AUKUS Is History's Bitter Burp In The Indo-Pacific

2025-10-09 07:01:42

(MENAFN- Asia Times) John Noh, US President Donald Trump's nominee for assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, made a significant entrance at his Senate confirmation hearing on October 7, 2025.

His message, both blunt and foreboding, cast a shadow over the AUKUS pact , a trilateral defense technology-sharing agreement among the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, signed in 2021 under Joe Biden's presidency.

Noh, currently deputy assistant secretary for East Asia, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the pact's first pillar-supplying Australia with nuclear-powered submarines-might need tweaks to be more“sustainable.”

He cited pressures on America's ailing submarine industrial base, which is already struggling to meet the US Navy's domestic demands. The review, initiated in July by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, aims to align AUKUS with Trump's“America First” policy.

Both Republican and Democratic senators bristled. Committee chairman Roger Wicker called the review a“distressing surprise” to Australia, who he referred to as a“steadfast ally.”

Noh's more impactful words were reserved for Taiwan. He“strongly” endorsed Trump's view that the island is“facing an existential threat from Beijing,” and must“do its part and pay” by boosting defense spending to 10% of its GDP-much higher than its current 2.5%.

Reports last month in The Washington Post suggest Trump has paused $400 million in military aid to the self-governing island, raising fears of a“Ukraine playbook” where weapons authorized by Congress are quietly returned to American stockpiles.

Wicker said such moves defy congressional intent, forcing Taiwan to repurchase arms that have already been allocated. In China's view, Taiwan is a renegade province that must be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary. Beijing will surely delight in Trump's public penny-pinching of its so-called allies.

This transactional turn in Washington's Asia policy evokes a literary quip from Julian Barnes's“A History of the World in 101⁄2 Chapters” (1989) . Barnes wrote,“Does 'history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce'? No, that's too grand, too considered a process. History burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.”

AUKUS feels like such a belch-a sour echo of imperial overreach now repackaged as deterrence against China's rising naval power in the Indo-Pacific.

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