AT PENPOINT
The Sino-American standoff is becoming more serious, though it has not yet reached the stage of a hot war. However, there are peaceful manoeuvres going on, looking like nothing so much as a stately dance, as the two countries gather forces, and prepare for the sort of showdown that both actually dread more than their allies do. The USA announced AUKUS, an alliance of Australia, the UK and the USA, which centres around a submarine deal, while China saw the admission of Iran to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, meaning that the Penta is finding some formal structure as a contrast to the Quad, which is the regional alliance the USA is developing against China.
It is worth noting the racial component of the USA’s latest alliance. Apart from the USA and Australia, the Quad includes India and Japan. They have been excluded from AUKUS. The new alliance excludes New Zealand probably for the same reason that the earlier alliance, ANZUS, came to grief. ANZUS was signed in 1951, being part of the ring of alliances that the USA tried to throw around the USSR, such as NATO, SEATO and CENTO. However, in 1986, New Zealand was suspended, because it had declared a nuclear-free zone around itself. Not only did the USA wish to disclose whether its conventional ships carried nuclear weapons, but many of its ships and submarines were nuclear-propelled. It became impossible for US warships to operate in New Zealand waters.
As nuclear submarines are at the centre of AUKUS, it would not be possible to bring New Zealand on board.
However, the racial bias remains. Recently Pakistan tasted this when New Zealand cancelled a cricket tour because of a terrorism alert received from Five Eyes, which includes only Anglo-Saxon countries, the USA< the UK, Australia and Canada. Of those, England has cancelled its tour, and Australia is expected to.
While there are now danger signs beginning to pop up, conflict is neither near nor certain. However, the world stepped a little nearer to conflict as the two main protagonists very publicly performed the equivalent of twiddling with the pieces they had arranged on the chessboard
At the centre of the new AUKUS alliance is the USA sharing the technology for nuclear propulsion with Australia, making it the only country apart from the UK with which it has done so. While the UK has operated Trident submarines, caring Polaris nuclear missiles (and which have been the mainstay of British nuclear forces), Australia will not deploy nuclear weapons, but simply operate nuclear-propelled submarines, carrying conventional torpedoes and anti-ship missiles.
The advantage of nuclear propulsion is that there is virtually no limit to the amount of time a submarine can remain underwater, and on station. The crews’ endurance of the cramped conditions thus limits the amount of time that a submarine can remain on patrol. Also, diesel-electric submarines have to surface periodically to recharge their batteries.
This has created ripples in Europe, because Australia has also cancelled it’s a $ 90 billion deal for 20 conventional submarines with France. France is so upset that it has recalled its Ambassadors from the USA and Australia. Apart from the loss of the business, which is immense, France also resents being left out.
Though all the USA would not like it to be seen that way, the USA has apparently ditched the non-white members of the Quad, and latched on to its only other Anglo-Saxon member. With the UK on board, this impression is strengthened. Indian glee at its inclusion in the Quad may now die down, though there are probably those who see an opportunity also to seek US nuclear-propulsion technology.
The Indian Navy has been operating ex-Soviet nuclear submarines since the late 1980s. In the Subcontinent, nuclear-missile submarines would be particularly destabilizing, because they give their country a second-strike capability. Assuming a counterforce strike, in which an enemy destroys land-based missiles, a sea-based nuclear capability, based on nuclear submarines carrying nuclear missiles, will survive, because submarines are notoriously hard to detect. They can then be used to launch a retaliatory strike.
India would be pressing the USA to give it the necessary technology, just as it was allowed a civilian nuclear deal which got it into the Nuclear Suppliers Group. However, for the time being, it has been excluded. Without nuclear subs, it would not be able to compete with the Australian Navy, once it has acquired the planned subs, in combating the Chinese navy, whose submarine fleet consists of both nuclear and diesel-electric boats, as well as ballistic-missile vessels.
Meanwhile, China is lining up the Penta: itself, Russia, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. Only Turkey is not a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation after Iran was included at the recent summit in Dushanbe.
It is worth noting that India is also a member of the SCO, which made a certain amount of sense when the SCO was founded in 2001, when it was meant to coordinate a response to terrorism, but it is difficult to see it remaining if it becomes a platform for China to combat the USA. One of the inherent tensions in the SCO is Russia, which has its own axes to grind with the USA, and which will be a competitor with China for leadership of the ani-US bloc.
However, now that the SCO is trying to make inroads into Afghanistan under the Taliban, it has led to an interesting prospect, that of Afghanistan being made to join the SCO. As the new regime is anti-US, it would suit China to have a new member who would drive the organization further in an anti-US direction. Pakistan is crucial in this respect, but it is also suspect. It has resisted US attempts to break it way from China, but it has also resisted Chinese moves. If Turkey comes into any formal arrangement with the Penta, it will mean another historically pro-US state in the Penta.
This means that while it is intended to strengthen the Penta, it will actually act as a brake on the group, and will thus not predispose it to conflict. The members are thus not pushing China towards a conflict. China may be finding itself in the same situation as Japan in the build-up to World War II.
Japan was trying to expand, and it has been said that it actually started World War II by invading Manchuria in 1931. However, by attacking the USA at Pearl Harbor, it brought it into the War. It also then occupied Indonesia, the Philippines and Burma, one of its motives being to secure the oil supply so crucial to its industry. In the same way, China has been careful, while carrying out the Belt and Road Initiative to make sure that its oil supply from the Middle East is secured. That is one reason for the importance of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor; it provides a convenient route for fuel, all the way from Gwadar Port to China.
In World War II, India had been opposed to Japan, and was even invaded, with the major Imphal battle taking place in Manipur. Though Indian troops fought the Germans in North Africa and also played a role in invading Italy, they played a major role in fighting the Japanese. This time around, it may find itself facing the brunt of China. It has already fought China, almost 50 years ago, back in 1962. That war only ended with the USA guaranteeing Indian integrity.
While there are now danger signs beginning to pop up, conflict is neither near nor certain. However, the world stepped a little nearer to conflict as the two main protagonists very publicly performed the equivalent of twiddling with the pieces they had arranged on the chessboard.
