The United States is urging Australia and Japan to clarify their roles in a potential war with China over Taiwan, according to recent reports.
US defence official Elbridge Colby has been “pushing the issue” with Australian and Japanese counterparts in recent months, sources familiar with the discussions told the Financial Times.
Australia Under Pressure to Commit to War Efforts
Mr Colby, the undersecretary of defence for policy, is considered a China hawk and is leading a review of the $368 billion AUKUS pact.
The “animating theme” of the discussions around Taiwan was “to intensify and accelerate efforts to strengthen deterrence in a balanced, equitable way”, one source claimed.
Mr Colby took to X to say the US government was focused on an “agenda of restoring deterrence and achieving peace through strength”.
“That includes by urging allies to step up their defense spending and other efforts related to our collective defense,” he wrote.
AUKUS Submarines in the Spotlight
The Sydney Morning Herald cited an anonymous “senior US defence official” to report on Sunday that the Pentagon had asked Australia how AUKUS submarines would be used in US military conflicts.
“There’s a conversation about command structure, about alignment of assets. We would want, in any scenario, a clear sense of what we can expect from Australia,” they said, adding it was not just in relation to Taiwan.
Australia’s Defence Spending Under Scrutiny
Australia has been under pressure from the Trump administration to raise defence spending, but requests for commitments to war “caught Tokyo and Canberra by surprise” given the long-standing approach of “strategic ambiguity” taken by the US over Taiwan, the Times reports.
Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy said “the sole power” to commit Australia to war rested with the federal government.
“We don’t engage in or discuss hypotheticals” when asked if the government had given “a clear answer behind closed doors”, he told the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday morning.
Expert Weighs In on US Demands
United States Studies Centre defence program head Peter Dean said Mr Conroy was “absolutely right” to push back on Mr Colby’s reported demands.
“Colby needs to get his own house in order before he starts making demands of alliance partners. Alliances are also not transactional in this manner and no country should be giving away its sovereignty,” Professor Dean said.
“Any Taiwan scenario is purely hypothetical.”
PM Albanese’s China Trip
The news came as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese arrived in China’s economic capital Shanghai on Sunday to begin a week-long visit.
Mr Albanese’s trip will include high-level talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang in Beijing.
He told reporters on arrival the Australian delegation “we will have important meetings about tourism, about decarbonisation of steel, about the full range of issues”.
“We know that one in four of Australia’s jobs depends on our exports, and China is our major trading partner, with exports to China being worth more in value than the next four countries combined,” he said.