LATIKA M BOURKE: Donald Trump could ‘accelerate’ AUKUS but may demand Australia spend more on defence

US President-elect Donald Trump is likely to support AUKUS and could even accelerate it, a former Bush adviser and Pentagon staffer has said.

Mr Trump has never directly commented on whether he supports AUKUS, amid concerns that his unpredictability and “America-First” approach to foreign policy could extend to Australia’s plan to acquire nuclear submarines from the United States and then the UK.

But Michael Green, who advised former President George W. Bush, served on his National Security Council and now heads the United States Studies Centre at Sydney University, said AUKUS would be safe under a Trump 2.0 Presidency but warned that he could push Australia to spend more on defence.

“Things like AUKUS are going to be fine and in some ways might even be accelerated,” he said in an interview with the Latika Takes podcast.

“People worry that Donald Trump cancels things, lies, cheats, demands more - he can’t do that to everything.

“The Trump national security officials are going to be focused like a laser on competing with China.

“And AUKUS helps, that’s the broad view and Australia is important.

“Throughout this whole election year, national security officials in the Biden Administration and members of Congress and National Security experts and think tanks associated with Trump, have been talking and have been iron-plating things like the Quad.

“So I’m not worried about AUKUS.”

But he said there was a good chance that Trump would increase defence spending and expect Australia and other allies to do the same.

“I’d worry more about a Trump Administration that has that urgency and anxiety about the balance of power with China coming in and pushing for more defence spending,” Dr Green said.

“There’s more urgency in the Republican national security community about China.

“They want to be ready, they want deterrence to work.”

He said that while the Biden Administration adopted a good Asia policy it was run by academics, lawyers and diplomats. Trump’s top security team would be different.

“The Trump policy was run and will be run again by former military officers who will have seen the war plans, who are nervous that we’re not doing enough,” he said.

“AUKUS for people who look at contingencies in Asia is popular because the undersea advantage is one of the big advantages the US, Australia, UK, and Japan have.”

Under the AUKUS deal Australia will buy Virginia-class boats from the United States before co-designing a completely new class of attack submarine with the British called SSN AUKUS.

The nuclear-powered submarines can stay underwater for longer and travel a greater range than the current diesel-electric Collins-class model that Australia operates. They will be used to help prevent China from taking control of key shipping routes in the South China Sea and the Straits of Malacca.

However the AUKUS deal is contingent on the United States being able to build enough submarines in time for its own needs.

Former Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo, who wrote the 2009 Defence White Paper, told the Australian Institute of International Affairs that there was a risk that the US might not be able to deliver Australia its first Virginia-class boat, due after President Trump’s term in office expires.

But he said that inability to deliver would be out of necessity, rather than ill-will.

“If they’re keeping their boat it’s because there’s a serious prospect of either undersea warfare in the western Pacific or undersea warfare in the North Atlantic,” Mr Pezzullo told the Australian Institute of International Affairs annual conference in Canberra.

“So in those circumstances, it’s not just simply a question of saying ‘gosh, our mate’s let us down because he promised us that boat’.

“We might well want them to win that war if it comes about and so we might make alternative contributions.

“Now I’d prefer to have a sovereign submarine capability any day of the week.

“But if it’s a choice of the Americans not having their 48th or 49th or 50th boat because they’re fighting a real war, we’ve probably got a vested interest in supporting them to win that war anyway, so I’m not so catastrophised about that uncertainty.”

Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, his one-time rival Marco Rubio who he used to deride as “Little Marco” is a China hawk and member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, the cross-party international group of MPs that includes Australian MPs James Paterson, Andrew Hastie and Deborah O’Neill.

Senator Rubio has previously sounded alarm at China’s dominant industrial base, including its shipbuilding capacity that is estimated to be 230 times greater than the United States.

In July, Senator Rubio questioned Kurt Campbell, the Biden Administration’s outgoing Deputy US Secretary of State about how leaning into alliances could help the US counterbalance the Chinese Communist Party.

“How does that fit, this whole view of this domination that they’re establishing in these key core industries … into our strategy,” Rubio asked.

“Because some of these are going to require us to lean heavily into our alliances, to make sure that our allies in some sort of consortium fashion are not just protecting their domestic industries, but protecting the existence of non-Chinese Communist Party-controlled sources of steel, cement, shipbuilding, and the other fields that they seek.”

Responding to Trump’s election, Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said he was totally confident that Trump would not delay or scuttle the deal.

“No, there’s a really clear answer to that question,” he said.

“I think, as I just said, if you look at where President Trump and his team have been in respect of the question of AUKUS, there has been support.”