Government officials and bureaucrats are rushing to assure us that Australia stands by the “rules-based” order, even while our supposed closest ally breaks all of them.

Their message is that Australia must hang tight on AUKUS, despite growing misgivings about this secretive military pact with such a lawless and dangerous “ally”.

The British and US governments have concluded their “reviews”, but we are unlikely to know much more than headline material, as they will not be made public.

While defence officials are sticking to the script, some former ones are warning about the military pact’s reliability.

The latest is Philip Mathias, a former director of nuclear policy with the British Ministry of Defence.

He told the January 12 Sydney Morning Herald that while British politicians do want to expand Britain’s military presence in the Indo-Pacific, “there is a high probability” that it would not be able to deliver because, like the US, it does not have enough of its own.

Mathias, who oversaw Britain’s nuclear defence policy from 2005 to 2008, said Australia has shown “a great deal of naivety”. He accused it of not undertaking “due diligence on the parlous state of the UK’s nuclear submarine program before signing up to AUKUS — and parting with billions of dollars”.

He said there had been plenty of “grandstanding” over the past four years, “but very little substantive progress on........

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