Australia’s recent decision to acquire nuclear-powered submarines through the new Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) defense technology partnership has put its efforts to deter China’s rising military power on the global stage. But as Australia’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update makes clear, China’s increasingly aggressive gray-zone coercion — the use of asymmetric tactics to achieve strategic goals without the overt use of military force — is eroding the Indo-Pacific order today. Unfortunately, Australia’s submarines won’t enter service until the late 2030s at the earliest. To effectively defend its security interests and shape the strategic environment in the interim, Canberra needs a more active strategy to deter China’s gray-zone coercion now. The United States and Australia should pursue this together.
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