Kevin Rudd confident AUKUS submarines will arrive on time
Updated ,first published
Australia’s recently departed ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd, said the AUKUS submarine project has passed the point of no return and will be delivered successfully.
“There’s zero chance of this being resolved,” Rudd said in his first interview in Australia since leaving civil service last month. This is the most emphatic expression of confidence ever from any of AUKUS’ senior architects.
He admitted he had doubts about the Australia-UK-US joint venture, which was announced nearly five years ago, until October when US President Donald Trump publicly declared that AUKUS was “full steam ahead”.
The former Australian prime minister said: “Beyond the normal political arrogance and normal record-based defence, I have a high degree of confidence that by 2032 the first Virginia-class boat will be delivered to Australia by the US on time.”
Rudd, who is also an expert on China, speaks Mandarin and is the author of a book about Chinese President Xi Jinping, said China has “yet” to overtake the United States as the dominant world power. But he said he continues to move toward seizing control of Taiwan by force.
“Regardless of President Trump’s stance and policy, I think we would have to say that the risk of Chinese military action against Taiwan continues to increase,” he said.
“It would be crazy to speculate publicly on any timeline for this, but things are not going the other way.”
Three years later, Rudd resigned from his ambassadorship at the end of March — a year before his term expired — to resume his old job as president of the New York-based Asia Society, a 70-year-old cultural institute with an affiliated think tank, the Asia Society Policy Institute.
His “enthusiastic interest”, he said, was “I don’t want us to be dragged into crisis, conflict and war because of Taiwan.” He said he didn’t want to exaggerate its impact, but “I’ve been working on this for decades” and would do whatever he could to prevent war. A conflict between the US and China would be “incredibly disastrous”.
When asked about Trump’s recent visit to Beijing, Rudd said he was not bothered by the US president discussing arms sales to Taiwan with Xi because Trump had not made any changes to US policy.
He argued that Beijing, given its priority on showing force, would be deeply uncertain about how Trump would respond to any unilateral military action against Taiwan.
Expressing his confidence in the success of AUKUS, Rudd noted that the law was passed by the US Congress with bipartisan support and has now been approved by presidents on both sides of politics. Rudd helped shepherd enabling legislation through Congress.
He noted that significant work has already been done to prepare Australian shipyards for AUKUS.
“Operationally, I see the risk of this coming to a stalemate as negligible, both in terms of the huge investments in preparatory work being carried out at Fleet Base West for the submarine transport facility for our future fleet, and the support of visiting American and British ships, as well as the huge investments coming out of Osborne, South Australia,” he said.
“If you had asked me before last October that the Prime Minister was in town with the president, I would have said that maybe there was some risk.”
Rudd said the US-Australia relationship is well positioned for the future. He said it is currently supported by three pillars and a fourth is under construction. The first was AUKUS; second, collaboration between rare earths and critical minerals; third, Australian superannuation investment-based financing; and fourth, cooperation on critical technologies, including artificial intelligence.
He said the “most complex challenge” was managing the US and Australia’s relationship with China, implying the two allies had different priorities.
Rudd was replaced as ambassador by Greg Moriarty, a long-serving diplomat and public servant who was most recently secretary of the Australian Department of Defence.
He served as ambassador to Iran from 2005 to 2008, in which capacity he briefed then-US President George W. Bush on Iranian policy; This was a rare event for an Australian diplomat. He was later posted to Jakarta and also served as private secretary to then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Moriarty presented his credentials to Trump at a ceremony at the White House on Thursday (US time), along with 11 other US ambassadors.
He was welcomed to the West Wing by U.S. chief of protocol Monica Crowley. The press was not invited to the authentication ceremony.
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Peter Hartcher is the political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.
Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political correspondent in Canberra.Connect with: X or email.
