> There are few issues on which we do not know Donald Trump’s opinion. After thousands of hours of interviews and speeches over the past eight years, the president-elect has enlightened us on what he thinks on almost any topic which enters his brain at any given moment. But in the key area of defense, there are some gaps — and that’s leading global military chiefs to pore over the statements of the president’s allies and appointees to attempt to glean some clues, specifically over the $369 billion trilateral submarine program known as AUKUS he will inherit from Joe Biden.
> Trump does not appear to have publicly commented on the AUKUS pact — named for its contingent parts Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States — which would see the U.S. share technology with its partners to allow both countries to build state-of-the-art nuclear submarines by the 2040s. This uncertainty has left ministers and government officials in London and Canberra scrambling to discover how the Republican is likely to view the Biden-era deal when he returns to the White House in January.
> Two defense industry figures told Politico there were serious concerns in the British government that Trump might seek to renegotiate the deal or alter the timelines. This is because the pact likely requires the U.S. to temporarily downsize its own naval fleet as a part of the agreement — something Trump may interpret as an affront to his “America First” ideology.
> There is hope in Westminster that Trump would be in favor of a military project which is an obvious, if unspoken, challenge to China. The deal would see American-designed nuclear submarines right on China’s doorstep and would form a part of Australia’s attempts to bolster its military might in the Indo-Pacific. When former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in September 2021 that the deal was not “intended to be adversarial toward China,” President Xi Jinping simply did not believe him. The Chinese leader said AUKUS would “undermine peace” and accused the Western nations of stoking a Cold War mentality.
> Mary Kissel, a former senior adviser to Trump’s ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said “you can assume Trump two will look a lot like Trump one” when it comes to building alliances with other Western countries against China. “We revivified the Quad [Australia, India, Japan and the U.S.], got our allies to bolster NATO funding and worked to prevent China from dominating international institutions,” she said.
> However, the deal also forces the U.S. government to sell Australia three to five active Virginia attack submarines, the best in the U.S. Navy’s fleet, by the early 2030s as a stopgap until the new AUKUS subs are built. This coincides with a time where there is a widely recognized crunch on America’s industrial defense capacity. In layman’s terms, the U.S. is currently struggling to build enough submarines or military equipment for its own needs.
> One UK defense industry figure, granted anonymity to speak freely, said there was “a lot of queasiness” in the UK government and a “huge amount of queasiness in Australia” about whether Trump would allow this to happen. “There is a world in which the Americans can’t scale up their domestic submarine capacity for their own needs and don’t have spare to meet Australia’s needs,” they said. “If you started pulling on one thread of the deal, then the rest could easily fall away.”One UK government official played down how much London and Canberra are worried about the future of the deal, however. They said the UK government was confident Trump is positive about the deal and that the U.S. was “well equipped with the number of submarines for their fleet.”
> In Washington too, defense experts are seeking clues to the attitude of the incoming administration. While close observers agree it is too soon to predict what Trump would do about AUKUS, there has been some reason for optimism in the president-elect’s selection of two China hawks for top national security posts: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), as secretary of state, and Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) as national security adviser.
Both served on the congressional foreign affairs committees that handled legislation to authorize AUKUS and will be well aware that it has broad bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress, giving AUKUS advocates on Capitol Hill two well-placed former colleagues with whom they can make their case to Trump world.
> But the brightest glimmer of hope may be an Economist essay Waltz co-authored last month that slams Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for a rash of global crises, but reserves a some praise for AUKUS. “Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris have taken some positive steps on China, such as strengthening export controls and establishing AUKUS, a trilateral security partnership with Britain and Australia, but these have been more than outweighed by the distraction caused by failed policies in Europe and the Middle East,” Waltz wrote with Matthew Kroenig, a former Pentagon strategist.
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> There are few issues on which we do not know Donald Trump’s opinion. After thousands of hours of interviews and speeches over the past eight years, the president-elect has enlightened us on what he thinks on almost any topic which enters his brain at any given moment. But in the key area of defense, there are some gaps — and that’s leading global military chiefs to pore over the statements of the president’s allies and appointees to attempt to glean some clues, specifically over the $369 billion trilateral submarine program known as AUKUS he will inherit from Joe Biden.
> Trump does not appear to have publicly commented on the AUKUS pact — named for its contingent parts Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States — which would see the U.S. share technology with its partners to allow both countries to build state-of-the-art nuclear submarines by the 2040s. This uncertainty has left ministers and government officials in London and Canberra scrambling to discover how the Republican is likely to view the Biden-era deal when he returns to the White House in January.
> Two defense industry figures told Politico there were serious concerns in the British government that Trump might seek to renegotiate the deal or alter the timelines. This is because the pact likely requires the U.S. to temporarily downsize its own naval fleet as a part of the agreement — something Trump may interpret as an affront to his “America First” ideology.
> There is hope in Westminster that Trump would be in favor of a military project which is an obvious, if unspoken, challenge to China. The deal would see American-designed nuclear submarines right on China’s doorstep and would form a part of Australia’s attempts to bolster its military might in the Indo-Pacific. When former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in September 2021 that the deal was not “intended to be adversarial toward China,” President Xi Jinping simply did not believe him. The Chinese leader said AUKUS would “undermine peace” and accused the Western nations of stoking a Cold War mentality.
> Mary Kissel, a former senior adviser to Trump’s ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said “you can assume Trump two will look a lot like Trump one” when it comes to building alliances with other Western countries against China. “We revivified the Quad [Australia, India, Japan and the U.S.], got our allies to bolster NATO funding and worked to prevent China from dominating international institutions,” she said.
> However, the deal also forces the U.S. government to sell Australia three to five active Virginia attack submarines, the best in the U.S. Navy’s fleet, by the early 2030s as a stopgap until the new AUKUS subs are built. This coincides with a time where there is a widely recognized crunch on America’s industrial defense capacity. In layman’s terms, the U.S. is currently struggling to build enough submarines or military equipment for its own needs.
> One UK defense industry figure, granted anonymity to speak freely, said there was “a lot of queasiness” in the UK government and a “huge amount of queasiness in Australia” about whether Trump would allow this to happen. “There is a world in which the Americans can’t scale up their domestic submarine capacity for their own needs and don’t have spare to meet Australia’s needs,” they said. “If you started pulling on one thread of the deal, then the rest could easily fall away.”One UK government official played down how much London and Canberra are worried about the future of the deal, however. They said the UK government was confident Trump is positive about the deal and that the U.S. was “well equipped with the number of submarines for their fleet.”
> In Washington too, defense experts are seeking clues to the attitude of the incoming administration. While close observers agree it is too soon to predict what Trump would do about AUKUS, there has been some reason for optimism in the president-elect’s selection of two China hawks for top national security posts: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), as secretary of state, and Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) as national security adviser.
Both served on the congressional foreign affairs committees that handled legislation to authorize AUKUS and will be well aware that it has broad bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress, giving AUKUS advocates on Capitol Hill two well-placed former colleagues with whom they can make their case to Trump world.
> But the brightest glimmer of hope may be an Economist essay Waltz co-authored last month that slams Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for a rash of global crises, but reserves a some praise for AUKUS. “Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris have taken some positive steps on China, such as strengthening export controls and establishing AUKUS, a trilateral security partnership with Britain and Australia, but these have been more than outweighed by the distraction caused by failed policies in Europe and the Middle East,” Waltz wrote with Matthew Kroenig, a former Pentagon strategist.
!ping UK&AUS
The gift that keeps on giving.
Macron is gonna blow a gasket