The AUKUS Trilateral Defense Agreement: Degrading Custom and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

On 15 September 2021, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States publicly announced their joint intention of entering a new trilateral defense agreement (AUKUS). The central guarantee of this agreement is a major investment by the UK and the US in Australia’s underseas domain in the form of eight nuclear-propelled submarines. This article will review relevant multinational treaties, patterns of state behavior, and important textual arguments to conduct a surface-level legal analysis which is rather critical of the agreement's damaging precedent-setting potential