How AUKUS
Former defence minister Kim Beazley says the Indo-Pacific has now become a 'contested zone'. Can Australia still count on the US under Trump to offer protection as regional risks intensify?
There were two quotes today in the realm of national defence that made the day. The first was almost tragically funny. In response to a question from a British reporter on whether he would be discussing the AUKUS agreement with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, US President Donald Trump replied: “What does that mean?”
The second was a little less funny, and it came from former opposition leader and ambassador to the US Kim Beazley while answering questions from Capital Brief about Australia’s increasingly hostile backyard.
“The warning time on a possible attack used to be 10 years for a local threat capable of major damage,” Beazley told Capital Brief in a text message. “The region was a backwater. Now, [it’s] a contested zone.”
Though Beazley is perhaps best remembered as the man who almost became prime minister, he first truly earned his stripes as defence minister in the Hawke government, where he was a genuinely strategic operator in a portfolio that usually rewards mere management. Beazley fundamentally understood Australia’s tyranny of geography as a Western nation parked in the Indo-Pacific, with all the complications that entails.
