AUKUS is a trilateral security agreement between Australia, the UK and the USA for the Indo-Pacific region. Under the agreement, the USA and the UK will help Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
The agreement was designed to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region. However, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson later told Parliament that the move was not intended to conflict with China. The agreement also includes cooperation on “additional cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and underwater capabilities”. According to the agreement, Australia will purchase modern and long-range capabilities for its air force, navy and army. The agreement is a big opportunity for these states with a like-minded alliance to promote security, prosperity and other shared interests in the Indo-Pacific region.
The agreement will help Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines that are faster and harder to detect than those of conventional navies. These submarines can stay underwater for months and also can fire long-range missiles. However, Australia has declared that it has no plans to develop or to use nuclear weapons. Australia will become the seventh country in the world to operate nuclear-powered submarines. Apart from this technology and nuclear-powered submarines, Australia will also shared in cyber capability, artificial intelligence and other undersea technologies. The alliance reflects, in the view of several scholars and policymakers, that it would have to face challenges and resistance from the regional powers and their allies.
The AUKUS agreement’s intentions may be to deter the growing influence of China in the Indo-Pacific region. When the USA was busy in the Middle East and Afghanistan, China was struggling to modernize and expand its nuclear capabilities so as to increase its influence in the region and beyond it as well.
China has established significant involvement in the South China Sea which is a main concern of Western powers because a third of the maritime shipping of the world passes through it and there is $3 trillion trade in it every year. The strategy of AUKUS indirectly may protect the interest of America and Europe by using the shoulder of Australia. With the submarine deal, Australia may feel secure from any aggression from the People’s Liberation Army after obtaining nuclear submarines. The two countries with nuclear weapons may not attack each other for fear of mutual annihilation but the controversy would create long distances for trade and investment activities among the regional and beyond the regional powers.However, the strategy carries many challenges in the region to the AUKUS alliance.
Unfortunately, after false military adventures in the Persian Gulf and the humiliating defeat of the world’s strongest military in Afghanistan, it gives the impression that the Western bloc is now attempting to test the waters of East Asia and the Pacific Coast. It might be to take forward Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” policy rather than to relax military muscles. According to Carl von Clausewitz famous dictum “War is nothing but the continuation of policy with other means”. That is happening and I think such developments are an unending series of Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Although the agreement is an attempt to draw a line before Chinese aggressive moves in the region occur, it separatse New Zealand and Canada from the USA, the United Kingdom and Australia who aretogether members of the alliance of intelligence-sharing, Five Eyes. This machismo has been working during the Cold War and has proved a successful intelligence alliance. The AUKUS agreement will focus on military capability and intelligence sharing.The government of New Zeeland has responded that it would ban Australian submarines from its water under the present policy of banning nuclear-powered submarines and surface vessels.
France has also angrily reacted and called back its ambassadors from Australia and the USA. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian also stated that the AUKUS Submarines deal is a “stab in the back” for the strategic partnership between France and Australia. France thinks that if the deal goes ahead then the French defense industry would have gained much reward. A French official has stated that “We think that it would be a mistake for all Europeans”. “We could turn a blind eye and act as if nothing had happened” The official said without elaborating that the European Union could play a strategic role in the Indo-Pacific region with the USA in terms of trade security, defense and defending freedom of navigation.
On the other hand Beijing has condemned the AUKUS agreement and called it “extremely Irresponsible” because it may undermine the regional peace and stability with the intensification of an arms race in the region. Although US President Joe Biden has announced just a few weeks ago that the days of Washington’s foreign nation-building projects are over, it seems that Americans haven’t lost their appetite for global military adventures. China has also accused the AUKUS states of having a “cold war mentality”.
The agreement might also lead towards a Cold War mentality and ideological prejudgment. Chinese state media, particularly Global Times, took more extreme position on AUKUS and wrote that Australia’s deployment of nuclear-powered submarines will “potentially make Australia a target of a nuclear strike if a nuclear war breaks out, even when Washington said it won’t arm Canberra with nuclear weapons, because it’s easy for the USA to equip Australia with nuclear weapons and submarine-launched ballistic missiles when Australia has the submarines. As well as North Korea,he said the nuclear-submarines agreements may spark a regional arms race. Malaysia has also said the deal serves as a catalyst for a nuclear arms race and once an arms race started, it would be difficult to overcome.
Although this is not the place to discuss the merits of this competitive version of the Australian National Strategy, it is worth noting that when Australia really relies on submarines, it will only face China. If the USA remains a major power in Asia then Australia has no need of them because the USA will be there. If the USA is not a superpower now, it will still be a part of the confrontation between Australian forces and the People’s Liberation Army. So it makes sense to upgrade all of Australian forces and capabilities to defend Australia. This also signals that the decline of the USA has started.
The AUKUS controversy illustrates that close friends can be divided if trade concerns are at stake. But, Britain and the USA have other ideas, as their own military industry would be the one that would benefit from the deal the most as France had planned. But the most disturbing reality that emerges from this conflict is the deployment of nuclear ships in the Pacific. .
Unfortunately, after false military adventures in the Persian Gulf and the humiliating defeat of the world’s strongest military in Afghanistan, it gives the impression that the Western bloc is now attempting to test the waters of East Asia and the Pacific Coast. It might be to take forward Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” policy rather than to relax military muscles. According to Carl von Clausewitz famous dictum “War is nothing but the continuation of policy with other means”. That is happening and I think such developments are an unending series of Tom and Jerry cartoons.
