Cameron Stewart recently attempted to vaunt the virtues, so to speak, of the AUKUS nuclear submarines via an article in The Australian newspaper. In part, it’s threaded together with tufts of intellectual fluff from Kim Beazley, his one-time offsider, Paul Dibb, Peter Dean from the United States Study Centre in Sydney, Mike Pezzullo formerly of the Department of Home Affairs and John Blaxland from the ANU.

“Blast for Labour elders over AUKUS” the headline on Stewart’s article boasts. Well, more like an errant zephyr of discontent whose lazing tufts The Australian has, to its credit, allowed Gareth Evans to gather and put in the bin.

Evans has largely ignored Professor Blaxland’s recent attempt in The Conversation of 15 September to bluster down AUKUS critics. Maybe that’s because he is the most junior in The Australian’s line of AUKUS boosters who thus may struggle to get into Evans’s line of sight. Yet Evans does say Blaxland is presently “on secondment” to the Australian Embassy in Washington, a helpful vantage point from which to conjure up academically detached notions.

Nevertheless Blaxland’s views are worth more attention, for his Conversation article is:

• uncourageous in that it doesn’t specifically tackle nominated critics of the AUKUS
• dissembling in that he invents strawman arguments which misrepresent, as Evans points out, the views of serious critics of the project
• inept in that he doesn’t effectively dismantle his strawman.

So, Blaxland attributes to AUKUS critics “five main arguments” these being that:

• the deal enhances the prospects of war with China
• nuclear submarines are not needed
• the South East Asia neighbours are uneasy
• the country is being “dragged back into the Anglo-sphere” and the US
• the cost is “unconscionably high”.

This is an unfair and unreasonable summary of what serious critics have been saying.

Blaxland’s list notably doesn’t include a primary contention – that the government has provided no strategic justification for the deal. That is to say, it has not explained the strategic risks that can be addressed by getting, sometime after 2030, 3-5 second hand Virginia class boats from the US and, many years later, eight UK designed nuclear submarines.

As Hugh White has said “Why should we expect our adversaries — China, of course — to be deterred by the AUKUS plan to deploy a small fleet of nuclear-powered submarines decades from now?” Blaxland squibs that question.

He also skates by serious misgivings about how, if the present plan goes ahead, the Navy will be able simultaneously to operate three different types of submarines – the Collins boats to be phased out, the US Virginias and the UK craft. As White says, this “defies belief”.

On costs (presently estimated at $368 billion), Blaxland provides the casual assurance that “this amount is unlikely to be fully spent as other efficiencies may arise” and that “defence is accommodating the submarines from its existing budget…”. Surely he doesn’t expect to get away with such amateurish leg-pulling? Can Blaxland name one major defence acquisition that has not blown its budget big time? And is he aware that defence budgets do not span 40-year horizons? Please be assured that if the $368 billion estimate is realistic now, realism will require that to expand hugely if, against the odds, the project goes full term.

Blaxland makes reasonable claims that nuclear submarines are more stealthy, can more quickly get to where they need to be and can stay on station for longer than conventional boats. But again he avoids the critics, like White, who point out that for the money being spent on eight nuclear submarines, Australia could have a fleet of 40 conventional ones. White says that, “This huge difference in numbers swamps the advantage of nuclear propulsion. For the same investment, a fleet of 40 conventional subs would deliver more than three times as many submarines to the operational areas as an eight boat nuclear fleet.”

Meanwhile, the question of detection is a recent government concern. It wasn’t one with the prospective and dumped French boat and many countries who now are persevering with conventional subs are not so fretful. Moreover, it may well be that rapidly developing technology will narrow any stealth advantage nuclear subs have. Blaxland is also silent on this point, while his claim that nuclear subs can remain “undetected” is surely a fantasy. The Americans would seem to think they can detect Chinese nuclear submarines now.

Ploughing on, the intrepid professor attributes to “some critics” the fear that Australia getting nuclear subs will “support a more belligerent posture by the US towards China, notably over Taiwan” and will make “war more likely”. This may be his most splendid strawman. As most primary school children would appreciate, US attitudes towards China, including over Taiwan, will turn on stronger forces than Australia being able simultaneously to keep half, at the most, of a fleet of nuclear boats in water.

On the attitudes of neighbouring countries, Blaxland says that “the new enhanced defence pact signed by Australia and Indonesia on August 29 suggests that Indonesia, like the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam, are quite comfortable with Australia engaging with AUKUS and with its neighbours concurrently”. That’s a non sequitur that doesn’t mean the neighbours don’t like it. As Susannah Patton from the Lowy Institute points out, there is no singular view among nations in South East Asia yet the AUKUS has “cut against the region’s grain for predictability, consultation and preservation of the status quo”.

Blaxland concludes with a befuddling rhetorical flourish. He says that what we have now is “the Australian way of war and peace” which means that “Australia is respectfully, but firmly asserting its rights, protecting its interests and setting an example for others in the neighbourhood to follow”. Say that again:

• “Asserting its rights” while putting itself under the likelihood of greater pressure from the United States to heed its call if that should come.
• “Protecting its interests” while spending lots of money on a project that will give it less bang for its buck than viable alternatives and raising the possibility the country could have a period when it will be without submarine protection.
• “Setting an example for others in the neighbourhood”? Do we really want them to get nuclear submarines as well?

If our professor is now with Ambassador Kevin Rudd in Washington, he can draw comfort from Rudd’s recently reported claims that AUKUS and other military alliances involving the United States have “clouded” Beijing’s views of the region and denied the country “absolute clarity”. The evidence for these freakish assertions is uncertain.

Paul Keating says AUKUS is “The worst deal in all history”. Gareth Evans reckons it’s “one of the worst defence and foreign policy decision Australia has ever made.” Bill Kelty condemns it as “the greatest folly of them all.” Hugh White says it is a “charade”.

Everything Professor Blaxland has said doesn’t move these dire judgments one millimetre.