Trump evaluates the retreat of the USA from the Aukus agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom. China’s containment strategy in the Pacific is at risk. The Chinese naval fleet exceeds the US Navy, and the armament race becomes more and more dangerous.
Donald Trump does not just question NATO. Since he settled, on January 20, the Republican President has also started to evaluate the unilateral withdrawal also by the AUKUS, the strategic agreement started in September 2021 by his predecessor Joe Biden, and signed in March 2023 The power of the Chinese military fleet in the Eastern Pacific.
Two years ago, signing the Aukus, the White House has set a fundamental goal: to transform the Australian navy into nuclear power, Which is at the forefront against the increasingly threatening war machine of Beijing. Most of the top-secret, the treaty provides that Washington provides a dozen submarine submarines with nuclear propulsion of the “Virginia” attack to the Canberra government-the most powerful ever produced in the United States-and the creation of new super protected underwater bases, while London in collaboration with Australia should start the design and launch of another hundred nuclear submarines, the new class, the new class. “Aukus”. In autumn 2023 the Treaty, of ultra-concrete duration and assessed 200-330 billion dollars, had also cost Biden a diplomatic crisis with France, forced to retire from his 50 billion agreement for the supply to the Australia of a dozen submarines.
The Virginia, so called because they are built on the Newport news construction sites, In Virginia, they are colossal “cigars” of steel, black and shiny, 115 meters long for a tonnage of 10 thousand tons. Equipped with 40 cruise missiles and 25 torpedoes, they have 132 crew members and are capable of remaining immersed for weeks, sliding in perfect silence at a speed of 25 knots, almost 50 kilometers per hour, at 800 meters deep. For their supply, between January and February, the Australian government paid the first 500 million dollars. Shortly after, however, Patatrac happened. In March the American deputy minister of defense, Elbridge Colby, said he was “very skeptical” on the continuation of the AUKUS, because the sale of Virginia to Australia “could weaken the American navy” with “the risk that submarines are not in the right place at the right time”. The “place” of which the deputy minister speaks is close to China, in defense of Taiwan; And evidently the “moment”, in his opinion, is not very far away. In an audition to the Congress Defense Commission, Colby spoke of the “very concrete threat of a conflict in the coming years”, and added that “our attacking submarines are essential to make Taiwan’s defense practicable”. In short, the Pentagon has discovered that he had a desperate need for Virginia and can no longer afford to sell them to Australia. And Colby, be careful, is not one who speaks disproportionate, since between 2016 and 2019 he was Trump’s personal military councilor.
Panorama He has written several times that since 2023 the Beijing fleet has overcome the US Navy. It is the gap continues to grow: at the beginning of 2025 the Chinese navy is by far the first in the world, with over 370 ships (three of which are aircraft carriers, plus one under construction and another six from here to 2035), against the 296 Americans (11 launders), which only for their high technology still guarantee a certain superiority. The problem is that Chinese war ships will increase 395 already at the end of 2025, and will be 435 in 2030, while American ships, due to budget cuts, continue to decrease and are not replaced. Already a year ago the Heritage Foundation denounced that the US Navy “is unable to arrest or reverse its decline (…) and also the technological advantage is being reduced to China and Russia”.
A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) last December described with tones more than worrying the incredible naval race of the People’s Republic. Seven out of ten Chinese war ships have been launched under the presidency of Xi Jinping, therefore starting from 2012: they are new, in short, while the average age of American ships exceeds 27 years. The CSIS adds that Beijing now “has outclassed the United States throughout the shipbuilding, both civil and military”, and estimates that the ratio between the respective production capacity is at a shocking level: 230 to 1. “In 2024”, we read in the report, “China has reached a launching capacity equal to about 50 percent of global production, while the United States share has dropped to 0.1”. The conclusion to which the CSIS arrives seems to justify the worst concerns of Colby and Trump: “The enormous cantierist industry of China would already provide an unsurpassed strategic advantage in a war that went beyond two to three weeks, allowing it to repair damaged ships or to replace them much more quickly than the United States”. For the Aukus placed in perhaps, the Australian government has already started to protest. But it seems that Elon Musk, head of the Department for efficiency, is also skeptical.
