Washington and Canberra on Wednesday agreed to boost the US military presence in Australia and speed up cooperation, both countries said.
Wary of China’s unprecedented military build-up, US ally Australia has reshaped its defense force to focus on its missile strike capability and deterring would-be foes from its northern approaches.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Canberra understood “the gravity of maintaining a favorable balance of power in the region” as he met with Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles in Washington.
Photo: Reuters
The two “agreed to accelerate force posture initiatives at Australian bases, bolster cooperation in combined logistics and build greater interoperability through joint exercises,” a joint statement said.
Australia does not permit foreign military bases on its soil, but hosts US Marines for exercises for six months of the year in the northern city of Darwin. A rotating force of US-commanded submarines is scheduled to arrive in Western Australia next year.
Pressed on what the expanding force posture would entail, Marles told journalists that cooperation was also taking place in “logistics, cooperation, in respect of our air forces, cyber and space.”
The expanding cooperation was a response to “the biggest conventional military build-up by any country in the world since the Second World War in the form of China,” he said. “We need to be ensuring that we build deterrence, that we build balance, so that we can provide for the peace and stability of the region in which we live.”
“Collaboration through the alliance with the United States is fundamentally important to that,” he added.
Australia has also embarked on its largest-ever military spending project to build nuclear-powered submarines next decade under the AUKUS agreement with the US and the UK.
Critics have said the deal does not guarantee that Australia would receive the submarines.