Follow us on social

51563813972_3a38446dde_k

Why is Jake Sullivan so coy?

Biden's National Security adviser doesn't want to talk about AUKUS in any terms that might suggest a military alliance — which it is.

Analysis | Asia-Pacific

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s speech to the Lowy Institute in Australia featured many points he has made before. Prominent among these was a focus on allies and partners, a hallmark of the Biden Administration. Sullivan took pains to assure his audience that he is committed to America’s friends. 

Sullivan artfully dodged answering a question on French ire over the announcement of AUKUS, the new alliance between the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, by saying he is looking to the future. France was deeply upset that its previous submarine contract with Australia was summarily abandoned over a new deal to build long-range nuclear submarines. It won’t be so easy for Washington to bring the relationship with Paris back to the good old days.

But it was the question of AUKUS that deserved the deepest probing from the event moderator. Sullivan primarily portrayed AUKUS as a technology-sharing initiative that demonstrated how the United States enables the scientific progress of its closest friends. Sure AUKUS is about technology, as it includes (other than sharing methods for fabricating highly sensitive nuclear-propelled submarines) collaboration in areas such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. 

More to the point however, AUKUS isn't some high-minded scientific endeavor like curing cancer. It is an explicitly military alliance about arming Australia with offensive, blue-water capability that goes way beyond national and coastal defense (which the French diesel-electric submarines were primarily designed to do). AUKUS-built submarines will be much more expensive than the diesel-electric ones they replaced. Though their deployment may be up to two decades away, the submarines will have chief utility as an additional sword arm for projecting power in the open oceans. 

AUKUS may be less about ensuring allies can defend themselves and more about their conversion to frontline states, perhaps in a future coalition of the willing aimed at China. No wonder key Southeast Asian states, who do not want to be run over in a self-interested contest of the great powers, are deeply concerned. They may not belong to the select Anglosphere club, but are America’s friends no less.

If Sullivan had a rationale on AUKUS as a region-wide offensively-oriented pact, and the potential transformation of Australia’s role in U.S.-led plans on China, this was an opportunity to get at it. But in failing to probe the U.S. National Security Advisor further on the nature and intent of this pact, the event moderator missed his chance. The American and the Australian people, as also the people of Southeast Asia, need to know more about the geopolitical logic behind AUKUS, and the risks this entails to their lives and their interests. Mr. Sullivan has yet some explaining to do.


NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoană, Jake Sullivan, US National Security Advisor and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in October. (NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization/Flickr)
Analysis | Asia-Pacific
Latin America's hidden role in shaping US foreign policy
Top image credit: President Getulio Vargas of Brazil confers with President Franklin D. Roosevelt at a conference aboard a U.S. destroyer in the Potengi River harbor at Natal, January 1943 (via US LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

Latin America's hidden role in shaping US foreign policy

Latin America

For much of the Washington D.C. foreign policy apparatus, Latin America — a region plagued by economic instability, political upheaval, and social calamity — represents little more than a headache or an after-thought.

Not for Greg Grandin.

keep readingShow less
US Navy Red Sea Houthis
The USS Carney intercepts Houthi missiles in the Red Sea on Oct. 19, 2023. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Aaron Lau/ Public domain)

US missile depletion from Houthi, Israel conflicts may shock you

Military Industrial Complex

Historic levels of air defense missiles were expended by U.S. Navy ships in the Middle East in defense of Israel and in protection of Red Sea shipping since October of 2023. This led Admiral James Kilby, Naval Operations acting chief, to testify in June that their ship-launched air defense interceptors — SM-3s — are being expended at an “alarming rate” in defense of Israel.

But just how alarmed should we really be?

keep readingShow less
Hiroshima
Top image credit: Dennis MacDonald / Shutterstock.com

Symposium: Why was Japan the only nuclear holocaust in 80 yrs?

Global Crises

Eighty years ago today, August 6, 1945, the U.S. military dropped an atomic weapon nicknamed “Little Boy” on the city Hiroshima, Japan, resulting in a blast equivalent of 15 kilotons of TNT, killing approximately 66,000 people immediately and some 100,000 more, the vast majority civilians, by the end of 1945.

Three days later, the U.S. deployed another nuclear bomb — this one “Fat Man” — on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, leaving upwards of 80,000 people dead by the end of the year.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.