In a blizzard of pre-holidays defence diplomacy, Defence Minister Richard Marles has, in his own words, been ‘doubling down on friends’. His weekend sprint to Tokyo to meet Japan’s new defence minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, was followed by the annual AUSMIN foreign and defence ministers’ meeting in Washington alongside Foreign Minister Penny Wong. Marles then stayed in Washington for an AUKUS trilateral meeting with US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and British Defence Secretary John Healey.
ASPI analysts provide their views on what to make of this festive-season geopolitical flurry.
Alex Bristow, senior analyst
Marles’s meetings hinted at subtle shifts in Australian statecraft, adopting a tailored approach to keeping friends close.
After their meeting in Tokyo, Marles and Koizumi faced the cameras together for a joint press conference, accepting questions from journalists. As well as announcing a new bilateral framework for defence cooperation, their joint statement opposed the use of force or coercion in the Taiwan Strait, the East China Sea or the South China Sea. Those remarks were clearly directed at Beijing. This was an opportunity for Marles to show Australia’s support for Japan’s new government as it confronts sustained Chinese coercion, although he could have gone further than he did.
In contrast, and breaking from standard practice, Marles and Wong faced the media after AUSMIN without their US counterparts, Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. A bullet-pointed joint factsheet substituted for the usual voluble joint statement.
Public diplomacy around the AUKUS defence ministers’ meeting was similarly scarce. Marles, Hegseth and Healey gave opening remarks but eschewed a joint press conference afterwards. A very short joint statement simply reiterated the ‘full steam ahead’ mantra for AUKUS and noted the importance of Pillar Two for developing near-term deterrence and warfighting capabilities.
These differences presumably reflect the Trump administration’s preference to talk about ‘the practical application of hard power’, as Hegseth said at the AUKUS meeting, rather than shared values or abstract strategic aims. This aligns with the latest US national security strategy, released on 4 December, which commits to military and economic competition with China but stops short of criticising authoritarian regimes.
Australia has typically narrow-casted different messages to its region and Western countries, but doing so will require increasing finesse as the West’s values diverge.
Justin Bassi, executive director
In the 1990 film classic The Hunt for Red October, there is a memorable and oft-quoted scene where Sean Connery’s character, Captain Ramius, turns to Captain Borodin, played by Sam Neill, and orders him to sound the sonar: ‘Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please.’ The single ping is an attempt to send a signal to the commander of a US submarine that Ramius is not an enemy.
This week’s AUSMIN and AUKUS meetings are in Australia’s national interest, but many across Canberra, London and Washington have been left waiting for a ping—a policy signal to determine what precisely is next for the alliance and trilateral defence partnership, and what they are fighting for.
The lack of a joint statement or joint press conference is less important than action. However, the absence of joint messaging creates uncertainty about whether these groupings still share common objectives, particularly a commitment to protecting our democratic principles and way of life from China and Russia. These authoritarian regimes continue to be strategic adversaries, regardless of economic interests.
In a week that has seen much handwringing over the choice of wording in the latest US national security strategy, it is evident that messaging still matters.
Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, resident senior fellow
Even without a joint statement, the 9 December AUSMIN meeting yielded strong results. In today’s uncertain geopolitical context, we should welcome the fact that the US and Australia expressed their shared intent to move ‘full steam ahead’ across several defence and strategic issues. The four ministers present at AUSMIN deserve full credit for this.
At the end of the meeting, a joint factsheet was released in place of a joint statement. But what matters more is the content of the agreements, which is generally very positive. While the factsheet leaves out the usual normative aspects of cooperation, it details several focus areas, including joint promotion of a free and open Indo-Pacific and strengthening of the US-Australia alliance. It also prioritises key aspects of defence cooperation, such as expanded US military presence in Australia through enhanced air-base infrastructure, which will go onto reinforce rotations of US bombers, fighters, and surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft.
However, by forgoing a joint statement, Australia and the US missed an opportunity to call out China’s aggressive behaviour towards Japan, a critical partner for both countries. By neglecting to address this aggression, Washington and Canberra—along with Tokyo’s other partners—risk giving Beijing a free pass and, in effect, normalising its behaviour.
While this missed opportunity could raise doubts about the US commitment in the region, any negative effects of the omission were likely offset, at least in part, by Marles’s visit to Japan prior to AUSMIN.