AUKUS will boost Australia’s comprehensive national power. The challenge for Australian statecraft is to harness its effect right across international policy.

In acquiring nuclear-powered submarines and other advanced capabilities under AUKUS, Australia’s capacity to apply and project force – and deter its adversaries from doing so – will receive a massive, and much-needed, boost. Also worth considering, though, is how this uplift in defence capability will grow the pie of Australia’s comprehensive national power – and, in particular, the spill over effects for other dimensions of Australian foreign policy.

For better or worse, we still live in a world where power – even in its rawest manifestations of physical force – remains important and respected. In particular, diplomacy and naval power have a long history of working hand-in-glove, leveraging each other’s respective advantages in persuasion and coercion, and negotiation and force. Australia’s AUKUS partners exemplify this best, successively the world’s leading powers for most of the last two centuries, driven in large part by the effective combination of dominant sea power and effective diplomacy. Australia will never be such a major power, but it should take inspiration from history for how a powerful navy can broadly enable a more effective statecraft.

The numbers behind AUKUS – up to $368 billion for the submarines alone – are eye-watering, not least in these fiscally constrained times. And quite naturally they beg cost-benefit analyses and questions of how else this money might be spent, whether in defence and foreign policy or on other national priorities. But if the costs of AUKUS are to be considered in such an expansive and comparative way, then so should the benefits. The simple fact is that the next three decades demand a bigger and better Australian statecraft: one where all tools and arms are valued and resourced commensurate to Australia’s needs, including diplomacy and development, and where the multiplying effects of them working together are realised. So it’s important, then, to think through what the AUKUS capabilities, especially the SSNs, can do for the whole of Australian foreign policy.

This starts with Australia’s identity. In acquiring one of the world’s most advanced military capabilities in nuclear-powered submarines, Australia is not just making a defence procurement decision – it’s making a deliberate and permanent choice to be a consequential power in the Indo-Pacific. Australia is saying that it’s not enough to just defend its own maritime approaches; rather, it has a role actively contributing to regional deterrence and, if necessary, fighting to maintain a favourable regional order. As foreign minister Penny Wong told the National Press Club earlier this week: “Just as we each have a responsibility to help maintain the conditions for peace through our diplomacy, we also have a responsibility to play our part in collective deterrence of aggression.”

As Rory Medcalf wrote after last month’s announcement, “AUKUS is about Australia itself, and our coming of age as a power to match our unique place in the world.” Implicitly, too, it’s a clear rejection of the diminutive humility that sometimes characterises Australian foreign policy: the impulse that the country is too small to shape the world around it, and so must simply deal with it as it comes. Instead, AUKUS should be a clear signal of ambition and source of confidence for the foreign policy community: Australia fully intends to mould its regional reality and is acquiring the hard capabilities to do so credibly. Australia should match this ambition in resourcing and empowering its entire statecraft accordingly, especially its diplomatic capability and aid budget.

The effect of AUKUS on the political landscape is important too. Such advanced capabilities will give Australia greater surety about its own security, narrowly defined. In turn, a self-assured Australia is more likely to be generous to its neighbours. In a hierarchy of national needs, the integrity of the homeland is a pre-condition to taking a more expansive understanding of national security as interdependent with that of the region.

The capability boost from AUKUS also matters for how other countries think about Australia. A more lethal deterrent that can be projected far beyond its shores will give Australian diplomacy a harder edge. This means more space and greater leverage for Australian diplomats to negotiate outcomes favourable to the country’s interests, especially in tense situations to avoid escalation. It also means Australia has a better chance of forcing an adversary to the negotiating table before they are in a position to directly threaten the Australian mainland. It’s not hard to imagine a scenario, for instance, where the credible threat posed by a nuclear-powered fleet helps Australian diplomats dissuade China from establishing a military presence in Melanesia under the pretext of regional instability.

Short of crisis scenarios, AUKUS will also empower Australia to contribute more directly and fully to the stability and “strategic equilibrium” of the Indo-Pacific. A region easily subjected to coercion by nefarious, destabilising actors is not an environment favourable to human development, climate resilience, and economic growth. As Australia seeks to address these challenges in the region, it should also understand the security contribution it makes through AUKUS as a public good that makes its other efforts, for example through development policy and technical assistance, more likely to succeed.

While the immediate reaction to the March 2023 AUKUS announcement throughout the region has been mixed, Australia must focus on the longer-term shift in perceptions. It is hard to imagine a clearer sign of intent than the SSNs that Australia sees its own security as deeply enmeshed with that of its neighbours – in particular, that Australia wants to curb and respond to the worst excesses of Chinese aggression throughout the region, and not just when they directly threaten Australia. This makes Australia a more valuable and desirable full spectrum partner for any country that wants to avoid a region dominated by China’s assertiveness. As others have argued too, AUKUS will help anchor US (and British) power and presence in the Indo-Pacific, undeniably in Australia’s interests.

Thinking about AUKUS in zero sum terms, and as a boost to defence at the expense of other arms of Australian statecraft, misunderstands the cross-cutting effects of greater comprehensive national power. The real challenge is to recognise and grasp the benefits of an iron fist within the velvet glove of Australian statecraft: creatively and consistently leveraging the effects of greater military power across the full gamut of international policy.

Hugh Piper is Program Lead at the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy and Defence Dialogue. He is also Deputy Editor of The Policymaker, a publication of the James Martin Institute for Public Policy. He was formerly a strategic policy adviser and ministerial speechwriter at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The views expressed are his own.

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.