The existential threat to Aukus: choking on US red tape
- The technology sharing central to the Australian-United Kingdom-United States alliance faces entrenched bureaucratic hurdles
- ‘If Aukus fails, there is a good chance that the United States can no longer defend the liberal international order,’ one analyst says
“It’s all bound up by red tape,” said Ashley Townshend, an Australia-based senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The paperwork is endless. The time it takes is extremely cumbersome.”
Export control rules constricted Australia’s ability to service, maintain or overhaul many US and Australian systems with US components, let alone obtain or stockpile weapons, analysts said.
Moreover, the fundamental premise behind Aukus – that the US and its two closest allies can operate seamlessly and interchangeably, trade equipment and backstop each other – is called into question by turf battles and paperwork.
Even joining US forces in shared military exercises – a cornerstone of Pentagon strategy to deter Beijing and demonstrate that combined forces are greater than the sum of their parts – requires Australia to submit retransfer or re-export requests to the State Department before it can fly and sail alongside US forces, let alone carry out exercises together.