As a matter of national security, and basic strategic sanity, Aukus should be scrapped and replaced with Aujus.
Drop the Brits. Bring in the Japanese.
When Aukus was announced, I supported it enthusiastically, largely because it killed the farcical submarine deal with the French – one of the many idiotic, hubristic, and grotesquely wasteful legacies of the Turnbull era. Ending that fiasco alone justified celebration.
The idea that France is a rock-solid defence partner collapses under even a cursory glance at history.
Before the 1967 Six-Day War, France was Israel’s primary supplier of Mirage fighter jets. Then, right on the eve of war, President de Gaulle imposed an arms embargo, halting deliveries and cutting off spare parts for aircraft already paid for and already in service.
France had ‘realigned’ toward Arab states, and Israel was left to improvise in wartime. Talk about Mirage.
The lesson is obvious – a defence partner that turns off the tap when shooting starts is not a defence partner at all.
But Britain is not much better.
Despite shared history, sentimentality, and endless Churchill cosplay, the UK has a long record of choosing itself first and its allies later. In 1973, Britain joined the European Economic Community and happily swallowed the Common Agricultural Policy, sacrificing Australian agricultural exporters to secure European, particularly French approval. Commonwealth loyalty evaporated the moment market access was at stake.
Fast forward to today, and the British rot is no longer subtle.
The United Arab Emirates has now removed UK universities from its list of state-funded study destinations, citing concerns that students are being radicalised on British campuses.
The move means the UAE has removed British universities from a list of higher education institutions eligible for state scholarships amid growing tensions over London’s decision not to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation, the Financial Times reported.
‘[The UAE] don’t want their kids to be radicalised on campus,’ a person directly involved with the decision told the outlet.
Let that sink in. A Middle Eastern government has decided British universities are too extreme for its citizens.
The UK is not a country in strategic ascent. It is a country in economic, social, and institutional decline. Tying Australia’s long-term national security to a rapidly decaying state is not prudent. It is negligence.
Japan, by contrast, is a serious country with a serious military, a direct stake in Indo-Pacific security, advanced industrial capacity, and an unambiguous interest in deterring regional aggression. It actually lives in the neighbourhood.
That matters.
If this alliance is about submarines, deterrence, and hard power rather than nostalgia and accents, then the answer is obvious. I suspect a US administration would be entirely open to the logic.
Aukus is dead.
Long live Aujus.
