Tim Kaine Presses Trump Nominee On Status Of AUKUS Alliance And Indo-Pacific Security

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During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) spoke about the AUKUS alliance and the security situation in the Indo-Pacific.

Transcript

00:00Mr. Cain. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Congratulations to our nominees. Mr. Tell, I really appreciated

00:06our visit about the work done by the Corps in Virginia and everywhere. I look forward

00:12to working with you. Mr. Anderson, congratulations to you. I don't know that all my colleagues

00:16know that Mr. Anderson was a longtime member of the Virginia General Assembly, and I appreciate

00:21that service in addition to your military service. And Dr. Nampoli, I'm going to spend

00:25my time on you and actually talk about a past job, not your current job. In your past or

00:31your current position, not the one to which you've been nominated, you've been very involved

00:36in AUKUS. I have been very involved in the AUKUS framework as a member of both the Armed

00:41Services Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee. The position to which you are nominated

00:45deals with nuclear nonproliferation, and that's a different matter than helping Australia develop

00:51a capacity to use Virginia-class subs and eventually build their own subs. So I want

00:56to draw a line between those two issues. But having you before us gives me the opportunity

01:02just to ask you your kind of perception of how AUKUS is going. I've been a big supporter

01:08of both Pillar 1 and the need to, you know, find important, innovative projects. We can work

01:13together with Australia and UK on Pillar 2. You've been given awards within the Pentagon

01:18for your work on AUKUS and I applaud you for that. But talk a little bit about your assessment

01:23of AUKUS where it is right now as you get ready to transition into a potentially different

01:27role. Senator, I appreciate the question and thank you for the recognition of my work with

01:34Australia and the United Kingdom to date. The AUKUS agreement provides a new and unique element

01:42of our defense cooperation with Australia. I was fortunate enough to be involved at the

01:48ground level as that agreement took shape, and also passing forth the Atomic Energy Act

01:54Section 123 agreement here with this body in Congress as well. The cooperation with Australia

02:04provides new asymmetric advantages in naval warfare in the region for one of our closest allies.

02:12I applaud Australia's efforts to date to invest both, you know, most importantly the people

02:20into this endeavor. And I have also had a personal role tying the, if I tie the nonproliferation

02:26effort and the AUKUS effort together because I believe they are inextricably linked. I have

02:32worked with the international, with the IEA to date to ensure that we're upholding very high

02:39nonproliferation standards as Australia seeks a conventionally armed nuclear powered submarine.

02:46I will have a different role moving into the Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation,

02:50but I know that the team in the Department of Defense is well equipped to continue along with the AUKUS

02:55endeavor. I'm a huge fan of this framework in the need to focus on the Indo-Pacific. We don't have,

03:03you know, the 70 years of a NATO in the Indo-Pacific and what we need to rely on is a more layered set of

03:10relationships, some bilateral, some multilateral, to promote deterrence and stability. I view this

03:16as a positive one. I want to thank both the Chair and the ranking. The AUKUS framework had to originally

03:22go through the Foreign Relations Committee because of jurisdictional issues, but then the leadership here

03:27worked very, very hard to kind of take that work product and bolt it on to an NDAA and they've been

03:33very supportive of it. I think going forward, you know, the two challenges that we have are one,

03:38making sure that we can produce the Virginia class subs called for in pillar one in a timely fashion.

03:45When we're having challenges meeting our own needs, how do we meet both our needs and the commitments

03:49that we've made to Australia? They've invested in us. We need to meet those commitments to show the world

03:55that we're good on the commitments we make. But then on pillar two, which is very open-ended,

04:00which is great, we probably need to define some, a finite number of deliverables where we can really

04:09achieve something and then once we achieve those we can look at more. So I think there's a lot of work

04:13to be done, but the fact that you were in on the ground floor and that you have helped get this off

04:18to a positive start is something I commend and I also commend Senators Wicker and Reid for being such

04:23strong champions of it. And with that, I yield back.

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