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MAKING AUKUS WORK

commentary

(The RAND Blog)

An artist's rendering of the future Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine

Illustration by U.S. Navy

by Jennifer D. P. Moroney and Alan Tidwell

March 22, 2022

Russia's war in Ukraine brings into stark relief the true meaning of revisionist
power. It could serve as a catalyst to urgent action in countering both Russian
and Chinese revisionism. On September 15, 2021 President Biden announced the
creation of AUKUS, a trilateral, experimental arrangement among the United
States, Australia, and the United Kingdom focused on defense technology that
would deliver nuclear powered submarines to Australia by 2039. The President
also made clear that AUKUS would extend beyond cooperation on submarines, and
these sentiments have been echoed in Canberra and London.

Even with the ongoing war in Ukraine, Australian Secretary of Defence, Greg
Moriarty, is in Washington to discuss ways to get AUKUS moving. AUKUS could open
new avenues for cooperative development (co-designing) and production
(co-building) of armaments (the P-8, Triton, and Jammer are examples to follow).
Given the lag time to 2039, it would likely be important to demonstrate the
utility of AUKUS in facilitating a broader defense relationship by laying out a
realistic, clear-eyed vision for the trilateral relationship, establishing a
framework and plan to manage the work, identify and then address the existing
barriers, and ensure that metrics are in place to measure progress. Taking all
these steps may help get AUKUS off the ground, which could bring major benefits
to the allies.

AUKUS is an example of mini-lateralism, which can be thought of as a complement
to—or a substitute for—traditional intergovernmental cooperation. AUKUS isn't a
new alliance. It's an additive, focused security partnership that is intended to
deepen collaboration on advanced military capabilities and technologies
including cyber, artificial intelligence, and quantum concepts. It builds on the
Defense Trade Cooperation treaties negotiated by the Bush administration in 2007
and ratified in 2010. AUKUS presents new opportunities, the first and most often
mentioned is that it provides Australia with nuclear powered submarine
capability. The U.S. has only ever shared nuclear propulsion technology once
before, and that was with the United Kingdom. Second, AUKUS aims to promote
greater sovereign capability for Australian and British defense industry by
providing access to U.S. technology. Third, it is designed to push back against
any potential weakening of the alliance bonds by selectively combining defense
capability between Australia, United Kingdom, and United States in the face of
strategic competition with China and Russia.

AUKUS could not only deliver new submarines for Australia, but it could become
the springboard for revolutionizing how the U.S. works with a select group of
its most capable allies.

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The promise of AUKUS stems from the bringing together of three capable allies in
a grand experiment, with a high-stakes mini-lateral relationship that depends
first and foremost upon trust to deliver highly valued capabilities. If
effectively implemented, AUKUS would not only deliver new submarines for
Australia, but perhaps more importantly, it could become the springboard for
revolutionizing how the U.S. works with a select group of its most capable
allies through the extraordinary depth of technological development, access to
highly classified materials and expanded sharing of intellectual property.

Canberra, London, and Washington have each responded to AUKUS differently. While
all are committed at the diplomatic level, Canberra is perhaps the most deeply
engaged, investing significant funding and resources to ensure that both the
nuclear-powered submarine and advanced capabilities workstreams succeed. As one
anonymous Australian official noted, AUKUS has virtually restructured the
entirety of their defense and foreign affairs thinking. United Kingdom national
security advisor Stephen Lovegrove described AUKUS as “perhaps the most
significant capability collaboration anywhere in the world in the past six
decades.” AUKUS fits neatly into the UK's Integrated Review, which promotes
London's return to the Indo-Pacific. Of the three powers involved, however, the
United Kingdom is, at least on the surface, the junior partner. The U.S. sits
somewhere in between, broadly keen to make it work, but distracted by countless
other major world events, like the ongoing strategic competition with China.

The barriers to AUKUS success are numerous. At the national level, each country
has its own political and economic challenges. Australia will face an election
sometime between now and the end of May 2022. If the current Morrison government
wins re-election, then it's a safe bet that AUKUS will continue along its
current path. The opposition Labor party has also indicated support for AUKUS,
and Prime Minister Morrison wrote to the Labor leader thanking him for his
“bipartisan approach.” Yet, a new government brings with it a new set of
priorities, which could have consequences for the early stages of AUKUS's
development. The U.S. mid-term elections this year will soon distract Congress,
and so the legislative actions necessary to bring AUKUS into being may well have
to wait until 2023. The United Kingdom will go to the polls no later than May
2024.

Given its considerable current international challenges, the United States
counts AUKUS as only one among many tasks it must undertake. An essential
element of AUKUS's success would require Congressional action, including
approval for the nuclear agreement under the Atomic Energy Act. Beyond
legislative compliance, the bureaucratic infrastructure to implement AUKUS would
need to quickly be established. This includes funding and empowering the working
groups with deep analytic expertise to hammer out the details of the security
pact. The imbalance of interest between the three nations suggests that
Australia has the most to lose, and so it will likely invest the greater effort
to see that AUKUS succeeds.


WHAT DOES AUKUS NEED TO BE EFFECTIVE?

AUKUS success depends upon the development of a new legislative framework in the
U.S., the commitment of organizational resources, empowering the working groups
tasked with governing AUKUS, ensuring access to the requisite expertise, the
ability to identify and manage barriers to success, and the employment of
measurable indicators of success. These are not easy tasks, and each carries
some risk.

An unprecedented U.S. legislative framework would include not only information
sharing agreements on nuclear propulsion, but also on much broader areas in key
sectors. Such a framework could allow for innovation to flourish, particularly
as AUKUS looks for opportunities in artificial intelligence, quantum, and other
key defense technologies. The role of the private sector, and the complications
therein, is an under analyzed aspect to AUKUS. For example, Lockheed Martin was
going to provide Australia with the weapons systems for its recently terminated
French submarine contract; now the company may well be the supplier of the
weapons systems for newly planned Australian nuclear submarine. And yet, just
two days after the announcement of AUKUS, BAE and Rolls Royce won the contract
to design a new nuclear powered submarine for the UK, which may have
implications for Australia's new submarine, and Lockheed, too. The involvement
of defense industry will also raise issues regarding commercial data
sensitivities and intellectual property issues—both of which should be studied,
as they may require additional legislative attention.

AUKUS would need to be adequately resourced to take on these tasks, which would
entail a distributed governance framework with shared responsibilities and
committed staff and resources, including political and organizational support
from Canberra, London, and Washington. In the U.S., for example, the Departments
of Defense, State and Energy would have roles to play. It has been assumed that
AUKUS is largely focused on the Indo-Pacific, thus drawing interests from U.S.
Indo-Pacific Command. That said, given the broad technology interest in AUKUS,
it also draws in the Defense Technology Security Agency and Cyber Command. The
U.K. would see input from the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Defence, the
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Royal Navy. In Canberra the
primary interests will be from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Royal Australian Navy and the
Department of Defence. Two Australian cabinet officials have defence portfolios
relevant to AUKUS, including the minister for defence as well as the minister
for defence industry.

In launching AUKUS, a number of working groups have been established to study
and flesh out the cooperative details. In order to be effective, these working
groups could be empowered by strong leadership, informed by evidence-based
analysis, and encouraged to convene regularly. They could go beyond admiring the
problems to identifying solutions. The success of the working groups would also
greatly depend on the active and continuous support of senior leadership from
all three nations.

AUKUS is likely to shine a bright light on the barriers to collaboration—not
only technical, but also bureaucratic, budgetary, cultural, regulatory,
political, and strategic.

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More specifically, the AUKUS working groups could have access to the requisite
expertise. Senior leaders could also ensure that the working groups have access
to experts, practitioners, and program implementers from Australia, the U.S.,
and the UK who would understand the breadth and depth of the existing barriers
and the necessary workarounds. This could be challenging: in the process of
developing the cooperative framework, AUKUS is likely to shine a bright light on
the many barriers to collaboration—not only technical, but also bureaucratic,
budgetary, cultural, regulatory, political, and strategic.

AUKUS could benefit from clear, measurable outcomes for each working group,
developed from the outset. For example, successfully meeting working group
deliverable dates is an obvious and essential metric, as is consistent
maintenance of working group meeting schedules and speed of decision making.
Progress in armaments cooperation is another metric, and includes changing
processes that facilitate innovation and deepening of cooperation. The ability
to resolve key bureaucratic barriers (such as routine overclassification of
information) and regulatory challenges (such as technology transfer limitations)
would be yet another hurdle to overcome. The three capitals might develop
multi-year plans detailing proposed projects, anticipated costs, and timelines
for delivery. Success on each of these projects could be reported annually.

The experiment of AUKUS clearly seems to offer significant opportunities for
Canberra, London, and Washington. More than a repackaging of existing
capabilities, AUKUS reimagines the way in which three capable allies could work
together, more closely than ever before, in many respects. The potential success
of AUKUS will rely upon the effective management of this mini-lateral
arrangement, and each countries' willingness to adopt new policies and make
legislative changes to allow for this close collaboration. Making such changes
would require strong management, but even more so, it would require the
recognition from all parties that such changes are necessary to make progress in
addressing common, overriding strategic goals. What happens now will determine
whether the U.S., Australia and the UK can compete more effectively against
China and Russia, or whether AUKUS becomes an interesting footnote in the story
of what could have been.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jennifer D.P. Moroney is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation in
Arlington, Virginia, and was inaugural director of RAND's office in Canberra,
Australia, from 2014 to 2018.

Alan Tidwell is director of the Center for Australian, New Zealand and Pacific
Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University.

A version of this commentary was originally published in The Strategist on March
22, 2022.

Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their
professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.

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AUTHORS


 * JENNIFER D. P. MORONEY
   
   @jdpmoroney
   
   SENIOR POLITICAL SCIENTIST


TOPICS

 * Australia
 * Military Technology
 * Security Cooperation
 * Submarines
 * United Kingdom
 * United States


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