AUKUS Is Building Hulls. Is Anyone Building Resolve?

On 16 September 2021, Australia, Britain and the United States announced AUKUS and called it an enhanced trilateral security partnership. Canberra’s prize: a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. Five years later the paper has turned into steel and poured concrete, and I’ll say what the communiqués won’t. AUKUS is a promise with a long fuse. Whether it ever deters Beijing over Taiwan will turn less on hulls than on a political will that no one has yet put under real strain.

Progress, to be fair, is real. A Pentagon review run by Elbridge Colby ended with Washington declaring it had found ways to put the deal on the “strongest possible footing.” Defence Minister Richard Marles says Australia is on track for Virginia-class boats from around 2030; the USS Colorado is due at HMAS Stirling from late 2027, and the rotational force there is meant, in time, to host four Virginia-class submarines and a British boat. Anthony Albanese calls the whole venture “full-steam ahead.” Both capitals are keen to stress that the boats carry no nuclear weapons, and Joe Biden put it in four words:

“Nuclear-powered, not nuclear-armed.”
— Joe Biden, then US President, on the AUKUS submarines, 2023

Beijing isn’t buying it. It dismissed the pact as a Cold War relic and accused the partners of breaching the Non-Proliferation Treaty by handing weapons-grade uranium to a non-nuclear state. One of its points has teeth, I think: apart from the five recognised weapons powers, no state operates nuclear-powered submarines, which would make Australia the first. China has carried the argument to the IAEA, where it says a formal agenda on the transfer was set up for the third time. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has called inspection “very tricky” but manageable. Western officials, for their part, murmur in private about hypocrisy (Beijing’s own nuclear-powered fleet is growing fast).

The Pacific reads all this with more anxiety than comfort. Dame Meg Taylor, once secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum, spoke of a “serious lack of consultation.” Manasseh Sogavare of Solomon Islands said he “learnt of the AUKUS treaty in the media.” Former island leaders warned of “bringing war much closer to home,” although the Rarotonga Treaty does allow nuclear-powered vessels to transit. Beijing has played on that unease, signing a security agreement with the Solomon Islands in 2022. But the Forum turned down China’s push for a ten-nation security and trade deal. Hedging, then, not defecting.

So what does Beijing do next? Its toolkit is already on show, and I expect it to be stretched rather than swapped for something new. The legal campaign at the IAEA carries on. Then the signalling: in February 2025 a PLA Navy task group circled Australia and, at very short notice, held a live-fire exercise in the Tasman Sea, which sent airlines diverting flights. Officials in Canberra and Wellington judged it lawful; analysts saw a demonstration that the PLAN can operate all the way around Australia. And there’s plain growth. The Pentagon’s 2023 assessment projected 65 Chinese submarines by 2025 and 80 by 2035. None of this needs a crisis. That’s its charm.

Could AUKUS navies counter China if it moves on Taiwan? On present numbers, no. The Pentagon’s 2024 report counted more than 370 PLA Navy battle force ships and submarines, over 140 of them major surface combatants, while the US Navy fields roughly 290 deployable ships, smaller but heavier. Submarines are where the West holds its edge; it is a thin one. The Congressional Research Service says Virginia-class output “never reached 2.0 boats per year,” running at about 1.1 to 1.2 since 2022, against the 2.33 needed to feed both the US Navy and Australia. Australia has no nuclear-powered boat today. Whatever AUKUS adds to a Taiwan crisis this decade is, in effect, American submarines working out of Perth.

The harder question is whether anyone would fight. Colby has pressed Australia and Japan to clarify their roles in a Taiwan contingency. Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy answered that Australia would not commit troops in advance of any conflict, and the Hudson Institute’s Bryan Clark has noted how Canberra has been “very coy about how they would actually employ the submarines.” I don’t read that as cowardice. Democracies rarely pre-sign wars, and Washington itself has preferred ambiguity over Taiwan for decades. But ambiguity is a double-edged thing: it keeps Beijing guessing and keeps allies guessing too.

My reading, for what it’s worth: AUKUS is a sound hedge for the 2030s and beyond, and a credible sign of permanence. It won’t decide a Taiwan war in this decade, and its partners know that. What would give Beijing pause isn’t one more announcement of hulls but a settled, publicly understood answer to a plain question: when the first shot is fired, who sails? Until then the submarines are a promise, and a promise is only as good as the people who must keep it.