In view of Trump’s review of AUKUS, should Australia cancel the subs deal? We asked 5 experts

Speculation is swirling around the future of the A$368 billion AUKUS agreement, following Washington’s decision to review the nuclear submarine deal to ensure it meets President Donald Trump’s “America first” agenda.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was planning to use talks with Trump at the G7 to demand the US continue to back the deal – but the meeting has been cancelled.

With the Pentagon taking another look at AUKUS, we ask five experts whether the government should rethink Australia’s own commitment to the pact.

Jennifer Parker

Expert Associate, National Security College, Australian National University

Absolutely not. Another review would consume time and capacity better spent delivering AUKUS on its tight timelines.

To understand why, we must put the decision in context.

The leaked details of the US Department of Defense review does not alter the position of any of the three AUKUS partners. Much of the commentary has missed the broader picture: Washington is undertaking its regular review of defence strategy.

Normally conducted every four years, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently announced the 2026 version would be brought forward to August 2025, with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby leading the process.

It makes sense the Pentagon would also assess AUKUS – a central element of its Indo-Pacific posture.

While some have fixated on Colby’s supposed scepticism, the reality is different. In March, Colby told the US Senate Armed Services Committee the US should do everything in its power to make AUKUS work.

Why now? Because the strategy review is being accelerated under the new administration. As for the leak, it is plausible it was designed to apply pressure to Australia over its defence spending commitments.

The more important question is: what is the likely outcome? While nothing is certain, AUKUS enjoys strong bipartisan support in the US, as it does in Australia. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called it a “blueprint” for cooperation, echoed by other senior officials.

Crucially, the real driver of this so-called “America First” review is what the US gets out of AUKUS. The answer is quite a lot. It secures access to Southeast and Northeast Asia from a location beyond the range of most Chinese missiles, adds a fourth maintenance site for Virginia-class submarines, and delivers an ally with an independent nuclear-powered submarine industrial base.

Beyond AUKUS, Australia has expanded its support for Marine and bomber rotations and other posture initiatives. Australia is central to US strategy in the Indo-Pacific. They need us as much as we need them. All signs point to a constructive outcome from this short, sharp review.

While AUKUS carries risks and Australia must remain clear-eyed, alarmism is unhelpful. Much of the public debate has taken that tone. Nothing fundamental has changed since the optimal pathway was announced in 2023. The risks we face now were known then.

There is no basis for an Australian review at this point. It would only distract from delivering this ambitious program. If core assumptions materially change, then a review may be warranted. But until then, such talk is a distraction.

Albert Palazzo

Adjunct Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra, UNSW Sydney

The AUKUS review should be welcomed by all Australians as an opportunity for the Albanese government to scrap the agreement and wean itself off US dependency.

The review is a chance for our political leaders to exercise their most important responsibility: asserting the nation’s sovereignty and equipping Australia to provide for its national security on its own.

Since AUKUS already contains clauses the US could use to cancel the pact, a termination now would benefit Australia. It would save the nation huge sums of money, and force the government to formulate a more useful and appropriate security policy.

Elbridge Colby has previously questioned the logic of “giving away” America’s “crown jewels”, namely its nuclear-powered submarines, and argued the US will need all its boats against China.

More alarmingly, in his book The Strategy of Denial, Colby concludes the ideal way for the US to deny China regional hegemony is to use its allies to minimise its own “risks, commitment and expense”. Additionally, he says the US needs to retain the opportunity to walk away from a China conflict if that proves to be in America’s best interest.

Colby’s track record suggests he will recommend Australia make a larger military contribution to the alliance — as his boss Pete Hegseth demanded at the Shangri-La Dialogue. This is even as the US reserves its right to desert us at a time of its own choosing, as the United Kingdom did during the second world war with the Singapore Strategy.

At one time, the existing defence policy of reliance on the US made a degree of sense. But that is no longer the case. Instead, Australia’s leaders have an opportunity to recalibrate defence policy from one of dependency to one of self-defence.

As I outline in my forthcoming book, The Big Fix, Australia should adopt the philosophy of “strategic defensive”. This is a method of waging war in which the defender only needs to prevent an aggressor from achieving its objectives.

This would eliminate the risks and enormous cost of AUKUS while securing the nation’s future. A strategic defensive approach is well within Australia’s capabilities to implement on its own.

While it would be an ironic act of dependency if the US was to save Australia from itself by either cancelling AUKUS or by making it too unpalatable to swallow, the chance to reconsider should not be missed.

AUKUS remains an affront to Australian sovereignty.

Ian Langford

Executive Director, Security & Defence PLuS and Professor, UNSW Sydney

Australia should not walk away from AUKUS in light of the Pentagon’s newly announced review. However, it should seize the moment to increase defence spending to meet short-term challenges not addressed by the submarine deal.

Despite the noise, AUKUS remains Australia’s most straightforward path to acquiring nuclear-powered submarines, deepening strategic interoperability with the United States and United Kingdom, and embedding itself in the advanced defence technology ecosystems of its closest allies.

But clinging to AUKUS without confronting the deeper risks it now exposes would be a strategic mistake. From an Australian perspective, the submarine pathway is on a slow fuse: first deliveries are not expected until the early 2030s.

Meanwhile, the risk of major power conflict in the Indo-Pacific is accelerating, with a potential flashpoint involving China and the US as early as 2027. Naval brinkmanship in the Taiwan Strait and the South and East China Seas is already routine.

Submarines that arrive too late do little to shape the strategic balance in the next five years. Canberra must therefore confront a hard truth: AUKUS may enhance Australia’s deterrence posture in the 2030s, but it does little to prepare the ADF for a near-term fight.

That fight, should it come, will demand capabilities the ADF currently lacks in sufficient quantity: long-range missiles, deployable air defence, survivable command and control, and more surface combatants.

Yet under current spending plans, Australia is trying to fund both the AUKUS build and short-term deterrence within a constrained budget. It will not work. Even after recent increases, defence spending remains around 2% of GDP. This is well below the level needed to fund both long-term deterrence and immediate readiness.

Without a step change – closer to 2.5–3% of GDP – or a major reprioritisation of big-ticket programs, the ADF faces a dangerous capability gap through the second half of this decade.

Nor can Australia afford to ignore its underinvestment in the asymmetric tools of modern warfare, including cyber capabilities and space-based surveillance.

Australia should hold firm on AUKUS. The strategic upside is real, and the alliance commitments it reinforces are indispensable. But we should not pretend it is cost-free.

Unless the defence budget is significantly expanded, AUKUS risks hollowing out the rest of the Defence Force. The result would be a future submarine fleet paired with an underpowered ADF, unready to meet the threats of today.

In reaffirming AUKUS, Australia must confront the complex reality that it won’t address the threats of this decade, and should plan accordingly.

Maria Rost Rublee

Professor, International Relations Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne

Let’s be honest – Australia is not going to withdraw from AUKUS.

The United States is our most important military and diplomatic partner; in the words of the 2024 National Defence Strategy, “our alliance with the US remains fundamental to Australia’s national security”.

Unilaterally extracting ourselves from AUKUS would significantly damage our relationship with the US. Given the bipartisan and public support for the alliance within Australia, it simply won’t happen.

As we navigate the complexities of AUKUS under Trump 2.0, we should remember that as a defence industrial agreement, AUKUS creates numerous benefits for Australia. In both Pillar I (nuclear submarines) and Pillar II (advanced defence capabilities), Australia is developing deep partnerships, collaboration and even integration with both the US and the UK in shipbuilding, advanced technology, and stronger supply chains.

In addition, a rarely discussed benefit of AUKUS is the total life-cycle climate impacts, given nuclear submarines are superior to diesel alternatives. Diesel is a non-renewable energy source with significant global warming potential, while nuclear power is generally acknowledged to be low-carbon.

However, AUKUS does offer very significant risks for Australia.
Flexibility is baked into the arrangement for the three partner nations – leading to the very situation we are in today. There are significant concerns Washington may not sell nuclear Virginia-class submarines to Australia in the 2030s, as agreed.

We have known for years the US is not producing enough nuclear attack submarines for its own domestic use, but we seem to have hoped this would change or the US would sell us the subs anyway.

The current US review of AUKUS makes it clear Australia needs to think seriously about other options for submarines. Without the Virginia-class, we will be without any subs at all, at least until the SSN-AUKUS submarines are delivered by the mid-2040s.

Our current ageing Collins-class subs, already beset with operational problems, will not be fit for purpose much past mid-2030. At this point, the most likely viable option is off-the-shelf conventional submarines from Japan or South Korea.

The fact is, while Australia is unlikely to withdraw from AUKUS, the US may force the issue by refusing to sell us its nuclear-powered submarines. Refusing to acknowledge this does not change the risks.

David Andrews

Senior Manager, Policy & Engagement, Australian National University

I want AUKUS to succeed. It offers a unique opportunity to substantially upgrade Australia’s maritime capabilities with access to world-leading submarine technology and a suite of advanced and emerging technologies.

However, we cannot realistically pursue “AUKUS at any cost”. There must be an upper limit to how much time, effort and resources are committed before the costs – financial, political and strategic – outweigh the potential long-term benefits.

Of course, the government must not be hasty. Any decision should wait until the completion of the US review. Likewise, AUKUS should not be abandoned merely because it is being reviewed.

Reviews are not inherently negative processes. A review after four years of a project of this size and significance is not a particularly surprising development. As seen in the UK, reviews can refocus efforts and commit greater resources, if needed.

However, it doesn’t look like that’s what the US review is setting out to do. Rather, it’s focused on ensuring AUKUS is aligned with the America First agenda. That indicates an altogether different set of considerations.

People often describe Trump as a “dealmaker” or “transactional”, but these are misleading euphemisms. This review, and recent language from senior US officials, gives the impression of a shakedown – of coercion, not partnership.

As with tariffs, this does not feel like “the act of a friend”.

The need to “win” and extract money from alliances is antithetical to their purpose. It misunderstands their nature and the fundamental importance of trust between partners. AUKUS is not an ATM.

Past behaviour suggests no deal Trump makes will last without further demands being imposed. No amount of money is likely to be satisfactory. Even if Australia’s defence spending was lifted to 3.5% of GDP, the question would be “why isn’t it 5%?” For AUKUS, there is no such thing as an offer he cannot refuse.

I do not say this lightly, but if the outcome of this process is a series of gratuitous or untenable demands by the US, the Albanese government should strongly consider walking away from AUKUS.

The consequences would be significant, so the threshold of such a decision would need to be similarly calibrated. But no single project should be put above the integrity of our wider defence enterprise and the sovereign decision-making of our government.