Australia faces a “colossal surrender of sovereignty” if promised US nuclear-powered submarines do not arrive under Australian control, former foreign affairs minister Bob Carr has said, arguing the US is “utterly not a reliable ally” to Australia.
“It’s inevitable we’re not getting them,” Carr told the Guardian, ahead of the release of a report from Australians for War Powers Reform that argues the multibillion-dollar Aukus deal had been imposed upon Australia without sufficient public or parliamentary scrutiny.
“The evidence is mounting that we’re not going to get Virginia-class subs from the United States,” Carr said, “for the simple reason they’re not building enough for their own needs and will not, in the early 2030s, be peeling off subs from their own navy to sell to us.”
Under “pillar one” of the planned Aukus arrangement, it is proposed the US would sell Australia between three and five of its Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines in the early 2030s before the Aukus-class submarines were built, first in the UK, then in Australia.
However, the US has already forecast it might not have capacity to spare any of its Virginia-class boats, the Congressional Research Service instead floating a proposal in which: “instead of … them being sold to Australia, these additional boats would instead be retained in US Navy service and operated out of Australia”.
Carr said that alternative would leave Australia without Australian-flagged submarines and no control of when, and to where, those boats were deployed.
“It involves the total loss of any sovereign submarine capacity and, more than that, a colossal surrender of Australian sovereignty in general.”
Australia, Carr said, needed to look past the “cheerful flag-waving propaganda” of the proclaimed Aukus deal, saying the alternative likely to be presented by the US would leave Australia “totally integrated in American defence planning and we’ll be hosting even more potential nuclear targets”.
Australians for War Powers Reform, a group that advocates for parliamentary oversight of the decision to send Australian troops to war, launched a report on Thursday morning arguing that the Aukus deal – signed by the Morrison government in 2021 and adopted by its Albanese-led successor – had been instituted without any public or parliamentary scrutiny.
“The public and the national parliament have been kept in the dark every step of the way,” the report argues.
“The Aukus pact has become a textbook example of how to disenfranchise the community, providing almost no transparency or democracy in a sweeping decision which will affect Australia for decades.”
Aukus and the Surrender of Transparency, Accountability and Sovereignty argues the multi-decade, multibillion-dollar Aukus deal was presented to the Australian public without any discussion, consultation, and without parliamentary debate. The current forecast cost of “pillar one” of Aukus – to buy US Virginia-class submarines and build Aukus subs – is $368bn to the 2050s.
The report raises concerns over vague “political commitments” offered by Australia in exchange for the Aukus deal, as well as practical concerns such as where and how nuclear waste would be stored in Australia.
“Aukus has no legitimate social licence because the public has been shut out of the process, and as a result, scepticism and cynicism have increased.”
Dr Alison Broinowski, AWPR committee member and a former Australian diplomat, said Australia’s agreement to the Aukus deal was manifestation of a structural flaw in Australia’s democracy, where decisions to go to war, or to make consequential defence decisions, were not subject to parliamentary scrutiny or public debate.
Broinowski said Aukus was acutely significant because of its size and potential consequence “and yet the same failure to be frank with the people characterises every government this country has had, during every war there’s been”.
She argued Australia had no control over Aukus. “We don’t know what Trump’s going to do and we have no control over what he does. And so we’re left hoping for the best, fearing the worst and with absolutely no way of controlling or influencing what happens, unless we first get ourselves out of Aukus.”
The Australian Submarine Agency’s Aukus strategy, released this month, said the optimal Aukus pathway would see US boats sold to Australia “from the early 2030s”. The strategy argues Australia’s acquisition of conventionally armed nuclear-powered submarines would represent “one of the most consequential endeavours” in Australia’s history, “at a time when our nation faces the most challenging strategic circumstances since the second world war”.
“An Australian submarine industrial base capable of delivering a persistent, potent and sovereign multi-class submarine capability is vital to the defence of Australia.”
Welcoming a rotation of US marines to the Northern Territory this week, the defence minister, Richard Marles, said the Australian defence force continued to work closely with the US: “The power of our alliance with the United States is a testament to our shared dedication to fostering a secure, stable and inclusive Indo-Pacific.”
But Carr, the foreign affairs minister between 2012 and 2013, said the Aukus deal highlighted the larger issue of American unreliability in its security alliance with Australia.
“The US is utterly not a reliable ally. No one could see it in those terms,” he said.
“[President] Trump is wilful and cavalier and so is his heir-apparent, JD Vance: they are laughing at alliance partners, whom they’ve almost studiously disowned.”
Carr said America had been fundamentally altered by Trump’s second administration and that American leadership of a rules-based international order was “not returning”.
“The speed of America disowning allies to embrace a new world order where it cuts deals with Russia and China has been so astonishing that people are struggling to grasp it, especially in this country, where people just cannot contemplate a world where America treats so lightly its alliance with Australia.”