The issue that is much more material to AUKUS’s social license in Australia is the agreement’s impact on Australian sovereignty. Here both governments will need to provide regular assurances that AUKUS will not compromise Australia’s sovereignty and specifically that it will not tie Australia to U.S. decision-making on future conflicts in Asia. Both governments might reasonably respond that they have done that to date. But the message has not always been carefully delivered, consistent or well-coordinated. For example, comments in 2023 by then U.S. Deputy Assistant to the President and Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell at a public event in Washington that, “when submarines are provided from the United States to Australia, it is not like they are lost. They will just be deployed by the closest possible allied force” became ready fodder for those in Australia who have criticized AUKUS from the sovereignty angle.
But this is not just a message management issue. Assurances on respect for Australian sovereignty need to be credible as well as consistent. There needs to be more public discussion, and where possible greater transparency, about the details of the agreement as it evolves. A focus on the sovereignty question should, for example, be reflected in public comments when Australian and U.S. ministers and officials meet, such as at the annual Australia-US Ministerial consultation (AUSMIN). And it hardly needs saying that assurances on Australian sovereignty will be especially important if the next U.S. president acts in ways that erode Australian public confidence in the alliance and in U.S. global leadership.
Dominique Fraser is a Research Associate at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Australia.
Anthony Bubalo is Chief Executive Officer of Asia Society Australia.