“We must now take our partnership to a new level,” said Morrison.
“We’re adding a new chapter in our friendship,” Johnson added.
All three countries will work over the next 18 months to figure out how best to deliver the technology, which the U.S. traditionally has only shared with the U.K., the official said. U.S. officials and experts noted that Australia currently doesn’t have the requisite fissile material to run a nuclear-powered submarine, meaning the next year and a half of negotiations will likely feature nuclear-material transfer discussions.
Washington and Canberra signed a gold-standard “123 agreement” in 2010 in which Australia promised not to enrich or reprocess nuclear material sent to it by the U.S.
Australia doesn’t seek a nuclear weapon, Morrison and Biden emphasized. Still, a senior U.S. administration official previewing the remarks Wednesday morning said of the nuclear-powered submarines that “this technology is extremely sensitive. This is frankly an exception to our policy in many respects. I do not anticipate that this will be undertaken in other circumstances going forward.”
There’s nothing explicitly about China in the three-way deal, but two U.S. officials noted that the subtext of the announcement is that this is another move by Western allies to push back on China’s rise in the military and technology arenas.
“This is a surprising and extremely welcome sign of the Biden administration’s willingness to empower close allies like Australia through the provision of highly advanced defence technology assistance — something that Washington has rarely been willing to do,” said Ashley Townshend, director of foreign policy and defense programming at the United States Center in Sydney. “It suggests a new and more strategic approach to working collectively with allies on Indo-Pacific defence priorities.”
Source:politico.com