Former prime minister says US would ‘scuttle itself back to San Diego’, leaving Australia to deal with retribution from China.
Aukus critic Paul Keating has said the submarine deal is locking Australia in to any future US conflict with China – “a war America would certainly lose” – and making Australia a target for retribution.
The former prime minister responded to comments reported out of Washington this week from Republican member of Congress Michael McCaul – a China hawk and co-chair of the Congressional Friends of Australia caucus – who said “Australia is a target” for enemies of the US already. McCaul argued that greater integration with the US military would better protect Australia than leaving it more vulnerable.
McCaul also said it was “logical to assume” US nuclear-powered submarines rotating through Australian bases could also be nuclear armed after 2032, and that Australia’s participation in a US war against China over Taiwan was assumed by the US military establishment.
McCaul met with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, the defence minister, Richard Marles, and the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, during a visit to Australia this month.
Keating said Australia’s increasing enmeshment within the US military, especially through Aukus, was seeing Australia’s “sovereignty effectively being shredded”.
The Guardian revealed last week that the US military, and its corporate interests, control, or have access to, more than 100 military bases across the Australian continent.
Under Pillar One of the proposed Aukus agreement – a multi-decade deal slated to cost Australia $368bn to the mid-2050s – Australia will buy three “in-service” Virginia-class nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines from the US, beginning in 2032.