“The export controls that have built up over decades are going to require Congress to reform the system. The White House is fully aware of this and there’s a growing group of members of Congress that are becoming educated about this issue,but it’s harder than it sounds to fix. This is a threshold issue.”
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Australian officials have for years been pushing their US counterparts to reform their treatment under arms regulations,and the issue was front and centre of the December Australian-US Ministerial consultations between Marles and US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin.
“There is,I think,a unanimity of purpose in wanting to create the kind of seamless environment … where information and technology can be shared much more freely between our two countries,” Marles told reporters in Washington last month. “Not for a moment do we underestimate the complexity of bringing that about within the American system.”
In response to questions from this masthead,a spokesman for the Australian Department of Defence said it was anticipating that export arrangements would need to change “to ensure technology and expertise could be transferred seamlessly and effectively among AUKUS partners,as well as their respective industrial bases,within a suitably designed protective framework”.
In Washington,others are also cognisant of the challenge. Among Republicans,AUKUS caucus co-chair Mike Gallagher,like Courtney,is committed to reforming the export control regime and has consistently talked up the importance of equipping Australia with attack boats to help counter China’s aggression and “protect our interests in the Indo-Pacific”.
He also acknowledged that AUKUS did not provide Australia with enough flexibility regarding the International Traffic in Arms Regulations and suggested a “carve-out” might be necessary to exempt the project.
At a seminar last week,Democratic congressman Adam Smith,a ranking member of the House of Representatives armed services committee,also warned that while AUKUS was “a great idea,with a lot of promise” it “could also go bloop” unless some regulatory restrictions were eased.
And Mark Watson,the director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Washington office,suggested that “an AUKUS express lane is what we need” to avoid delaying or derailing the project due to the maze of red tape and complex US laws surrounding it.
But the regulatory hurdles are not the only difficulty the alliance faces.
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One of the concessions Republican congressman Kevin McCarthy made this month to secure the speakership of the House of Representatives was a vote on a framework that caps discretionary spending at fiscal 2022 levels. Some fear that this could result in the US defence budget being cut in real terms,which Courtney warned “could have a very negative effect on AUKUS”.
Helping Australia acquire nuclear submarines will also test America’s submarine manufacturing industry,which has already been strained by the COVID pandemic.
While AUKUS has received bipartisan support since September 2021,a letter sent to Bidenby Senator Jack Reed and then-senator James Inhofe,a Republican,in December raised concerns the US submarine base could be stretched to “breaking point”.
However,in a counter letter sent to Biden last week,Courtney,Gallagher and a group of other Republicans and Democrats defended AUKUS as “a multi-decade and multi-generational effort – one that is worth embarking on for the security of our nation and that of our allies in the Indo-Pacific”.
‘An AUKUS express lane is what we need.’
Mark Watson,Australian Strategic Policy Institute,Washington
Last year,members of the group also brokered a bipartisan agreement to establish a training pipeline that will give at least two Australian submarine officers a year a chance to train with the US Navy.
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