AUKUS Gets Ready for Prime Time

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep!

Starting off this week with some shocking news from Egypt, where Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s authoritarian government forbade U.S. press traveling with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin from covering meetings. Big yikes. But in brighter news, this former Gov. Michael Dukakis-esque picture of British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace is cracking us up today.

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: the first phase of the AUKUS “goat rodeo” is almost over, U.S. President Biden is still missing a top envoy for women’s issues, and the Defense Department doesn’t want to share U.S. intelligence about Russian war crimes in Ukraine with the International Criminal Court.

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So it turns out it takes a long time to build a submarine. It takes a longer time to build a nuclear submarine. Six years, if you’re lucky. And then if you split up the industrial base for the production line between multiple countries, it takes even longer.

And speaking of that, let’s talk about AUKUS, the consortium the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia announced in September 2021 so Australia can learn to submarine well (and how to do other military stuff well too).

Phase one of the trilateral pact is set to be concluded on Monday, with U.S. President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gathering on the docks of Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego. They plan to announce that Australia will buy five U.S.-made Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines as well as build a new fleet of nuclear-powered submarines based on a British design with American parts.

Long lead time. Just don’t expect those submarines to be in the water anytime soon.

The U.S. Navy already wants more submarines for itself than Huntington Ingalls Industries can build in Newport News, Virginia, and Australia’s own submarine industrial base (yes, nerds, that’s a real term) is still gearing up to build nuclear-powered submarines, which are more complex than the diesel-electric submarines that France wanted to sell Australia before AUKUS crashed the party. (Remember that?)

So those submarines could be on ice until the mid-to-late 2030s, just a little bit after China’s military modernization plan for a Taiwan invasion wraps up in 2027. In the meantime, the United States plans to rotate more American attack subs through Western Australia, beginning in 2027.

AUKUS has already outlived one Australian and two British prime ministers. (Although one of the British heads of government didn’t outlast a head of lettuce.) At this rate, it’s going to outlive several more.

Risk-reward. But is it going to work? That’s been the major question all along through phase one of AUKUS, which has been beset by sticky U.S. export control and intelligence-sharing rules that have depth-charged key features of submarine design. First, the United States has to expand its own shipyard output to send five nuclear-powered submarines to Australia as well as make sure Congress is on board. Second, even if all goes to plan, the land Down Under will be operating a Frankenstein-like Navy with nuclear subs from two different countries, a potential nightmare for training and spare parts—and presumably, and most importantly, reactor maintenance and little details like that.

“If these reports are correct, this program is a goat rodeo in the making,” said James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank. “[Australia], which has never operated a [nuclear-powered submarine] before, now plans to operate two different classes.” He said modding the British-built subs with a U.S. kit will add “significantly to the technical risk.”

Next steps. Two interesting points to note: The finalized AUKUS plans gives the Brits a bigger role in the submarine program than they might have initially imagined. It’s also contingent on Congress and British Parliament approving plans to share nuclear propulsion technology with the Aussies.

“The Australians are already talking to the [International Atomic Energy Agency] about what this looks like,” said Marshall Billingslea, the former top U.S. nuclear arms negotiator during the Trump administration.

Initiate phase two. The handshakes and back-slapping on the San Diego pier next week will launch this little AUKUS alliance into its next phase, which will include technology-sharing to build hypersonic missiles. The House Foreign Affairs Committee is already pushing a bill that would change export control rules to remove potential hurdles.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price is stepping down from his role to shift to a policy job at the department under U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Career foreign service officer Sarah Beran, who is currently a deputy executive secretary to Blinken, is set to become the senior director for China and Taiwan on the National Security Council (NSC), with NSC China director Rush Doshi moving up to become her deputy. Beran replaces Laura Rosenberger, who is off to lead the American Institute in Taiwan. CNN first reported the news.

There might be a favorite in the running to replace Gen. Mark Milley as the next chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. military’s top officer. (Milley’s term expires at the end of the summer.) U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, who campaigned for Biden in Pennsylvania before moving to his new job in the Pentagon, hinted that POTUS might nominate Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown to the top job. If nominated and confirmed, Brown would be the second African American chair after Colin Powell and the first Air Force officer to hold the U.S. military’s top job in nearly 20 years, since Gen. Richard Myers departed the Pentagon in September 2005.

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Not enough to celebrate. The World Bank and United Nations have both separately released new data on the reversing pace of rights for women and girls worldwide. At the current, abysmally slow pace of progress, the U.N. assesses that full gender equality worldwide is still 300 years away. This data coincides with International Women’s Day, which was March 8.

On the Washington side of things, a lot of gender equality advocates are looking to the U.S. ambassador at large for global women’s issues (GWI) to help speed up that glacial pace. Just one problem: There isn’t one.

The GWI post has been vacant for two years, filled in an acting capacity by a lower-ranking official. Biden’s pick for the envoy, Geeta Rao Gupta, has been mired in Senate confirmation limbo. That could soon change, as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee finally voted her out of committee on Wednesday. Next up is a confirmation vote in the full Senate. TBD on timing. Republican lawmakers previously put a hold on her nomination over concerns about her stance on reproductive rights, but the GWI post doesn’t have any jurisdiction over that.

“It’s been too long since we have been without that critical leader at this critical post,” said Michelle Milford Morse, vice president for girls and women strategy at the U.N. Foundation, where Gupta worked since 2017. “This issue, the role and the rights of women, deserves a very visible and dedicated leader, and we need that leader at the ambassador level.”

Deadly backlog. The number of Afghans applying for U.S. special immigrant visas (SIVs) to escape Taliban rule has surged to more than 150,000 people, officials and advocates who track the matter told FP this week. During the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Washington airlifted more than 120,000 Afghans out but left behind tens of thousands of former allies who aided the U.S. war effort. Some of them have been hunted by Taliban death squads, with others imprisoned.

On Wednesday, the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee held its first oversight hearing on the final withdrawal from Afghanistan. The panel is expected to pressure the U.S. administration to speed up processing for SIVs.

Communication breakdown. The Pentagon is stopping the Biden administration from sharing intelligence with the International Criminal Court on Russian atrocities in Ukraine, the New York Times reports, fearing that the move could set a precedent for the global court to prosecute Americans. The State and Justice Departments as well as the U.S. intelligence community favor sharing the information with The Hague, which could include information about Russian decisions to deliberately target civilian infrastructure and forcibly abduct thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia.

U.S. President Joe Biden presents the Medal of Honor to retired U.S. Army Col. Paris Davis during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington on March 3.Win McNamee/Getty Images

Today: Czech President Petr Pavel (who SitRep spotted enjoying beers at the Munich Security Conference a couple of weeks ago) is being inaugurated in Prague. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin continues his first Middle East jaunt in Israel, where protests over judicial reforms have forced the Pentagon chief to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Ben Gurion International Airport. And Finnish President Sauli Niinisto is in Washington, as Turkey, Sweden, and Finland hold talks on NATO accession.

Friday, March 10: Biden welcomes European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to the White House. Meanwhile, Sunak travels to Paris for a powwow with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Monday, March 13: Biden, Sunak, and Albanese are set to meet in San Diego to conclude the first phase of the so-called AUKUS alliance. But if you’ve read this far, you already knew that.

Rep. Michael McCaul: “So you had them?”

Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews: “We did.”

—U.S. Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas Andrews, who lost two limbs in the Islamic State suicide attack at Abbey Gate near Kabul’s airport in August 2021, tells Congress on Wednesday that U.S. troops spotted two suspects fitting the description flagged by intelligence reports. American troops were not given permission to shoot, he said. 

• China’s Ukraine Peace Plan Is Actually About Taiwan by Craig Singleton

• How Ukraine Learned to Fight by Jack Detsch

• Why China Is Not a Superpower by Jo Inge Bekkevold

Mr. Feeny would be so proud. You know you’re starting to age when the stars of your favorite shows growing up start running for Congress. Former child actor Ben Savage, who starred in the hit sitcom Boy Meets World, is running for Congress in California.

Thank you for your service. Are you the mother of a Russian service member who died fighting in Ukraine? You may be eligible to win a $39 multi-cooker. The Kremlin was seen handing out Galaxy pressure cookers and bouquets of flowers to the families of fallen Russian troops this week with the word “life” taped on them in the region of Bashkortostan.