This saw it build a
system of legal and regulatory walls, safeguards and a mentality that
viewed anything foreign as deeply suspicious in its bid to protect the
crown jewels. Over time, however, the world changed around the US
defence establishment. The momentum on military-related R&D,
innovation and creative thinking increasingly shifted to the private
sector. It’s just a bureaucratic process that’s divorced from time and
urgencyWilliam Greenwalt, American Enterprise Institute
The line
between military and commercial technologies blurred – as seen by the
use of civilian drone, satellite and social media technology in the
Ukraine war. The US has also lost its hallowed perch as other countries
rivalled it in capability and innovation. In 1960, US military-related
R&D accounted for 36 per cent of total global R&D. By 2019, that
had slipped to 3 per cent, according to the Congressional Research
Service.
A key provision of US export control policy is the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (Itar).
“Through
a process you can term Itar contamination or Itar taint, whatever US
person touches that technology, it has to go back to the State
Department for a ‘Mother, may I?’”, said William Greenwalt, a senior
fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “It creates a tremendous
incentive for our partners, and particularly in the commercial
marketplace, to never deal with the Department of Defence and the US
government.” “It’s just a bureaucratic process that’s divorced from time
and urgency.”
As outlined in March, the three partners will
engage in unprecedented intelligence, hardware and technology sharing.
US and Britain will rotate submarines through Australia – the USS
Asheville visited Perth last month – and sell Australia three US
Virginia-class nuclear-powered subs with an option to buy two more.
The
partners then plan to build a new class of submarines dubbed the SSN
Aukus in British shipyards using a British design and US technology.
Vessels will be delivered to the British fleet in the late 2030s and
Australia in the early 2040s. The cost for Canberra is an estimated
US$180 billion to US$245 billion over 32 years.
The phased
arrangement is meant to thread several needles, including Australia’s
pending security shortfall, backlogged US shipyards well behind on
America’s own submarine construction and the time needed to train
Australian crews and build port facilities.
It also recognises the
Indo-Pacific’s critical role in Western defence thinking and
acknowledges that the intelligence-sharing group known as the Five Eyes –
the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – was not moving
fast enough nor fully in sync on a robust China policy, requiring a
pared-down core.
China, for its part, is believed to have some 10
nuclear-powered submarines, several dated and noisy, with plans to
build a dozen more. It is also mounting sensors on the ocean floor,
improving its anti-submarine technology and looking at expanded overseas
basing, potentially including the Pakistan port city of Gwadar.
Beijing
is also active in the public-approval battle, arguing for a
nuclear-free Southeast Asia and accusing Aukus of violating
non-proliferation safeguards and fuelling a “Cold War mentality”.
The
Aukus submarines are nuclear-powered but will not carry nuclear
weapons, the partners said, nor will Australia enrich uranium or
reprocess used fuel. Instead, they will receive sealed nuclear power
units from the US and Britain that will not require refuelling during
their lifetime.
The US export control regime has come under criticism
for its inflexibility and inability to distinguish effectively between
close allies, weak allies and adversaries.
The issue has become
increasingly important as Washington builds higher walls around key
technologies aimed at slowing China’s military build-up – advanced
semiconductors, chip-making equipment and artificial intelligence – even
as it amplifies alliances with shared data security systems, integrated
industries and common geopolitical policies.
Congress is also a
factor, experts said. Lawmakers see a tough anti-China line as a key to
re-election, so committees beyond foreign affairs and armed services
have piled on, at times without great knowledge, experience or
understanding of US-China relations. Some 250 China-related bills are
now before Congress, according to the US-China Business Council.
The
US has long touted its multilateral defence partnerships to demonstrate
global support for its policies and underscore that it is not working
alone.
“But a lot of that has been for political
show and less for the capability that they bring,” Pettyjohn said. “Here
we actually need combined capabilities. And we need to be able to do it
together before a balloon goes up and some sort of crisis or war breaks
out.
“Because we’re not going to be able to recoup and cobble together when you face an adversary as capable as China.” Long
before Aukus, the need for faster acquisitions and decision-making was
widely acknowledged in statements, reports and reform blueprints. Now
some regard Aukus as the best catalyst for systemic change, given its
high profile, ambition and White House backing.
“You
are a testament to the strong and deep support for this partnership,”
US President Joe Biden told his British and Australian counterparts at
the alliance’s formal launch in San Diego last month. Ideally, though, it should not take a president’s clout to reform a sclerotic system, analysts said.
“You
have bureaucracies carrying out standard operating procedure in an
environment where traditionally there’s been no penalty for saying no
and risk for saying yes,” said Thomas Mahnken, president of the Centre
for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a former Pentagon official.
“This is a prominent opportunity to reset the incentive structures.”
Added
Sameer Lalwani, a senior expert with the United States Institute of
Peace: “Aukus is the canary in the coal mine. If it won’t work for
Aukus, there’s no chance for India. If Aukus figures it out, then
there’s a template.”
The ambitions of the elite Aukus club – and
promised access to leading-edge quantum technologies, cyber tools,
undersea tactics, hypersonic and counter-hypersonic know-how, electronic
warfare and integrated industrial sectors – has attracted other close
allies, including Japan, India and Canada. “Will AUKUS ever become
CAUKUS?” asked a headline in Canada’s Financial Post newspaper. It has
also led to speculation that Aukus could be the start of a Nato-style
collective alliance in Asia.
But given the mammoth, long-term
challenge of integrating American, Australian and British personnel,
mindsets and systems, expanding the alliance any time soon could prove
counterproductive. “If it can’t work between Britain, Australia and the
United States, it can’t work, period,” Townshend said. “Until we have
proof of concept, and this thing is working amongst the three-headed
hydra, the time is not right.”