Britain once risked a reputation as the weak link in the trilateral AUKUS partnership. But now the appointment of an empowered senior official to drive the project forward and a new burst of British parliamentary engagement reveal an ambitious new posture.
This demonstration of seriousness and dynamism strengthens London’s legitimacy to secure a new era for AUKUS during the administration of US President Donald Trump.
While AUKUS addresses Australia’s existential need to acquire vital nuclear submarine technology and supports the United States’ central mission of strategic competition with China, Britain has at times struggled to craft a narrative that has secured genuine political purchase.
On one level, the British government’s previous lack of focus on AUKUS has been understandable. For the past three years, Britain has been consumed with the vital task of leading European support for Ukraine’s defence. The startling build-up of Russian troops along the Ukrainian border immediately followed the AUKUS announcement in September 2021. In the past few months, the fragility and urgency of the situation in Ukraine has necessarily forged a war-room focus on the Russian menace.
But it is hard not to feel that the fundamental issue has been that the AUKUS project has often been regarded in the British government not as an opportunity to be seized but as an allied responsibility needing to be serviced. This has sorely short-changed the national interest.
Advanced technology and innovation are central to Britain’s economic growth agenda. On this basis alone, AUKUS should be considered a national priority, as its second pillar provides the opportunity to accelerate cooperation in vital new frontiers of competition. And, while the origins of AUKUS lie in solving an Indo-Pacific problem, the capabilities it will produce are interoperable with NATO and can be deployed in Britain’s primary Euro-Atlantic security theatre.
The good news is that the winds are finally changing. Two recent announcements may shift Britain into the most active posture of the three partners.
The first is the confirmation that Sir Stephen Lovegrove has been appointed as Britain’s special representative for AUKUS. This new position will give him responsibility to drive the project forward and the authority to act as the nation’s point person for allies. Lovegrove served as the prime minister’s national security adviser during the conception of AUKUS and last year completed a landmark review into the project’s future. The review confronted past failures of governance, process and capacity and aimed to galvanise the British system to drive a new era of delivery based on a more focused set of priorities.
The second is the launch by the House of Commons Defence Select Committee of a new AUKUS inquiry, a substantive investigation into the government’s handling of the pact and the wider geopolitical context in which it is being advanced. The expansive scope and timeframe of this inquiry will enable it to serve as a mechanism of scrutiny and accountability for the government’s implementation of the AUKUS review. It will also deepen Parliament’s engagement with AUKUS, an area where Britain had previously lagged behind its American and Australian partners.
Both developments considerably enhance Britain’s stake in AUKUS and strengthen the government’s hand in its representations to the US.
There has been much anxiety as to whether Trump will remain committed to AUKUS. It is plainly unwise to assert that any project or alliance remains a sure bet in the current environment. However, there are early indications that suggest its survival, and even hint that it could be advanced with greater urgency due to the current administration’s laser focus on China and technological competition.
The Trump administration is still appointing its key AUKUS personnel. Britain and Australia will need to strike a delicate balance in highlighting the importance of the pact without drawing undue attention to its challenges. The most effective approach will be to offer a reset, to secure buy-in for its objectives through stronger alignment with the narratives and priorities of the new administration.
The revolutionary zeal of the Trump ecosystem presents opportunities to inject new energy and pace into AUKUS, in ways that would benefit all three partners. In particular, there is a chance to recognise that the current bureaucratic structures have not facilitated the delivery that deterrence demands and that the project must be recast to meet the spirit of its original intent.
Britain’s new AUKUS personnel, architecture and accountability mechanisms afford it the legitimacy to make this case in Washington. With its federal election coming in a few weeks, Australia should consider how to use the fresh start of a new political term to match Britain’s dynamism and demonstrate alignment with the pact’s strategic mission.
It is a sobering reality that AUKUS may well be one of the only meaningful allied co-creation projects, if not the only one, that secures the early commitment of the Trump administration. Britain and Australia must rise to meet this opportunity with the agility and ruthlessness this new era demands.
