Run me through Australia's strategic outlook if the US decides to invade us. Or if they decide Australia needs to go and starts supporting one of our neighbors in fighting us.
1) The subs are certainly not for fighting China. By the time they're delivered, assuming all else equal, China will be in a position to ignore them. People are talking about deliveries in the 2050s vs a country that can basically build an entire economy in a few decades; it'll never work out in our favour. And we can't afford to be in a war with an Asian power under any circumstances anyway, we'd probably be better off surrendering immediately rather than fighting back against China if the US's deterrence fails. Ironically we'd probably end up with better infrastructure.
Fighting China with those submarines is a similar idea to fighting the US with those same subs. The plan is not to do that. It won't work out well for us.
2) Keep going with your thought, you haven't gone far enough. If diplomacy works because you have the means to defend yourself, why aren't we fighting the US? We can't possibly defend ourselves from them, and realistically we'd probably struggle to annoy them if they attacked us via a proxy war. And yet there is no realistic scenario where they fight us. Why is that, hm?
Here’s my view of why countries don’t attack each other: The downside for the attacker has to be larger than the upside, that’s when diplomacy becomes interesting. The downside doesn’t just have to be the defense of the attacked country but also the relation with other countries. The US won’t invade Australia because they wouldn’t gain much, compared to the loss of trust by other countries. Defense from china is more important than from the US for Australia, because the “public stage” deterrent is smaller for china than the US. That’s why you need to increase the deterrent by increasing your defense capabilities. You can correct me if you disagree though.
