Description
Responding to strategic competition with China, the US has focused efforts on building minilateral vehicles of willing partners in the Pacific region, as part of its integrated deterrence strategy. At the sharpest end of US minilateralism is AUKUS, a security pact between Washington, Canberra and London. Although never officially articulated, it is widely understood that the objective at the heart of AUKUS is to contain China’s perceived expansionism. There is an implicit contribution to deterrence with China conceived as the adversary seeking to take unwanted actions. Amid a threat environment as dispersed, complex and maritime-centric as the Pacific, the AUKUS partners are developing not only classic deterrence focused on denial and punishment, but resilience strategies that emphasise proactively preparing for and adapting to risk. This requires the securing of supply chains, especially for critical minerals and strategic technologies. However, a careful analysis of US efforts to strengthen AUKUS supply chains (e.g., its critical minerals agreements, the Atlantic Declaration, and Australia and Britain’s designation as ‘domestic sources’ in the Defense Production Acts) reveals this is largely being driven by US protectionism, to shore up domestic industries like electronic vehicles. This begs the question, whose deterrence are US minilateral vehicles designed for?
