White House Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell has said that other countries may take part in certain areas of the AUKUS' cooperation such as cybersecurity or anti-submarine warfare.
His comments came at an event hosted recently by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.
Said cooperation is expected to take place under the auspices of the so called Pillar Two part of the AUKUS, with the Pillar One part being the provision of nuclear submarines to Australia.
Professor Joe Siracusa, dean of global futures at Curtin University in Australia, told Sputnik that Pillar Two may be “a way of sort of keeping the idea alive because the first phase of AUKUS hasn't worked very well.”
“Nothing's in place yet to make it happen. The American Congress may not even approve of this extra construction because there is a long waiting list in the American dockyards for these Virginia class submarines,” Siracusa said. “So that's how I see it. It's kind of aspirational rather than practical.”
Regarding the prospects of other nations joining AUKUS, the professor argued that India is unlikely to become one of them since, no matter how much the US and the UK might want it, “the Indians are not going to get involved in defending American interests in the Pacific or anywhere else.”
“The Canadians would like to get involved. And I couldn't tell you why. Canada is deeply involved in the Atlantic Alliance, why they would want to get tied down in the Indo-Pacific area? It is really beyond my imagination,” he said.
According to Siracusa, Japan, which seems to be “in a sort of a fighting mood right now,” would actually like to get involved with the bloc.
The professor pointed out that China’s objections to the first phase of AUKUS – the one involving the provision of nuclear submarines to Australia – are in fact justified, referring to Beijing previously complaining to the International Atomic Energy Agency that the AUKUS partnership essentially involves “illegal transfer of nuclear weapon materials” to a non-nuclear weapon state.
“The Americans are going to transfer nuclear technology first time since the 1950s, it's in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty," Siracusa remarked. "Australia pretends to be the leader in nuclear nonproliferation, but it isn't because it's tied to American nuclear power. And now this treaty actually violates the spirit in the letter. And the Chinese are right to jump on that.”
Professor Siracusa also lamented that, with the demise of the New Start Treaty, the IRNF Treaty and the AMB Treaty, the world became deprived of the “three pillars” of nuclear nonproliferation, and that he believes the “AUKUS agreement does not contribute to a re-strengthening of the nuclear nonproliferation regime.”