SpaceWar.com - Your World At War
Blinken, Austin visit Australia on last leg of Pacific blitz
Brisbane, Australia, July 27 (AFP) Jul 27, 2023
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin will meet top Australian officials Friday on the final leg of a Pacific tour designed to reinforce Washington's standing in the region.

The United States has been ramping up efforts to re-engage in the South Pacific, where China has emerged as a rising diplomatic and military power.

Blinken's trip to Brisbane caps a diplomatic blitz in which he has also visited Tonga and New Zealand, while US Secretary of Defense Austin arrived from Papua New Guinea.

The US duo will hold high-level talks across two days with their Australian counterparts, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles.

While military cooperation is expected to dominate discussions, Washington has signalled that other issues such as climate change and supply chain security also sit high on the agenda.

The United States views Australia as a useful friend in its quest to loosen Beijing's dominance of emerging clean energy industries such as electric vehicle manufacturing.

Australia is one of the world's largest producers of lithium -- a key component of rechargeable batteries -- but currently sends most of its ore to be processed in China.

"The United States are looking at options to source critical technologies and their components from allied countries in place of China," said researcher Tom Corben from the United States Studies Centre at Sydney University.

"That applies as much to the climate as it does to defence -- given the emphasis placed on things like next-generation batteries," he told AFP.

Climate change is also emerging as a security threat in its own right as the toll from increasingly severe natural disasters mounts in Australia and the broader Pacific.


- Nailing down AUKUS -


Corben said the discussions were a chance to nail down the details of the AUKUS pact, a fledgling military pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Under "pillar one" of the agreement, Australia will acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines -- billed as one of its biggest-ever military upgrades.

Attention now turns to "pillar two", which revolves around cyber warfare, artificial intelligence and the development of hypersonic missiles.

Another key issue likely to come up concerns efforts to shore up longstanding relationships with Pacific nations that have been aggressively courted by China.

Pentagon chief Austin comes to Australia from Port Moresby, where the US signed a defence agreement earlier this year giving troops access to key military facilities.

"It all fits into wider efforts to make US force posture in the Indo-Pacific more resilient by drastically increasing the number of locations the Chinese military have to consider," said Corben.

Washington's latest push is likely to irritate China, which has despatched a raft of its own senior officials into the Pacific backed with generous aid commitments and infrastructure loans.

Beijing has committed the lion's share of funding to the upcoming Pacific Games in Solomon Islands, and recently despatched the "Peace Ark" hospital ship to treat patients in Kiribati, Tonga, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.


ADVERTISEMENT




Space News from SpaceDaily.com
SpaceX Crew-11 launches to International Space Station
US, India launch powerful Earth-monitoring satellite
Defense Department opts to not end satellite data for storm forecasts

24/7 Energy News Coverage
Light driven visual microphone offers new tool for silent sound detection
Ancient Roman concrete longevity offers mixed sustainability benefits
Next generation of autonomous drones will harness wind like an albatross

Military Space News, Nuclear Weapons, Missile Defense
Trump deploys nuclear submarines in row with Russia
Navy F-35 jet crashes in California
Slingshot unveils TALOS AI to simulate and support strategic space operations

24/7 News Coverage
Airbus CO3D satellites begin mission to generate high precision global 3D map
NASA teams with India to launch Earth-tracking satellite
Beijing officials admit 'gaps' in readiness after rain kill dozens



All rights reserved. Copyright Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.