Australia’s bold decision to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines is a revolutionary strategic policy shift prompted entirely by China’s unrelenting military aggression and political coercion throughout the Indo-Pacific region.

The question is no longer whether Australia can afford nuclear submarines but whether it can afford to be without them in the deteriorating strategic circumstances produced by Chinese pressure.

It is a tribute to the flexibility of the Australian government that it has, very quickly, entered the AUKUS partnership with the United States and the United Kingdom to enable Australia to acquire the nuclear technology needed to power the new submarine fleet.

But brief initial announcements by Scott Morrison, Boris Johnson and Joe Biden left many questions unanswered: How many nuclear submarines will be built in South Australia? What submarine class will they most resemble? What offensive and defensive capabilities will they have? What will they cost Australia’s defence budget to build and maintain? How will Australia deal with the complex nuclear-fuel and waste-management issues without breaching its nuclear non-proliferation obligations? When will the first nuclear submarines be ready for deployment from their planned Western Australian base?

Then there are the inevitable political and diplomatic questions. How will the decision affect the government’s prospects in next year’s federal election? How will Australia repair diplomatic relations with France following its ruthless dumping of the diesel-electric Attack-class project? How will important regional neighbours react to an Australian nuclear-powered submarine fleet?

Given China’s destabilising, provocative and coercive actions throughout the region, these have to be seen as second-order questions. Changing circumstances have forced the Australian shift to nuclear submarine propulsion and, happily, there’s some history that should reassure Australians about the decision.

The prize-winning The silent deep by Peter Hennessy and James Jinks, a history of the British Royal Navy Submarine Service since 1945, details the impact on the Royal Navy of the October 1957 visit to the UK of USS Nautilus, the world’s first operational nuclear-powered submarine, to take part in Operation Rum Tub, an exercise that matched the Nautilus against the Royal Navy.

The Nautilus comprehensively outperformed the Royal Navy and prompted the first sea lord, Louis Mountbatten, to write, ‘[W]e now appreciate that we are in the presence of a revolution in Naval warfare; in some ways more far reaching than the transition from sail to steam.’ Australia’s decision to acquire nuclear submarines suggests that it has finally accepted that the transition from diesel-electric to nuclear submarine propulsion is a similarly revolutionary reality.

It has also accepted the reality noted at the time by Britain’s Home Fleet commander Admiral John Eccles. He summed up the four advantages of the nuclear submarine: it had complete freedom of action in three dimensions, it could disregard threats from the air because it could stay submerged, it had a good picture of what was happening on the surface, and it was vastly superior to surface ships and conventional submarines when attacking.

The British Admiralty Board declared: ‘If the Royal Navy did not acquire these submarines it would cease to count as a naval force in world affairs.’

Australia faced a similar issue. An aggressive China has perhaps 10 nuclear and some 57 diesel-electric submarines. North Korea reportedly has 70-odd decrepit old tubs. With the US signalling that it expects Australia to play a bigger role in stabilising the Indo-Pacific, Canberra decided prudently that it needed to upgrade its submarine power as the current fleet of somewhat dodgy Collins-class submarines leaves the scene.

A critical question for Australia will be what exactly the US and UK will ultimately deliver in terms of nuclear technology and at what price. No country easily gives away the crown jewels in its military armoury. And as Hennessy and Jinks point out, the odious US Navy Admiral Hyman G. Rickover was far from cooperative when Britain was moving to acquire its first nuclear submarines.

Australia has to hope that the ghost of Rickover doesn’t still haunt the Pentagon. It may not learn what it can expect until it is engaged in the planned 18-month consultation with the US and UK.

Nevertheless, as Hennessy and Jinks argue, the question after the USS Nautilus demonstration was not whether the UK could afford nuclear submarines; it was whether the UK could afford to be without them. Australia faces the same question as it is confronted by an expansionist communist China clearly seeking to exert coercive hegemonic power over the Indo-Pacific.

Since becoming US president on 20 January, Joe Biden has shown that he’s a changed animal to the vice president he was under Barack Obama. He’s learned some important lessons since then and is applying them to how he operates domestically and internationally, with some striking parallels.

What this means for Australia is starting to get clearer and creates opportunities for Australian national security and economic interests—if we can lift our speed of action and delivery.

Obama tried to bring America—and the US Congress—together and get big initiatives through using negotiation, consultation and reaching across party lines. The Affordable Health Care Act is a totemic example of this approach.

The bill was signed into law by Obama on 23 March 2010 after the enormous effort he put into working with congressional Democrats and a small number of Republicans failed in the preceding year. The law itself was a compromise that came from the failed consultations, and so achieved less than the original design.

What Biden seems to have learned from this is that big initiatives have to be driven hard, and that consultation with those who fundamentally don’t want you to succeed will likely result in big initiatives being blunted. So, even if they proceed, they do so in a way that underwhelms and underdelivers. That’s not how Team Biden wants to roll.

Biden has already put forward and signed into law a US$1.9 trillion stimulus bill despite not a single Republican in either house voting for it. And he’s been rewarded by polls showing that 70% of American adults support the package (including 41% of Republican voters surveyed). Uncomfortable reading for Republicans in Congress, and a signal of more to come.

At the same time, Biden has made unity a signature part of every element in his administration’s priorities—starting with his inaugural address to the American people:

Few periods in our nation’s history have been more challenging or difficult than the one we’re in now … To overcome these challenges—to restore the soul and to secure the future of America—requires more than words. It requires that most elusive of things in a democracy: Unity. Unity.

But this unity is not defined by bipartisanship with congressional Republicans. It can be despite them.

Biden is now taking the same approach to an even bigger economic plan, with a multi-part package of some US$3 trillion. The first tranche will apparently ‘center on roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects and include many of the climate-change initiatives Mr Biden outlined in the “Build Back Better” plan he released during the 2020 campaign’.

This tells us Biden is in a hurry because he knows speed of delivery matters. It also tells us that he’s comfortable with building support where he can, outside the normal centres, institutions and forums like Congress, and that he doesn’t intend to have delivery slowed and blunted by interminable negotiations and consultation with partners who either don’t want what he does or can’t move with the speed and momentum he sees as essential. If you are to provide company, you also need to make a contribution. Biden won’t throw away his strength as a pragmatic negotiator, but he also won’t lose focus on outcomes.

This is the same method Team Biden is using internationally. And it’s what seems best described as ‘fast multilateralism’. The Quad leaders’ meeting is an example. Biden sought unity on things that matter, with speed of delivery a key factor. That explains the Quad focus on vaccine production, financing and delivery in the Indo-Pacific, with Southeast Asia and the Pacific as focuses. And it explains why taking risk out of critical supply chains, notably for high-technology items, was also at the heart of the Quad agenda. One reason Biden will have chosen the Quad as the right grouping for this work is that, while it’s brand new as a leaders’ forum, it has the unity and sense of urgency these challenges require.

There’s a similar ‘fast multilateralism’ in US preparation for engagement with China: Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made sure they consulted with Japan and South Korea, and built on Biden’s Quad discussions and early calls to allied and partner leadership to set the scene for the Alaska meeting with China.

Broader, slower consultation—with NATO, the EU, the Five Eyes and the G7, for example—will follow, as we see with Blinken’s engagement with Brussels. But again, a signature feature of Biden’s international action will be that it values momentum and delivery. Process and consultation are being seen much less as values in themselves than many may have expected.

Out of this, as with US domestic policy, Biden judges that unity of purpose and action will be the likely result, not just at the political level, but at the population levels in the US and its allied and partner communities. That’s a deeper unity that’s more likely to last and affect underlying trends.

This is a big call and a very new a way of operating. It shows us that the Biden administration understands that taking some big risks is what the current strategic environment requires, and that the opportunity costs of not doing so are high.

For Australia as a US ally with some very clear overlaps in our national interests that map to Biden’s priorities, this is both challenging and good news, because it creates enormous opportunities for us politically, economically, technologically and for our security.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison can position Australia as one of the primary contributors to Biden’s free and open Indo-Pacific initiative by taking some fast, hard-nosed decisions to enable closer US–Australian maritime operations, and to enmesh the rebuilding of Australia’s economy with the huge stimulus-driven rebuilding Biden is undertaking.

Here are three simple big examples that could be on this year’s AUSMIN agenda, or even in a package that Morrison and Biden announce.

First is an Australian package that sets up Darwin as a major port to enable greater Australian, US and Japanese naval presence and operation—yes, and that resolves the pocket of sand in the oyster that is Landbridge. This will work with the grain of Biden’s global force posture review, which in our region is about enabling the US military to operate and be sustained from more dispersed locations, notably in Southeast Asia. Darwin makes strategic sense here.

Interestingly, this port package might be cheaper than expected, because a set of ad hoc planned investments by government and private actors has the bones of a master plan already. They just require orchestration. It’d help with Australian engagement with Southeast Asian partners, with momentum coming out of both the US and Japan.

The second could be an Australian plan on quantum technologies as they apply to national security that partners with the US national security community’s work, and puts new Australian money into our quantum research and development community. Quantum makes sense because it’s probably one of the ‘commanding heights’ of future technology that will determine national power and prosperity.

And the last could be a package that’s about accelerating key new capabilities into service with the Australian and US militaries, with core items being co-production of advanced missile systems to reduce supply risks in conflict, rapid movement from development to production of hypersonic missiles, responsive space systems like small satellites, and a joint program on unmanned undersea systems like Boeing’s Orca. This package would also deliver on the government’s drive to give the Australian military more offensive firepower sooner than the mid-2030s.

Funding of the Australian defence elements can be made available out of the growing defence budget, even if getting hold of it in the early years will make some unhappy by cancelling or delaying things they love very much.

Outside these areas of joint priority for Australian and US security, similar imagination by Australia can connect to Biden’s priorities. Critical infrastructure and the digital technologies it involves are an example, along with using Australia’s renewable energy and natural resources to remove key supply-chain vulnerabilities for both countries.

There’s time, but not much time, for Australia to get ahead of Team Biden and benefit from the momentum of working with our huge US partner. Let’s be company that contributes—in our interests and for our joint prosperity and security.

In the first foreign-policy speech of his presidency, Joe Biden had a simple message for the world: ‘America is back’. But restoring the credibility of US diplomacy and implementing an effective foreign policy will be an uphill battle.

To his credit, Biden is taking steps to reverse many of Donald Trump’s most damaging policies. As he noted in his speech, he already signed the paperwork to re-join the Paris climate agreement and has re-engaged with the World Health Organization.

Biden also announced the suspension of Trump’s planned troop withdrawals from Germany—a clear attempt to reassure America’s alienated European allies. He also warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that the days of the United States ‘rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions … are over’. And he pledged to end US support for the Saudi-led offensive in Yemen, and to step up diplomacy to end the catastrophic war there.

At the same time, Biden seems poised to uphold some of Trump’s more sensible policies. Notably, Trump was resolute in his desire to avoid ‘stupid, endless’ wars in the Middle East, and he withdrew US troops from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, resigning himself to the Afghan Taliban’s return to power.

Biden is likely to take a similar approach (which began with Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama). And for good reason: the US has expended vast amounts of blood and treasure in the Middle East, and has very little to show for it.

As for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Biden has endorsed the Trump-brokered Abraham Accords between Israel and a number of Arab countries, even though they represented a strategic setback for the Palestinian cause. While he is not expected to endorse Trump’s bogus Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, he also seems unlikely to invest much political capital in advancing the two-state solution—by now a lost cause.

But there remain major foreign-policy tests ahead. Starting with Iran, which Biden barely mentioned in his recent speech. During his campaign, Biden promised to return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which Obama negotiated and Trump abandoned. To this end, the Biden administration will have to persuade Iran to stop enriching uranium beyond JCPOA-imposed limits and agree to new negotiations, before the US lifts its punishing economic sanctions on the country. Of course, Iran wants sanctions relief first, but compromise is entirely achievable.

The bigger challenge will be overcoming resistance from America’s regional allies, especially Israel, whose military is already preparing for possible offensive action against Iran. The strategic viability of such an offensive is far from clear. In 2012, Israel’s then-defence minister, Ehud Barak, concluded that Iran’s nuclear program was already nearing the ‘immunity zone’, where an attack could not derail it, owing to the country’s accumulated ‘know-how, raw materials, experience, and equipment’.

Nonetheless, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a proven record as a spoiler, and the Biden administration must be careful not to allow him to reprise that role. Despite being crippled by sanctions, Iran retains considerable bargaining power. It enjoys the support of Russia and China, and Biden seems to recognise that the US cannot afford to wage another war in the Middle East.

While Biden gave short shrift to Iran in his speech, he did not mention North Korea at all. Here, the dilemma is no longer how to reverse nuclearisation, but rather how to mitigate any threat to America’s allies and the US mainland. With diplomacy having consistently failed, and military action sure to be an unmitigated calamity, the Biden administration has few good options.

Finally, there is the China challenge. In his speech, Biden pledged to ‘confront’ China’s economic abuses, ‘counter its aggressive, coercive action’, and ‘push back’ against its ‘attack’ on human rights, intellectual property and global governance. But he also promised to work with China ‘when it’s in America’s interest to do so’.

Walking this line will not be easy. An excessively restrained approach would allow China to encroach further on the territory of US allies in Asia, erode America’s leadership in high-tech industries and challenge the US dollar’s primacy. But an overly tough approach would rule out much-needed cooperation on shared challenges like climate change and increase the risk of a potentially catastrophic military confrontation.

For the US, the key to balancing these risks is to focus on managing strategic competition, not asserting dominance. The days of US hegemony are over and America’s dysfunctional political system is incapable of countering China’s development strategy even by upgrading its own obsolete infrastructure. The only way to rein in an increasingly assertive China is through cooperation with empowered allies. Fortunately, Biden is aware of US deficiencies and has pledged to build a global alliance of democracies for precisely the purpose of competing with China.

But goal-setting is just the first step. If the US is to work effectively with allies, let alone competitors, it needs credibility. And that is in short supply nowadays.

A country’s international credibility—and, thus, the effectiveness of its foreign policy—must be built on strong domestic foundations. But, from its botched pandemic response to the storming of the US Capitol, America’s political dysfunction has lately been on stark display. The ‘City on a Hill’ has lost its shine.

US foreign policy suffers from endemic inconsistency. Even if Biden manages to reach agreements with allies and competitors, who is to say that his successor will not simply abandon them, as Trump did? With the US Senate having voted to acquit him of inciting the mob on 6 January, Trump himself may run again in 2024. And he could well win, not least because he may not be facing an incumbent. (At 78, Biden is already the oldest president in US history.)

So, yes, America is set to re-join the rest of the world. But whether the power of its example will convince sceptical partners, as Biden hopes, remains to be seen.