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Chandigarh: The haphazard execution of the US-Israel war against Iran – combined with the abrasive and often openly insulting remarks of US President Donald Trump towards close allies – has pushed two key Washington-led strategic frameworks into visible strain: the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) and AUKUS (a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the UK, and the US).

Over the past three weeks, Trump has publicly berated partners across both groupings, deriding their reluctance to back the US war effort against Iran and casting long-standing allies as unreliable and opportunistic. Such rhetoric, delivered in the midst of a crisis, has amplified existing anxieties worldwide about Washington’s reliability as a security guarantor.

Under these circumstances, it is difficult to see either framework- Quad and AUKUS- advancing meaningfully in the near term. Both rest, not only on converging strategic interests between the US and its other partners, but also on a baseline of political trust and predictability from its principal sponsor – the US. That foundation, however, now appears visibly frayed, with the long-term objectives of both strategic arrangements increasingly jeopardised by the volatility and transactional approach that Trump has brought to bear on these alliance managements.

The Quad – bringing together Australia, India, Japan and the US – was first convened in 2007, suspended and then revived in 2017 as an informal, non-binding strategic arrangement aimed at coordinating responses to China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific. It was deliberately structured as a flexible consultative platform rather than a treaty-bound alliance, dependent on trust and strategic alignment – both of which now appear increasingly fragile under enduring circumstances initiated exclusively by Trump.

AUKUS, by contrast, is a far more structured and consequential enterprise. Announced in September 2021, it binds Australia, the United Kingdom and the US into a long-term defence and technology partnership. Its centrepiece is the transfer of nuclear-powered submarine (SSN) capability to Australia, alongside deep collaboration in advanced domains like artificial intelligence, cyber warfare, quantum technologies and undersea systems. Unlike the Quad, AUKUS is not merely consultative – it is a commitment, explicitly oriented toward shaping the regional balance of power in response to China’s growing strategic assertiveness in both the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions.

However, despite their differing design and ambition, the Quad and AUKUS are now being tested by a common strain: the refusal of key US partners to be drawn into the war against Iran or to assist in forcibly reopening the Strait of Hormuz, whose prolonged closure threatens global energy flows. The US has repeatedly pressed allies such as Japan, Australia and the UK to contribute militarily to break this deadly blockade – only to be met with hesitation or outright refusal.

That reluctance has, in turn, provoked an increasingly hostile response from Trump, who has publicly berated his partners and allies in the Quad and AUKUS, questioning their credibility and accusing them of selectively benefiting from US security guarantees for decades, without assuming commensurate strategic risk. In doing so, Trump has not merely strained both these security frameworks, but actively undermined them – taking, as it were, a sledgehammer to both arrangements, one ally at a time.

With Japan, Trump’s onslaught was especially crude. Whilst defending the secrecy of the February 28 US strikes on Iran, Trump invoked the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi sitting beside him in the White House on March 19. When a reporter asked Trump why Japan had not been notified in advance of the US strike on Iran, he said: “We wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbour, Ok?” Trump gauchely stated, looking boorishly at the visiting Japanese prime minister .  

Takaichi appeared visibly uncomfortable, with reports describing her eyes widening, her taking a deep breath, and shifting in her seat, but without responding directly to the remark. Japan is not merely another US  partner in the Asia-Pacific, but the cornerstone of Washington’s post-World War II presence in the region, and to thus casually invoke Pearl Harbour in such a setting was not bluntness – it was simply egregious, even by Trump’s own low standards.

Australia, too, was treated with the same brusqueness. Trump dismissed Canberra’s global strategic role as marginal and overly dependent on Washington, suggesting it “wouldn’t be much without us” – a line that also hit out at one of the US’s most steadfast Indo-Pacific partners.

Trump also expressed surprise and disappointment at Canberra for not joining the US–Israel-led military operations to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz by deploying a naval flotilla. He even went a step further, lumping Australia together with other allies he accused of failing to back Washington against Iran and – more crudely – branding partners, including NATO members, as “cowards” for their reluctance to join the conflict in West Asia.

The UK fared no better. Referring to its Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump remarked that Britain had effectively “turned up after the fight was over,” a dismissive aside that portrayed London’s involvement in the Iran war as belated and inconsequential. India, too, in recent months, has been treated with similar brusqueness, with Trump and his inner circle of officials branding it a ‘tariff king’. The US president has also repeatedly reduced Washington’s critical strategic partnership with New Delhi to little better than trade irritation. 

Taken together, all these bitter criticisms cut across all members of the Quad and AUKUS, signalling a troubling shift by the US, in which partners are no longer treated as autonomous actors, but as supplicants, expected to align unquestioningly with POTUS’s military decisions, however disastrous and outlandish.

“By its actions and statements during the Iran conflict, Trump has not reinforced alliance cohesion but has severely undermined it”, said a two-star Indian Navy (IN) veteran associated with the Quad whilst in service. He has also reintroduced a fundamental doubt over whether or not the US remains a dependable anchor for long-term security arrangements, he added, declining to be identified for speaking on such a sensitive matter.

A cross-section of IN veterans similarly involved over the years with the Quad and its planning stated that both it and AUKUS depended not only on strategic integration but equally, if not more so, on long-term planning and high levels of political trust with Washington. Consequently, the sustained “unpredictability and venom” displayed recently by Trump is viewed as ‘deeply corrosive’ to alliance cohesion, internal confidence among partners, and the credibility of US leadership on which these arrangements ultimately rest.

“These are not transactional arrangements that can be recalibrated overnight but require sustained strategic direction,” said the aforementioned IN officer. Yet, Trump’s erratic and confrontational posture, he declared, has unsettled Indo-Pacific partners and raised doubts about Washington’s commitment to multilateral security frameworks. Moreover, through his acerbic remarks, Trump has also politically weakened his counterparts – undermining their domestic standing in ways that ultimately do little to advance, and may in fact harm, US interests, both now and in the longer term. 

Meanwhile, AUKUS, once projected as the technological core of Western deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, has increasingly come to appear tenuous – undermined by industrial limits, political uncertainty and diverging strategic expectations. At its core, the partnership hinges on an extraordinarily complex SSN enterprise, but this pillar is now under strain.

The US  submarine industrial base is overstretched, raising doubts over whether it can supply Australia with Virginia-class boats without compromising its own naval readiness. More starkly, a US Congressional assessment has even explored the possibility of not delivering any submarines at all, prioritising instead American requirements in anticipation of a  potential conflict with China.

The UK, the other key supplier in AUKUS, has its own vulnerabilities. Chronic delays, underinvestment and limited production capacity have cast doubt on its ability to deliver the next-generation SSN-AUKUS submarines on schedule. The programme’s timelines – stretching into the 2040s – already appear optimistic, if not unrealistic.

Overlaying these structural weaknesses is growing political uncertainty in Washington. The Trump administration’s review of AUKUS, coupled with its broader “America First” posture, has unsettled allies and raised concerns about long-term US commitment. This has been further compounded by transactional pressures on allies and scepticism within sections of the US policy establishment about transferring sensitive SSN capabilities abroad. 

Operational realities have further exposed asymmetries within the AUKUS partnership. Reports of Australian personnel being excluded from combat roles aboard US submarines have reinforced perceptions that Canberra remains a junior partner with limited agency, and AUKUS critics in Australia warn that the deal risks eroding sovereignty, while offering limited or no guaranteed capability in return.

Analysts said these trends suggest that AUKUS was no longer a ‘settled’ strategic compact but a fragile, evolving arrangement, whose success depended not only on technological delivery but on sustained political trust – something that, in the current climate, appears increasingly uncertain. They also agreed that the real risk for Quad and AUKUS was not collapse, but a hollowing out- an exercise in tokenism rather than an instrument of strategy.

And if this erosion continues unchecked, Trump may well, in January 2029, leave behind not alliances like Quad and AUKUS in need of repair, but frameworks so diminished that there will be little of substance left to rescue.

© The Wire