HAYDEN NELSON: Australia will pull out all the stops to save AUKUS alliance

Having been swept to victory on a mandate for change, Keir Starmer was confronted with the cold hard reality of the job in front of him.

The newly minted Prime Minister was taken into a room for some quiet contemplation.

In what is a grim tradition for Britain’s leaders, he would have been tasked with handwriting four identical letters dictating what the UK’s nuclear submarines should do if human life in the nation was annihilated, and there was no one left there to take orders from.

The options: do nothing and not retaliate; launch a barrage of missiles at an enemy country; take orders from the US president or the Australian prime minister; or leave the submarine commander to use their own judgment.

Once Starmer chose which of these impossible routes to take, the “letters of last resort” containing his instructions would be locked in the safe of British nuclear submarines and only opened in the event of the unthinkable.

Hopefully we will never know which of the options he chose.

But what we do know is taking orders from Australia may not have been an option until recently when AUKUS came along.

Scott Morrison’s 2021 deal and defiance of the French gave Australia skin in the game and allowed our country to do what it does best and punch above its weight.

I for one have been drinking the $360 billion AUKUS Kool-Aid, even with the platitudes and sweeping generalisations from the various ministers tasked with trying to sell it.

But now AUKUS is facing an existential crisis.

Not only is Australia’s submarine order at the end of a long waiting list in shipyards in the US in Connecticut and the UK at Barrow, but there’s a looming fear a Donald Trump Oval Office will try to rip up the deal entirely. It would be a huge blow to Australia, particularly for knowledge and capability sharing.

In Adelaide, for example, nuclear engineers and scientists are already in the process of being trained and a nuclear waste storage site has been selected.

If a Trump White House were to rip up AUKUS it would be devastating for Australia’s standing in world affairs, in particular with our regional neighbours who are looking to us to act as sort of good cop.

It’s safe to say we would — in the same way we avoided crippling US steel tariffs — roll out the diplomatic red carpet to navigate such a turn of events.

For starters, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese or Ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd would have to play on the strategy of containment placed on China by Trump as the 45th president as a reason for the 47th to keep AUKUS going.

Australia would also have to make it clear that if he nixed AUKUS, American voters domestically — who are broadly speaking uninterested in affairs overseas — likely wouldn’t even notice or care.

Our diplomatic efforts would also have to play up the importance of AUKUS not just for America’s relationship with Australia but also with the UK.

We know Trump is no fan of NATO or the UN, but AUKUS gives America a channel to deal directly with two other similar western democracies, without the bureaucracy or veto powers in these large unions.

Ending AUKUS would make the world’s biggest economy and greatest democracy appear indecisive around China.

Known anti-Trumper John Bolton, who channels Lin-Manuel Miranda with the title of his book, The Room Where It Happened, says AUKUS would be sunk in the same way Trump pulled America out of the Trans-Pacific trade deal.

Bolton says Anthony Albanese should learn to play golf so he can have a chance at getting along with a president who enjoys playing the game at his own golf courses.

But the thing about golf is — if you are anything like me — it’s about playing to the conditions. No matter how much 18 holes on a 38C day tries to break you, you learn to withstand the pressures. This is what I can only presume will happen to AUKUS.

Even if a Trump presidency tries to destroy it, AUKUS will survive. Perhaps just not as we know it.

Financially and strategically, so much has been staked on this deal by the three countries involved.

Perhaps AUKUS may have funding cut dramatically, leaving it a less functioning shell of its original self. Or perhaps Australia will be made to hand more cash to the US in exchange for training on or receiving access to its nuclear submarines.

As politicians would have us believe, much of the deal is well underway, we’re already on “Pillar Two”.

With a bit of luck, with all this in mind, AUKUS will survive a second Trump presidency and maybe one day we’ll actually even get a submarine.

If worse comes to worst, maybe we’ll have to use the biggest diplomatic drawcard and ask Greg Norman to dust off the irons.

Hayden Nelson is a 7NEWS reporter