The US is surrounding Australia with military bases under the AUKUS pact, which undermines the country’s sovereignty and makes it a legitimate target for China, former Prime Minister Paul Keating has said.

In an interview with ABC on Thursday, Keating, who served as prime minister between 1991 and 1996, voiced strong skepticism about whether his country benefits from being a member of AUKUS – a landmark security partnership between Australia, UK, and the US, which was announced in 2021. The pact, which has been condemned by China, focuses on helping Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines.

Keating argued that by allowing the US to “displace our military” and surround the country with bases, Canberra is essentially giving up its right to determine its foreign and defense policy. Australia will “completely lose” its strategic autonomy as a result, he claimed.

“So AUKUS is really about, in American terms, the military control of Australia,” Keating said, adding that the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is “likely to turn Australia into the 51st state of the United States”.

The former prime minister added that the expanded military presence makes the country a target from China’s point of view. “We’re now defending the fact that we’re in AUKUS… If we did not have an aggressive ally, like the United States, aggressive to others in the region, there would be nobody attacking Australia. We are better left alone,” Keating said.

The US, he argued, is trying to “superintend” China, with tensions between the two being fueled by a power struggle over the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which Beijing views as part of its sovereign territory.

However, Keating argued that the Taiwan situation “is not a vital Australian interest” while China “has no strategic design” on Australia. The US attitude to Taiwan is comparable to China deciding that Tasmania needed help breaking away from Australia, he said.

The former prime minister’s remarks come after Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong traveled to Washington for talks about the AUKUS pact, and to discuss a new agreement on the transfer of nuclear material to Canberra as part of its push to acquire domestic-built atomic submarines from the 2030s.

China has warned that the AUKUS agreement raises nuclear proliferation risks, adding that it was conceived in the “Cold War mentality which will only motivate an arms race.” Russia has also sounded the alarm about the security situation in the Asia-Pacific, insisting that it “has no place for closed military and political alliances.”

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