LATIKA M BOURKE: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio lauds AUKUS for preserving rules-based order in Pacific

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has championed the role of AUKUS in advancing a “rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific”, just two days after the Pentagon blasted “cloud-castle abstractions like the rules-based international order.”

Mr Rubio, who is also the US National Security Adviser, released a statement overnight to mark Australia Day and said that under the Trump Administration, the bilateral relationship had grown closer.

“Over the past year, our defence, economic, and security cooperation has deepened, reflecting our shared commitment to democratic values, regional stability, and mutual prosperity,” Mr Rubio said.

“Through AUKUS and broader alliance activities, the United States and Australia are advancing deterrence, emerging technologies, and a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific. Australia’s leadership in developing secure and reliable supply chains, including those for critical minerals, remains central to these shared efforts.”

But his comments are in stark contrast to the long-awaited National Defence Strategy (NDS) released by the Pentagon late on Friday night local time, which trashed the idea of a rules-based order.

“Previous administrations squandered our military advantages and the lives, goodwill, and resources of our people in grandiose nation-building projects and self-congratulatory pledges to uphold cloud-castle abstractions like the rules-based international order,” the NDS’ opening paragraphs stated.

On the weekend, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he agreed with the thrust of Mark Carney’s speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, when the Canadian Prime Minister said the “story of the international rules-based order” was always “partially false” and that the system had ruptured.

Mr Carney’s speech angered President Donald Trump, who said the Canadian leader needed to remember that Canada “lives because of the United States.”

Mr Albanese also ended speculation about who would replace Kevin Rudd as Australia’s next Ambassador to the United States, confirming that Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty would take up the role.

The Prime Minister said AUKUS was central to Australia’s US relationship.

But the Pentagon’s same document did not mention AUKUS, Australia or Taiwan - the ‘reunification’ of which China has expressed as a core national objective - once.

Instead, it set out President Trump’s softer approach toward China ahead of his April meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

“President Trump seeks a stable peace, fair trade, and respectful relations with China,” the document said.

This included the Department of War attempting to open up a wider range of military-to-military communications with the Chinese military (PLA) “with a focus on supporting strategic stability with Beijing as well as deconfliction and de-escalation.”

“Our goal in doing so is not to dominate China; nor is it to strangle or humiliate them,” the NDS said.

“Rather, our goal is simple: to prevent anyone, including China, from being able to dominate us or our allies — in essence, to set the military conditions required to achieve the NSS goal of a balance of power in the Indo-Pacific that allows all of us to enjoy a decent peace.”

While the document does not mention Taiwan - the self-governed island off the coast of China which Xi says he wants to take control of from as soon as next year - the Pentagon said it would erect a “strong denial defence” along the First Island Chain, a strategic arc of islands which takes in Japan, Taiwan and some of the Philippines and Indonesia.

However, the document did not state any specifics about what sort of defences this would entail.

The strategy also renewed America’s calls for Indo-Pacific allies to increase their contributions to defence as part of “burden-sharing,” complaining that allies had let the US subsidise their security for “too long.”

“In all cases, we will be honest but clear about the urgent need for them to do their part and that it is in their own interests to do so without delay,” the document stated.

“We will incentivise and enable them to step up. This requires a change in tone and style from the past, but that is necessary not only for Americans but also for our allies and partners.”

US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth and his number two, Elbridge Colby — an AUKUS sceptic — have repeatedly called for Australia to raise defence spending to 3.5 per cent of its GDP.

But Mr Trump is yet to publicly back their calls after appearing to give Prime Minister Anthony Albanese a free pass on the issue when they met for their first bilateral meeting at the White House last year. At that same meeting, Mr Trump said AUKUS was aimed at deterring Mr Xi over Taiwan but that he was confident the Chinese President would not move on the island.

Mr Albanese has refused to state that Australia’s quest to acquire nuclear-powered submarines from the US and UK is about China, instead claiming the defence pact is not aimed at any one country.

Jennifer Parker, who served in the Navy as a warfare officer and Expert Associate at the ANU’s National Security College, said that the implications for Australia were clear.

“The writing’s been on the wall for Australia for a while; we need to become more self-reliant,” she told The Nightly.

“We need to do more. If you look around the language of burden-sharing, it’s clear that the US wants us to do more and that relates to our level of capability.”

“Australia’s own National Defence Strategy is due in April. It will land in a very different strategic context.”

She said the US Defence Strategy should not be read as going soft on China because deterrence across the First Island Chain was still containment.

But she said it was not realistic to expect that it would lead to a “stable peace.”

“Because China gets a vote in all of this and it’s very clear that that’s not what China wants in the First Island Chain, it wants to operate exclusively, it does not want other nations there and we’ve experienced that first hand in Australia.”

Russia not a major threat

The Pentagon’s Defence Strategy was less hostile towards Europe than the National Security Strategy released by the White House last year. It repeatedly mentioned the need for control of Greenland, as well as the Panama Canal and Gulf of Mexico, as part of its America First focus on the Western Hemisphere, in line with the foreign policy first pursued by former president James Monroe.

The NDS signalled the US would remain committed to European security and “continue to play a vital role in NATO” but warned that troop deployments would be “calibrated.”

It also pledged a lower military role in South Korea and the Middle East.

It strongly played down the threat that it believed Russia posed saying it would remain a “persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members for the foreseeable future.”