It’s been more than a year since the US, UK and Australia (the alliance known by the initials AUKUS) made the surprise announcement of pooling their submarine forces, and it wasn’t until Monday that they detailed their ambitious plan to control China’s expansion.

Under the AUKUS long-term agreement, the partners will build a joint fleet of leading nuclear submarines using the technology, manpower and funding of all three countries, creating a powerful unified force in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

But the long timescales and huge financial costs – running into the hundreds of billions of dollars for Australia alone – raise questions about how far the partners’ plans may deviate from their “best course” in the coming decades as governments and perhaps priorities change.

In a joint statement Monday, U.S. President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his U.K. counterpart Rishi Sunak said the “historic” deal will build on all three countries’ past efforts to “maintain peace, stability and prosperity throughout the world.” . .

The plan begins this year with training Australian personnel on US and British submarines and bases, with the expectation that in about 20 years they will be in command of Australia’s first nuclear fleet. But there is still a long way to go, as outlined in a series of stages announced by the three leaders at the Port of San Diego.

From 2027, US and British submarines will visit the Australian naval base in Perth, which will be upgraded before Australia acquires three US submarines early next decade, with the potential for two more. In the same decade, the UK will acquire its first nuclear submarine through AUKUS, and a little later, in the early 2040s, Australia will deliver the first of its AUKUS submarines.

Several difficulties

However, the challenges of this timeline are significant and require an unprecedented level of investment and information sharing between the three partners, while the political careers of their leaders are expected to end before the man they are working against: Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Mr. Biden told reporters on Monday that he planned to speak with Mr. Xi soon, but declined to say when that would happen, adding that he was not worried that Mr. Xi would find AUKUS’ statement offensive.

This contrasts with sentiment emanating from Beijing, including accusations that the trio is fueling an arms race in Asia.

At a briefing on Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said AUKUS partners “completely ignore the concerns of the international community and are on the wrong and dangerous path.”

He added that the deal “would lead to an arms race, undermine the international nuclear non-proliferation system, and damage regional peace and stability.”

Smaller countries in the region are watching the AUKUS project with concern that a wider presence in their waters could lead to unintended conflict, said Ristian Atriandi Supriando of the Australian National University’s Center for Strategic and Defense Studies.

“Due to the more frequent presence of US and British submarines in Australia, there is an increasing need for China to monitor these units and, therefore, increase the likelihood of accidents or incidents at sea,” he said.

The AUKUS plan is Australia’s admission that without submarines, which can spend extended periods of time at great depths, the country would not be ready to take on China in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Numerous challenges are associated with a project of this magnitude that involves multiple relocations, with potential scheduling and cost implications.

Also, as all three countries struggle to expand their fleets, training enough personnel could be a major challenge. The stock factor means that the number of skilled workers is inevitably small. Efforts are being made in all countries to lure trainees into living under the sea for months at a time, which is not easy to promote in a competitive job market. And all this without including in the complexity of the significant cost of this project.

There is even a political risk that in the future, an introvert leader in the style of former President Donald Trump — or perhaps Trump himself — could emerge and threaten the deal.

Charles Edel, a consultant with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the deal represented much more than a concerted effort to change China’s calculations about its security environment.

“It is designed to transform the industrial shipbuilding capabilities of all three countries, is intended to be a technology accelerator, is intended to change the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, and ultimately is intended to change the United States cooperation model. and empowers its closest allies.”

Source: CNN