By Lin Yuan
The British military recently announced that it will assign a nuclear submarine detachment to Australia, which once again caught intense public attention amid the international criticism that the nuclear submarine cooperation among the US, UK and Australia will increase the risk of nuclear proliferation. Analysts said Britain’s limited capacity decides that its plan to deploy nuclear submarines in Australia will hardly get the expected effects, but we cannot underestimate the regional security risks the move may cause.
Australian media pointed out that the deployment will enable Britain to meddle in the Asian-Pacific affairs more conveniently, but responses from different sides seem to show a general questioning of the feasibility of London and Canberra’s strategic intention.
On the one hand, Britain is ridiculed for its declining strengths. Britain’s military capacity has been frequently questioned in recent years. At the end of 2021, the Defense Committee of the British Parliament released an assessment report claiming that the British navy is at the most difficult period in history with substantial problems in its overall capacity, scale and structure. London’s deployment of nuclear submarines in Australia is generally taken as being symbolic only because its submarines cannot really deter anyone, either in terms of quantity or firepower.
On the other hand, Britain’s crisis-spreading move is boycotted. Many countries have protested strongly against the accelerated UK-Australia cooperation on nuclear submarines. Prime Minister of Malaysia Ismail said Australia’s deployment of nuclear submarines will aggravate regional tension and trigger an arms race. In a recent meeting with Australia’s new Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin reiterated Kuala Lumpur’s concern over Canberra’s nuclear submarine plan. Representatives from other Pacific island states like Kiribati and Samoa and from Russia and Pakistan have also expressed their concerns over the US-UK-Australia nuclear submarine cooperation on various occasions.
Even within Australia, there is strong objection to the deployment of British nuclear submarines. Behm, Director of the International & Security Affairs Program of Australian Institute, held that the AUKUS military alliance may increase the risk of nuclear warfare in the long term. A key member of the Australian NGO, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapon, said the trilateral statement by the US, UK and Australia on nuclear submarine cooperation indicates a nuclearization tendency in Australia’s military development.
Following Britain’s announcement, the US House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces will pass the Australia-US Submarine Officer Pipeline Act in the coming days, which will allow the Australian Navy to assign officers to participate in America’s nuclear submarine training course every year and board their submarines to familiarize themselves with the operational procedures.
The US Department of Defense also pledged to upgrade the infrastructure at its military bases in Guam and Australia and deploy more troops and equipment in the latter. It’s foreseeable that as the AUKUS military cooperation keeps deepening, Australia will be turned into a bridgehead for the US and its allies to implement the “Indo-Pacific strategy”.
It is generally believed that the nuclear submarine cooperation among the US, UK and Australia may spur other countries to follow suit, triggering the chain effect of nuclear proliferation and regional arms race. The resulting greater risk of military conflicts will pose a serious threat to global peace and stability.
