The turmoil in the US Congress could hamper progress on the AUKUS deal, an expert says.
Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from his seat on Wednesday in a vote forced by hard-right conservatives that threw the House of Representatives into gridlock and uncertainty.
The Congress needs to sign off the proposed sale of Virginia-class submarines to Australia, but even before the sacking of McCarthy, there was some uncertainty about when that could happen. A recent research paper presented to the Congress posed the question whether the decision could be “deferred until 2024 or later”, raising the prospect the sign-off could happen during, or after, the 2024 presidential election.
“We’re looking at the disintegration of the Republican Congress with the ouster of speaker McCarthy, which makes it very difficult for the Republicans to come to any kind of consensus here,” ANU Strategic and Defence Studies Centre Honorary Professor Leszek Buszynski told Crikey.
“It looks like the whole thing could be caught up in congressional chaos at the moment. It’s entirely possible that Congress will face a deadlock. All of this is very much up in the air, in which case AUKUS could be sidelined or could get lost in the process.”
The research paper that raised the prospect of postponing the decision was published by the Congressional Research Service late last month. It speculated the decision may be possible to postpone beyond 2023, which would make “more information available to Congress about the details on specific elements of the proposed Pillar 1 pathway”.
Pillar 1 is a trilateral effort between Australia, the UK and the US to allow Australia to acquire the nuclear-powered Virginia-class submarines. The other element of AUKUS, Pillar 2, is focused on technology cooperation.
The research paper noted that if Congress signed off on Pillar 1 this year, it would mean “sending a signal of alliance solidarity and deterrence to China sooner rather than later”.
It comes after 25 Republicans sent a letter to US President Joe Biden in July urging him to increase funding for the country’s submarine fleet.
“We support the vision of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) partnership and its potential to change the strategic landscape in the Indo-Pacific. The AUKUS agreement is vitally important, but we must simultaneously protect US national security,” the politicians said in the letter, according to Reuters.
The Republicans added that selling three attack submarines to Australia would “unacceptably weaken” the US fleet.
Who would’ve predicted that a rabble of unhinged Republicans would save us from ourselves…
There’s a sort of precedent; one of the first things Trump did after being elected in 2016 was scrap the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which saved us, for a while, from shackling ourselves to yet another disastrous investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism. Funny how our Coalition government, so keen on boasting of its bombastic nationalistic Australia-first outlook, was secretly plotting to give away another chunk of our sovereignty and let foreign corporations tell us what to do.
Praise the Lord!
Lord Trump?
Honestly, it would be a great face saving measure for Labor if Australia were forced to design a more independent defense policy because of problems on the US side.
Hope we get a good lick of compensation!!! At least equal to the money we paid the French, Less Richard Marles Golf fees of course
Don’t let’s push it! We’re doing well to get out. Think of the $Billions!
The US is a basket case economically and strategically, it might be time for Australia to move away and get closer to China, the U.S. under a lunatic Trump is more likely to start a war than China, China doesn’t need a war it`s won the peace whereas America has lost the peace and will need a war to keep its economy going, an America under Trump will be like like a dying snake and bite anything that tries to get near it. the U.S is a dying empire destroyed by corrupt politicians and economists who don’t know their profession, The greed of the ultra-rich has totally destroyed their middle class, and as a consequence the economy .
The Republicans always hated and wanted to reverse FDR’s New Deal. Before WW2, only 4% of Americans went to college. By the 1950s, largely due to FDR’s “GI Bill”, which paid for returned service personnel to go to college, that number had risen to 25%, thus creating the great American Middle Class that prospered in the 1960s. The unmaking of the US consensus on true liberalism began with Goldwater’s campaign in 1960, continued with Nixon and achieved its goal under Reagan and the rise of the neo-liberals. Contributions towards the process have come from mass media (Murdoch) and social media. I can’t see how they are going to extract themselves from the mess without bloodshed and an ensuing wake-up call standing on the graves of those who died.
The Republicans always hated and wanted to reverse FDR’s New Deal. Before WW2, only 4% of Americans went to college. By the 1950s, largely due to FDR’s “GI Bill”, which paid for returned service personnel to go to college, that number had risen to 25%, thus creating the great American Middle Class that prospered in the 1960s. The unmaking of the US consensus on true liberalism began with Goldwater’s campaign in 1960, continued with Nixon and achieved its goal under Reagan and the rise of the neo-liberals. Contributions towards the process have come from mass media (including the M word that has put my first go at posting this into the naughty corner Awaiting approval.) and social media. I can’t see how they are going to extract themselves from the mess without bloodshed and an ensuing wake-up call standing on the graves of those who died.
Trump didn’t start any wars – possibly why he didn’t get a second term?
The US already has a war – the Ukraine conflict. Biden has metered out support so Kiev can hold on but not win keeping the conflict boiling on.
In the process Europe has started to rearm – even Germany and Japan are rearming – Sweden has shed it’s neutrality and joined NATO.
It’s disgusting but no one’s calling it out.
The one positive of the Trump Whitehouse was no new wars were started.
Faux anti-imperialist tankie, supporting Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, oligarchs and dodgy GOP grifters?
Not sure about ‘The US is a basket case economically’, unless one follows US RW MSM and GOP talking points?
So, US$33T in debt is not a basket case.
Can you explain and give context to that ‘debt basket case’, short or long, present or future values, % of government budgets?
Why are foreign investors prepared to buy $US, bonds, treasuries, shares etc.?
10, 15 and 25 year bonds have plummeted.
If selling Virginia subs to Australia would unacceptably weaken the US’s own capability, then if Australia really has to have nuclear subs why don’t we buy some Barracuda nuclear subs from France?
Because we annoyed France so much last time by not only cancelling but doing it in the most humiliating and obnoxious way we could, that it’s unlikely they’d even give us the time of day if we went crawling back?
If we do need subs we can buy off the shelf conventional ones from a number of sources. You can just about guarantee that we cannot maintain a nuclear sub fleet ourselves, and would have to get the US or UK to maintain them.
Singapore, which you would have to think shares the same geo-strategic challenges and threats as Australia, has invested in German subs. Good enough for the canny govt of Singapore, good enough for the galahs on Russell and Capital Hills.
We are not getting subs from the US, they are getting free sub crews from us.
And we are paying heavily for the privilege of having their subs based in our ports. We will have no control over where they go or how they are armed and operated.
Because we are idiots who deserve to be endangered and ripped off.
We tried that and were forced to renege.
The ridiculous, awkward, expensive, useless AUKUS concept should never have been created and if it goes, GOOD.