President Biden announced on Wednesday that the United States and Britain will enter a new security partnership with Australia, providing the country with the technology necessary to make nuclear-powered submarines.
The partnership will be known as AUKUS, and comes at a time when the U.S. and its closest allies are trying to curb China's influence in the region, although Biden did not mention the country by name during his remarks. "We all recognize the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term," Biden said. "We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region and how it may evolve because the future of each of our nations, and indeed the world, depends on a free and open Indo-Pacific, enduring and flourishing in the decades ahead."
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the submarines will be built in Adelaide, and his country will "continue to meet all our nuclear non-proliferation obligations." Nuclear-powered submarines are quieter, move faster, can be deployed for longer periods of time, and are harder to detect.
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