By Marko Gural, Spring 2025 Marcellus Policy Fellow

The United States should reform AUKUS to emphasize the partnership’s Pillar II (technology sharing) while sidelining Pillar I (transfer of U.S. nuclear-powered submarines to Australia). There are two problems with the U.S.-U.K.-Australia defense partnership. Canberra is unnecessary for a balancing coalition against China in the Indo-Pacific, as it remains far away from any likely contingency. AUKUS’s submarine transfer component is also untenable because the United States cannot even build enough submarines for itself, much less its allies and partners. Thus, contrary to Australia Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles’s 2023 statement that AUKUS is “too big to fail,” AUKUS is actually too big to succeed.

To solve these issues, Washington should align its ways, means, and ends, as is necessary in any good strategy. The United States should shelve its prospective sale of submarines to Australia and rely on Japan and South Korea for shipbuilding, since the anti-China balancing coalition can continue to obstruct Chinese hegemony in Asia without Australia’s inclusion. The United States should also expand AUKUS’s Pillar II by inviting more Asian allies and partners to share research on emerging technologies. This step will salvage important remnants of the initial agreement by continuing its spirit of cooperation for decades to come.

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The central argument of this paper is that the United States should reform AUKUS to emphasize Pillar II while sidelining Pillar I. First, AUKUS’s submarine component is unnecessary for balancing China. Australia is a strategic ally for the United States in the Asia-Pacific, but American military materials should predominantly go to Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, countries more immediately able to respond to territorial incursions around China. In addition, AUKUS creates steep political costs that the United States does not need to run. Second, the United States lacks the industrial engine to fulfill AUKUS. Washington should recognize its deficiencies and take advantage of its depleted defense industrial base to align its grand-strategic means with its balancing ends.