No nuclear arsenal for Australia
In this regard, Pentagon sources assure that Australia does not intend to acquire a nuclear arsenal anyway. The agreement on the supply of a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines represents a qualitative leap for Canberra’s military and defense ambitions as they are more agile, faster submarines, which can go as far as the South China Sea and which have relatively little need to surface.
The summit in sight
The announcement came a week before the summit that the United States will hold, for the first time in attendance, with the leaders of India, Japan and Australia, the so-called Quad format, another alliance that annoys the Chinese who speak of it as a “Born Asian.” The fleet, Australian Prime Minister Morrison said, will be built entirely in Adelaide, with the technological contribution of the US and the UK.
At this point, a significant problem with France remains to be resolved. Canberra in 2016 had signed an order with the French Naval Group for the supply of 12 conventional submarines, an agreement that according to the French media at this point is not. It is likely that the contract envisaged penalties in the event of termination, but it is not excluded that an accommodation could be found, as Biden’s words seem to suggest: “There is no division of interests between the Atlantic and Pacific partners, France is a partner key in strengthening security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region ”.
Reassure partners
The new commitment of the American administration also wants to reassure its partners, especially after the disastrous disengagement from Afghanistan and after the president outlined a political line more interested in the solution of internal problems than in the solution of international crises. In this case, however, the trilateral alliance responds well to the number one priority of American foreign policy for the coming years: the containment of China, increasingly threatening towards Taiwan and determined to reassert full control over Hong Kong with a series of laws repressive that effectively limited autonomy,
A containment that looks above all to expansionism in the South China Sea and to the fact that in relatively few years Beijing has built the largest military fleet in the world with 360 warships against the 260 of the United States at the end of 2020.