To the relief of Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese, incoming US secretary of state Marco Rubio has confirmed Donald Trump’s “very strong support” for the AUKUS military pact that is supposed to deliver Australia at least three nuclear submarines by 2050. Rubio’s announcement follows speculation that Trump would cancel the deal after congressional analysis warned it would be too “difficult and expensive for the US submarine industry.”

For Australian PM Anthony Albanese, Trump’s endorsement of AUKUS — which includes Australia, the United States, and United Kingdom — is vexed. On the one hand, Albanese can give a speech advertising the fact that he delivered on his promise to implement the deal. But AUKUS also binds Australia to Trump’s foreign policy agenda that, beyond provocative statements about annexing Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal, threatens to drag Australia along behind worsening tensions with China.

In 2021, prior to his election, Albanese described the deal as “clear-eyed pragmatism” and committed Labor to it, ostensibly as part of the party’s “small target” election strategy. Labor calculated that adopting AUKUS as a “pillar” of its 2022 election pitch would blunt the China-threat narrative that conservative former PM Scott Morrison had been using to portray Albanese as “soft” on national security. By implication, Labor’s acceptance of AUKUS was not born of love for US military might, but of love for winning government at all costs.