If the United States will not keep its word even to its closest allies, what is its friendship worth? In reviewing the AUKUS deal — a $240 billion multidecade agreement with the United Kingdom and Australia to share nuclear submarine technology — the Trump administration is vindicating every anti-American agitator who claims that Uncle Sam is a trickster.

AUKUS was conceived as a way of checking Chinese revanchism in the Pacific. Australia, which was sanctioned by Beijing after it called for an inquiry into the source of COVID-19, needs submarines that can stay at sea for months. It originally ordered them from France, but as the project fell behind schedule, it turned to the U.K. instead. Because the U.K. and the U.S. share nuclear technology, this required agreement among all three governments.

A deal was announced in 2021. Australia would order the new subs from Britain and, in the meantime, buy three second-hand Virginia-class craft from the U.S. to plug the gap, with an option to purchase two more after 2032.

The three great English-speaking democracies used the........

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