Extract from ABC News
Analysis
China's display of an array of naval weaponry and assets, as opposed to land-based ones, could hardly have been less subtle. (Reuters: Tingshu Wang)
Two developments this week that emerged separate to, but in the wake of, the Military Might Spectacular that paraded through Beijing, reveal as much about a "new world order" as goosestepping Chinese soldiers and an endless sea of missiles and other weaponry.
The first development was the revelation by The Financial Times that Pentagon officials had informed European diplomats last week that the US would no longer fund programs that train and equip militaries in eastern European countries that would be on the front line of any conflict with Russia.
Current funding will run out in September next year. A White House official said the move aligned with Donald Trump's efforts to "re-evaluate and realign" foreign aid.
The second development, also reported in the FT, was that US and Taiwanese defence officials held secret talks in Alaska last week.
The significance of the secrecy is that the administration had cancelled earlier planned and well-publicised talks in June in a move widely perceived to have been taken to avoid doing anything that would stop a summit between Trump and China's President Xi Jinping on trade next month.
Vladimir Putin, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Xi Jinping andShavkat Mirziyoyev at this week's military parade in Beijing. (Reuters: Sputnik/Alexander Kazakov/Pool)
Washington goes soft on Beijing
Despite China being the most obvious target for any US trade action, Washington has gone soft on Beijing for months now, extending deadlines before tariffs are imposed, even as Trump has hit India and others with punitive ones.
For these efforts at effectively appeasing Russia's Vladimir Putin and trying to woo China's Xi Jinping, all the US president has so far managed to achieve is having to watch Xi have his own summit with Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, with a clearly alienated Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi among a host of other world leaders also quite happy to hang out in Beijing.
The European developments were the clearest sign yet that Trump appears completely comfortable with the idea that Russia is entitled to what is euphemistically referred to as a "sphere of influence" in Europe, separate to any debate about who pays for European defence.
Meanwhile, China was sending an equally clear sign to the US that it was more than capable of fending off any American attempt to intervene over Taiwan.
It almost seems unnecessary, given Trump and his officials have in turn been signalling that trade takes precedence over both Taiwan and strategic issues in Asia, as far as he is concerned.
The presence of three nuclear powers in Beijing — China, Russia and North Korea — seemed to also focus people's minds a little more than normal on China's capacity for nuclear war, as analysts observed that the nuclear weapons on display had the capacity to easily reach the US.
Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un attend the military parade in China. (Sarah Ferguson)
A display of naval weaponry
China's display this week of an array of naval weaponry and assets, as opposed to land-based ones, could hardly have been less subtle.
It wasn't just that there was a lot of it, or that it appeared to represent absolutely cutting-edge military technology.
It was the fact that, as defence and intelligence expert Hugh White says, this extraordinary and rapid build-up of military hardware is currently focused on achieving one very specific short term aim — the reunification of Taiwan.
Then there's the broader, less specific one about demonstrating who is on top, in a geostrategic sense, in the western Pacific.
The US, by comparison, might have even more stuff, but it still regards itself as a global power, and Trump wants to be regarded that way, even with his confusing insistence both that Europe has to look after itself and that he has so much power to end conflicts around the globe that he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The US is reviewing the AUKUS submarine deal to ensure it aligns with its America First policy. (AP: Business Wire)
So where do these developments leave Australia?
You may recall a couple of months ago that stories leaked about how the man heading the US review of AUKUS, Elbridge Colby, was asking Australia and Japan to make clear their commitment to a fight over Taiwan.
The irony of this was that the US technically maintains a position of "strategic ambiguity" on Taiwan. That is, not saying it would come to its defence. Not saying it wouldn't (but still expecting Australia to say what it would do).
All the signs that have emerged from the Trump administration since then have only strengthened the idea that the US position — or at least that of the White House — is not that ambiguous any more. Which is why the Taiwanese are rather anxious these days.
AUKUS ties us to the confused American geopolitical muddle in strategic terms, and technologically to a military hardware that is simply now a fantasy.
Ask a politician, diplomat or official about AUKUS and they will insist that the political support for the scheme is still 100 per cent in Washington. That China hawk Elbridge Colby is an outlier whose views aren't too important.
They dismiss the idea that his review — whenever it is released given the flexible time schedule on which the Trump administration works — will definitely not scupper AUKUS.
But that perhaps sets up the wrong expectation. Colby probably won't say that AUKUS shouldn't go ahead. But he might observe that it won't be in the US's interests to do it unless it can dramatically accelerate the building of Virginia Class submarines.
And this is where the basic flaws of production schedules deviate from all that Washington-Canberra bonhomie.
AUKUS a threat to submarine capabilities
Peter Briggs is a former submariner and commander of the Royal Australian Submarine Squadron.
He also believes Australia should have nuclear-powered submarines, so is not against the idea in principle. But he has been increasingly critical of the whole AUKUS submarine proposal.
In a devastating analysis this week, he says the AUKUS plan "is now a threat to both the US and Australia's submarine capabilities".
He says the US Navy's attack submarine force "is shrinking faster than anticipated" and notes that the US has other priorities in its submarine building program than the Virginia Class subs we are supposed to be getting.
Building 12 new Columbia class submarines is the US's top priority, he says, and plans to build larger versions of the Virginia will only slow things down further.
The target of building "a Columbia each year and two of the larger Virginias would require at least a threefold increase in submarine construction tonnage compared with annual average build of 1.14 smaller versions of the Virginia actually achieved over the last 21 years", he says.
"Compared to the US Navy's target of delivering two Virginias each year over this period, that is a cumulative shortfall of 18 [nuclear powered submarines]."
Add in Australia's demands and it gets even worse.
Instead of its target of having 66 attack submarines, the US "has 47 or less now and is heading towards 41 or less in my estimate", Briggs says.
"With luck, the current Pentagon [Colby] review of AUKUS will reach this obvious conclusion and withdraw from this plan. Failing that we will continue until reality hits, when the next president declares the US national interest outweighs the 'best endeavours' we are now relying on."
Briggs is almost more pessimistic about the UK submarines we are supposed to eventually get ever leaving the design board.
Plan B, he says, should be just one class of submarine, a mature design which will have to be built in Australia simply because neither the UK nor US has the capacity to build them.
"There are two obvious options," he says, "a Virginia derivative or, wait for it, the French Suffren."
Of course, the French sub would be able to come as it is already configured — as a nuclear-powered vessel — not having to go through all the contortions of turning it into a diesel powered one as had been originally suggested.
Briggs dismisses the idea that changing at this late stage would inject further delay: "It will mostly likely be quicker."
Of course, the Chinese display of hardware this week once again raised the more fundamental questions about the suitability of manned submarines, given all the focus on unmanned vessels.
Peter Briggs is a former commander of the Royal Australian Navy's submarine squadron. (Four Corners: Rob Hill)
Politicians won't voice AUKUS concerns
Hugh White observes that China's showing-off also only highlights the madness of our current spend on new surface vessels, like the Hunter class frigates.
In the new age of unmanned vehicles, manned ones like these, he says, would be like cavalry in the Second World War, with 99 per cent of their effort being designed to defend their crew, rather than attack the enemy.
The weird thing is that so many politicians on both sides of the political fence believe we will never see any Virginia Class submarines delivered as vessels of the Royal Australian Navy. None of them will say it, even as the complexities of the world order shatter into much more complicated arrangements.
The political world — here and overseas — has started to come to terms with the weakness of Trump and the "every man for himself" chaos he has unleashed.
But it is not clear that our defence establishment can really conceptualise a world separate from its enmeshment with the US.
Whatever the actual strategic vulnerabilities, and money wasted, White says the failure of process involved in the AUKUS muddle is likely to have scholars shaking their heads for years in terms of how this could have been allowed to happen.
A failure, he says, which makes Robodebt — and government ministers' failure to take corrective steps — look like leadership in action by comparison.
Instead, Australia plods along, trying to convince itself that all will be well. And without one leader prepared to say that we now have little choice but to take our own independent strategic path.
Laura Tingle is the ABC's global affairs editor.
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