This commentary was originally published by the Lowy Institute.

When Barack Obama announced the rebalance to Asia in 2011, he also revealed the rotational deployment of US Marines to Darwin. In the intervening decade, however, additional changes to US regional posture have been few and far between. As a result, leading US defense expert Michèle Flournoy has observed, “Washington has not delivered on its promised ‘pivot’ to Asia.” Australian experts have expressed concern that “the Biden administration lacks a sense of urgency about China as a near-term military competitor”.

In light of these critiques, the AUKUS deal, the tripartite agreement for the sharing of sensitive nuclear technology between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, sends a badly needed signal that the United States is serious about rebalancing to Asia.

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Critics of AUKUS have expressed a number of valid concerns. They worry that eighteen months is a long time to wait for clarity on the plan, and eighteen years would be too long to wait for submarines. Nuclear-powered submarines will prove difficult and expensive for Australia to master, and could create non-proliferation concerns. Washington, Canberra, and London will have to mend ties with Paris as well as concerned friends in Southeast Asia, especially Jakarta. Others have argued that the deal ties Australia too closely to the United States or creates unnecessary tensions with China (although we would dispute these last two assertions).

Despite these concerns, we still believe that the strategic logic of Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines justified the agreement. But for those who disagree about the value of the submarines, this should not by itself obviate the logic of the larger AUKUS deal. Australia and many other US allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific have long sought a clearer US commitment to the region and to their defense. That is what AUKUS provides. This is not only about nuclear-powered submarines; it is about a strengthened US commitment to Australia, and a more robust shared capability for defending Australian and American interests.

Urgent action has been required because China has modernized its military at an impressive rate over the past two decades. The People’s Liberation Army has grown from “a sizable but mostly archaic military” which “lacked the capabilities, organization, and readiness for modern warfare” to one that could take on the United States in regional contingencies, in particular Taiwan. As a result, US conventional deterrence against China has eroded. Part of the challenge is that the United States is not a resident power in Asia – it largely relies on its allies for its ability to project power there. To bolster its regional military posture, it needs more base access and fewer restrictions on the use of those facilities.

The United States has prioritized interoperability with its allies since the Cold War, as the ability to fight together against a common adversary could determine victory or defeat. But Washington still prefers to keep much of its most sensitive information, including advanced technology, close hold. To achieve deep interoperability and ensure that allied forces can not only operate together but be truly interchangeable, the United States needs to share more and establish infrastructure for cooperation on emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. But none of this is possible if US partners aren’t willing to take the risk of upsetting Beijing. Countries in the region need to show China that they will not give in to its attempts at coercion – whether political, economic, or military.

The AUKUS agreement is a significant step towards meeting these demands. Australia will host US bombers on its territory and consider supporting US vessels at HMAS Stirling, two items that have long been on Washington’s wish list. Australia is also the first country to receive access to US naval reactors since the technology transfer to the United Kingdom in 1958 – a sign that the United States is shifting its mentality on sharing sensitive information with its closest allies. This is a critical step toward “pooling resources and integrating supply chains for defense-related science, industry, and supply chains” to ensure a technological edge over China. Through these efforts to build “federated” defenses, the Biden administration may finally be taking US alliances into the 21st century.

It is unsurprising that China responded to AUKUS with a canned claim that it harms regional stability, encourages arms races, undermines nonproliferation efforts, and reflects “an outdated zero-sum Cold War mentality”. But Chinese commentators also recognize that Australia plays a critical role in Asia, and view this as a sign that countries are willing to come together to push back against Beijing. Social media postings more directly express concern that a counterbalancing coalition is forming despite economic dependence on China. After all, rather than kowtowing to Chinese economic pressure, Australia has cooperated with the United States in two of the most sensitive military areas – nuclear power and undersea warfare.

As the United States, Australia, and other countries work to build resiliency against Chinese coercion and bolster deterrence against Chinese aggression, there are going to be tradeoffs. AUKUS is by no means perfect, but it demonstrates the Biden administration’s commitment to rebalancing its efforts towards Asia, and adjusting to a new strategic environment. Although the agreement will not change Chinese behavior, it sets Washington, Canberra, and London on an important course. Allied leaders should examine ways to strengthen the deal and built on it, lest this is seen as another false start in America’s long-promised rebalance to the region.

This essay was originally published by East Asia Forum.

Nuclear-powered submarines for Australia was the most eye-catching part of the announcement of ‘AUKUS’, the new trilateral security initiative joining Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The eight new boats would greatly extend the range, endurance and firepower of Australia’s submarine fleet. They would break the taboo against nuclear power in Australia. And they show that the United States and the United Kingdom are committed to strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific.

But while AUKUS shows a seriousness about naval power, it shows an even greater seriousness about alliances. The trilateral initiative seeks to expand an existing alliance structure — the Five Eyes intelligence alliance — into the field of leading-edge defense technology and industry. AUKUS goes much deeper than submarines — but it cannot do everything.

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The Biden administration promised to prioritize strategic competition with China, and to reinvigorate Washington’s alliances. Progress on this has been positive, but incremental. Aside from some high-level visits, Biden’s most notable initiative was elevating the Quad — comprising Australia, India, Japan and the United States — to the summit level.

AUKUS is qualitatively different. The submarine deal alone enmeshes the United States and United Kingdom into the region for decades. But more ambitiously, beyond submarines, AUKUS seeks to win the technology competition with China by pooling resources and integrating supply chains for defense-related science, industry, and supply chains. This will be the decades-long and multifaceted purpose of AUKUS — a transnational project racing to seize advantages in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and cyber technology.

This kind of technology integration is a radical idea. Countries often share military technology, but some technologies are more highly prized than others. Nuclear technology is in a class of its own. The United States has only shared its nuclear submarine technology with the United Kingdom — at the height of the Cold War. The United States is now so animated by competition with China that it will share the technology with one more country, Australia, for the first time in decades.

The technologies at the heart of AUKUS are at the cutting edge of scientific research, and promise to deliver unprecedented advantages in military power. The submarine project will likely serve as a forcing function to drive much of this new collaboration. It is still unclear how much of the submarines’ nuclear propulsion technology will be shared with Australia, but the Australian defense community will almost certainly gain access to the submarines’ other state-of-the-art technologies, including sensors and data-processing systems for maritime domain awareness and tracking and evading adversary forces.

What makes the United Kingdom and Australia Washington’s most valued technology partners? They are members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, which over decades has developed joint systems, organizations and processes for sharing collection responsibilities and intelligence data.

Less tangibly, but at least as importantly, this has cultivated mutual trust and habits of cooperation, including through the past two decades combating terrorism and fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Compared to the other Five Eyes members, Canada and New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Australia are also demonstrably more committed to upholding the strategic vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific.

AUKUS’s radical integration could only be possible among Five Eyes partners because AUKUS will be working on extremely sensitive intelligence-related technologies that Washington would only entrust to its closest intelligence partners. AUKUS’s stated technology priorities — artificial intelligence, quantum computing and cyber — are technologies that are at the forefront of emerging intelligence capabilities. Little wonder that several Australian intelligence chiefs have been front and center explaining AUKUS to Australia’s other strategic partners.

This is probably also why France was excluded from the grouping, prompting a sudden and ugly diplomatic spat. Despite its likeminded interests in the region, and despite its military power and activism, France does not share the systems and relationships that define the Five Eyes. In the years to come, AUKUS will gain greater regional acceptance and utility if it figures out how to share some of its prized defense technology and data with other partners, including France and others in the region.

AUKUS may represent the closest integration among partners, but it cannot do everything, and it cannot replace other groupings. The region requires a new security architecture, but unlike Cold War umbrellas like NATO, this architecture will comprise multiple, overlapping groupings, each with different roles and strengths. AUKUS’s technology-sharing mission is invaluable, but it is limited.

Different groupings serve different purposes. The Quad will remain critical for coordinating the strategic policies of China’s most powerful regional competitors, for presenting a common vision of regional order, and for acting as the nucleus for broader cooperation when needed. At its first in-person summit last week, the Quad reiterated its broad vision of promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific. And as the Indian government recently declared, AUKUS does not compete with or undermine the Quad.

Other partners like France and India cannot be full members of AUKUS, but they are indispensable in other roles that AUKUS cannot replicate. They each have significant military power, valuable geographic advantages and abiding networks of influence. And they are each vigorously engaged in the region, including through bilateral and trilateral partnerships with Australia.

The members of AUKUS should therefore work hard to repair their relationships with France because broad overlapping partnerships are a key asset in strategic competition with China. But not all regional challenges require a broad, inclusive approach. AUKUS’s declared objectives are radical — unseen in the firmament of US alliances, and certainly unseen in the region — and only possible precisely because the initiative is so exclusive.

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) is pleased to invite applications for four types of fellowship in contemporary Asia studies for the 2022-23 academic year.

The Center offers postdoctoral fellowships that promote multidisciplinary research on contemporary Japan, contemporary Asia broadly defined, health or healthcare policy in the Asia-Pacific region, and a fellowship for experts on Southeast Asia. Learn more about each fellowship and its eligibility and specific application requirements:

Postdoctoral Fellowship on Contemporary Japan

Hosted by the Japan Program at APARC, the fellowship supports research on contemporary Japan in a broad range of disciplines including political science, economics, sociology, law, policy studies, and international relations. Appointments are for one year beginning in fall quarter 2022. The application deadline is January 3, 2022.