Alpha-Delta
14th. April 2022
1] INTRODUCTION
As great power competition intensifies, Asian countries are under pressure to choose between the geopolitical tussle between United States and China. Recognising its waning dominance in the region, Washington is probing the willingness of allies and partners to join an economic coalition in confronting China. China, meanwhile, is realigning herself to solidify its supply chains and increase the economic interdependence of other countries in the region so as to become an indispensable player in Asia. In an architectural overarching strategy, Beijing is using its politico-economic power to weaken the cohesion of the US-led alliance system and bring US allies and partners closer to her orbit. Attesting that the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) — comprising the United States, India, Japan and Australia — prime intention is no more than to multilateralise the US-led hub-and-spoke alliance system enabling a networked security architecture to corral China. To further the military encirclement of China, the U.S. is dedicating $27 billion to the Pacific Deterrence Initiative – a plan to expand the U.S. military stranglehold over Okinawa, Korea, Guam, Hawai’i and more.
Reinforcing QUAD is the formation of AUKUS – the Australia United Kingdom United States alliance of the 5-Eye States (Anthony R. Wells) enabling Australia to solidifying a military relationship with the United States. In AUKUS we have the trilateral partnership and nuclear submarine deal representing a strategic disruption that potentially negates what the QUAD is trying to achieve vis-a-vis China. Functional cooperation in Asia in tandem with omnidirectional economic cooperation has been ditched in favour of triggering a potential arms race redolent of the Cold War.
AUKUS explicitly signalled its intent to deter China militarily, (Mick Armstrong and Danny Haiphong, Monthly Review 2021). Disturbingly, the fine details spelled out through the grouping’s desired submarine capabilities suggested that concepts such as countervailing retaliation and mutual assured destruction are in play, (A Chong, Reconciling the Quad and AUKUS: a bridge too far?, EASTASIAFORUM 11/12/2021), while regional states, especially Indonesia and Malaysia had much to say about the potential risks of AUKUS and Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine program. China and Russia both had warned about the danger of an arms race, (Australia Financial Review). The Editorial Board of EASTASIAFORUM opinated that There’s more to Australian security in Asia than AUKUS and that Middle Power diplomacy essential to secure Asia against big power rivalry, too.
2] UNBALANCING GREAT POWERS IN ASIA
AUKUS is about one big thing: shifting the military balance in the Indo-Pacific away from China to raise the cost of Beijing using military power and intimidation to achieve its ends, that is the US unipolar hegemony reactive posture, yet positive positioning. It may be about reducing the likelihood of conflict in the region by strengthening credible deterrence, but the strong reactions from some southeast Asian countries only expose the glaring fault lines in these regional countries. The divergence of perceptions amongst ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) member states is further driving apart their views on competition between the United States and China, and their differing stances on AUKUS present deeper problems for ASEAN’s future. Besides, many Southeast Asian countries face a huge test for their peace and security in the form of the South China Sea dispute, which might be one of the most complicated issues ASEAN has faced. Further, even as the world is watching, China hardens its foreign policy stance on the formation of a new military-based entity in Asia. As some countries begin to push back, it would be challenging to bring these countries together to address their shared concerns.
AUKUS is regarded as a trilateral technology accelerator between the governments of the three signatory nations with a ruthless focus on increasing the military power of each nation by accelerating the development and application of key technologies into the hands of their service men and women (MEDIA STATEMENT, 16 Sep 2021, Prime Minister)
As a trilateral agreement that is bringing into being three other joined ‘trilaterals’ in each of the three nations: between the governments, the research organisations and the companies—including tech firms outside the traditional defence sector, AUKUS will only be successful as a technology accelerator if it keeps its focus on the particular technology streams identified in the joint leaders’ statement and if the three nations, their defence organisations and research and corporate sectors understand the imperative of delivering tangible capability advantage to the US, UK and Australian militaries.
According to Michael Shoebridge, writing for
The Australia-UK-US partnership announced by American President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on 15 September 2021 shows how much the world has changed in just five years.
Back in 2016, when Australia selected a French diesel electric design as the basis for its key deterrent weapon—its next generation submarine—a nuclear submarine was not in the options considered. That’s because Australian government and military leaders did not see Australia’s strategic environment as warranting the difficulty and complexity of acquiring and operating nuclear submarines, and because neither the US nor the UK governments would have been likely to agree to share nuclear submarine technologies with Australia if Australia had asked. Neither government has shared this technology with any other partner since they entered the US-UK nuclear partnership in 1958.
[A Malaysian reader to Malaysiakini wrote ‘The recent Aukus pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States has caused much anxiety globally, more so in Southeast Asia.
‘Many see this as a form of military escalation with mixed reactions towards the move, depending on which side of the fence one is on, with strong support and protests by various governments. Many feel that this move will lead to another nuclear arms race, only this time, in the South China Sea.‘ ]
Shoebridge continues: a single factor explains the shift in these three governments’ positions between 2016 and 2021: the now manifest systemic challenge that a powerful, aggressive Chinese state under President Xi Jinping poses to security in the Indo-Pacific, and globally. President Xi has made what was unthinkable in 2016 necessary in 2021. AUKUS, therefore, is about one big thing: shifting the military balance in the Indo-Pacific away from China to raise the cost of Beijing using military power and intimidation to achieve its ends.
[The response from globaltimes was that an enhanced trilateral security partnership called “AUKUS is an effort of the US to build a new alliance against China. The pact will support Australia in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines and enabling patrol of nuclear-powered submarines in the Indo-Pacific region. AUKUS will bring ‘nuclear-powered submarine fever’ across globe, 16/09/21]
Eyeing an increasingly formidable Chinese military, the United States needs all the help it can get in the Indo-Pacific. That was Washington’s primary motivation for a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, or AUKUS, as announced.
As a first priority, the three countries will focus on providing the Royal Australian Navy with nuclear-powered attack submarines, or SSNs. The announcement launches an “18-month consultation period” to determine the best and most expeditious path to helping Australia field SSNs. Biden says that consultation period will be used to answer questions related to workforce, training requirements, production timelines, and nuclear safeguards.
In effect, this component of the AUKUS agreement ends an existing Australia-France deal to build new diesel submarines for the Australian Navy and replaces it with an Australia-U.S.-UK agreement to build nuclear-powered submarines for the Australian Navy.
As stated above, in response to that announcement, the Global Times cited an unnamed military expert as suggesting Australia’s acquisition of the submarines could make it a target of a nuclear strike from China.
The growing challenge, according to Defense One, for the United States Navy is her submarine capacity. The U.S. Defense Department publicly states it needs at least 66 attack submarines to meet its operational requirements, but the U.S. Navy’s SSN fleet is well below that requirement and expected to dip to 50 submarines by 2026.
The declining size of America’s attack submarine fleet is particularly problematic given that the People’s Liberation Army Navy fields more than 60 attack submarines with at least seven SSNs and is working hard to increase both quality and quantity. To make matters worse, the United States must deploy its SSNs around the world, whereas Beijing focuses almost all of its attack submarine deployments in the Indo-Pacific. That provides Beijing a numeric advantage in attack submarines in locations where U.S.-China conflict is most likely to occur.
However, it will take many years—perhaps “decades,” before these submarines are actually in the water.
To defend these territories and interests, France maintains a robust defense posture in the region. Paris retains about “8,000 soldiers and dozens of ships are pre-positioned in several bases” in the region, according to Marcos. This year, a French Amphibious Reading Group sailed to the Indo-Pacific, and a French submarine patrolled the South China Sea.
From a military perspective, the French are more present and active in the Indo-Pacific than any other European power. There are good reasons for that. France has numerous territories in the region, such as French Polynesia, La Réunion, Mayotte, and New Caledonia. According to an April 1 report by Pierre Marcos for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, these territories in the Indo-Pacific are home to 1.6 million French citizens.
For the US and the Biden Administration, AUKUS is an emphatic demonstration that the Afghanistan withdrawal was worth the pain because it is letting the US focus time and resources on the Indo-Pacific in a way neither Barack Obama nor Donald Trump did. It shows that Biden meant what he said during his presidential campaign—he has ended the US commitment to Afghanistan, he is seeking to rebuild the US economy through infrastructure, technology and investments that address climate change and generate economic and technological strength, and he is facing up to the challenge of China. AUKUS can give President Biden some of the momentum his administration needs.
It is, as Charles Edel has said, “a sea change in US strategic thinking towards empowering its allies, redistributing its forces around the Indo-Pacific, and better integrating its allies into its supply chains and industrial planning to deal with an increasingly aggressive China”.
According to The Strategist, 13/01/2022, however, Less discussed are the multiple factors that drove Washington to this decision. None relate to over-the-top claims that it was motivated by a desperate and provocative grasp at preserving its primacy. Understanding the multiple rationales at work is key to determining how important AUKUS is to America, the strength and durability of its commitment, and the likely evolution of this rapidly changing partnership…..This requires sharing sensitive technologies, deepening intelligence cooperation, pooling resources and changing domestic legislation around export controls. It could fundamentally change America’s engagement with the region, its approach to technological acquisition, and its relationship with Australia and other allies.….While President Biden has repeatedly asserted that alliances are America’s greatest asset and pledged that his administration will repair and reinvest in them, he had realised the insecurity of Americans where ‘we amplify our power as well as our ability to disrupt threats before they can reach our shores.…..where this straightforward logic has guided American policymakers for decades: there’s safety, and power, in numbers and threats are best confronted as far from the American homeland as possible.‘ For US, then, AUKUS is a tangible demonstration of its commitment to allies under duress. Significantly, it is a recognition that in a deteriorating security environment with a shifting balance of power, US presently and significantly has to augment close allies’ capabilities and enable them to do more than one managing as the sole hegemony globally.
3] UK’S AUKUS
For the UK, AUKUS is an enormous injection into the substance of the UK’s Indo-Pacific Tilt set out in its Integrated Review. It’s a part of the Global Britain ambition post-Brexit. And AUKUS connects to UK strengths—in cyber and science and technology.
An additional understanding of Britain’s role in AUKUS is summarised in the so-called ‘Indo-Pacific tilt’ set out in the government’s policy paper, ‘Global Britain in a Competitive Age: the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy’. This report, published in March 2022, specifies the goal of becoming the “European partner with the broadest and most integrated presence in the Indo-Pacific – committed for the long term, with closer and deeper partnerships, bilaterally and multilaterally.” This may be understood as part of a broader post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’ agenda of the British government, which is “designed to position the UK as a force for good in the world – defending openness, democracy and human rights” and with “an increased determination to seek multilateral solutions to challenges”.
The need to deepen engagement in the Indo-Pacific is fundamentally rooted in both economic and security concerns, as apparent with the Integrated Review’s description of the region as both the “world’s growth engine” and “the centre of intensifying geopolitical competition”. Accordingly, the government’s strategy takes the form of an amalgamation of commitments and policy objectives which seek to integrate the UK more closely into South-East Asia’s multilateral economic and common defence arrangements. This in turn has the objective of balancing China’s influence in the region. One recent development regarded as a success was the UK joining ASEAN as a dialogue partner.
4] The AUSTRALIA’s AUKUS
For Australia, AUKUS is a response to the government’s description of Australia’s deteriorating strategic environment, set out in the July 2020 Defence Strategic Update, primarily because it is the vehicle for adding offensive power to Australia’s military that raises the costs to others in the region of contemplating conflict involving Australia. Furthermore, it reinforces Australia’s deep alliance and security partnerships with the US and the UK, again with a regional focus.
It has to be emphasised that the Defence Strategic Update 2020 launched in Canberra is a notably candid assessment of the strategic challenges Australia faces and the measures with which the government plans to meet them. It explicitly declares “Australia’s ability – and willingness – to project military power and deter actions against us”. This is a sweeping agenda and the update is as ambitious in its strategic scope as in its capability plans.
That said, while it does not reject the possibility of Australia’s involvement in US-led coalition operations further afield, the update is explicit in focusing defence planning “on our immediate region: ranging from the north-eastern Indian Ocean, through maritime and mainland South East Asia to Papua New Guinea and the South West Pacific”. If Australia’s “backyard” still encompasses a significant percentage of the earth’s surface, there is nevertheless recognition of the vital interests at stake and – to an extent – of Australia’s own limitations, lowyinstitite theinterpreter; aspi thestrategist; afr Australian Financial Review.
AUKUS, though, is five ‘Nots’. It is not just a pact about sharing nuclear submarine technology that leads to Australia acquiring and operating eight of these “peak predator” deterrent weapons. It is not a military alliance that contains commitments to come to each other’s aid in times of crisis and conflict. It is not a sidelining of the other key rising Indo-Pacific-focused minilateral—the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue involving India, the US, Japan and Australia. It is not a signal that Australia seeks to be less engaged in existing regional multilateral architecture like the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the East Asia Summit. And it is not a substitute for the deep and successful Five Eyes intelligence partnership involving the US, Canada, the UK, New Zealand and Australia.
AUKUS has a clear agenda that includes the nuclear submarine program, but it goes beyond this into four essential areas of future but near-term military advantage: artificial intelligence, cyber, quantum technologies and undersea technologies (other than the submarines). These focus areas of AUKUS are critical for the three nations and for security in the Indo-Pacific over the next 5, 10 and 20 years.
Australia doesn’t need a new alliance with the US—it already has the ANZUS Treaty—and the Australia-UK partnership is already deep, with mutual expectations of consultation and assistance if either were to face conflict or crisis. The Five Eyes partnership is central here, (read Anthony R. Wells, Between Five Eyes: 50 Years of Intelligence Sharing (Oxford: Casemate, 2020).
In some ways, the return of great power politics to Asia recalls the geopolitical conditions in which ASEAN was born. Prior to the Association’s creation in 1967, the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) — whose only Southeast Asian members were Thailand and the Philippines — was a stalking horse for US,0 French and British security interests in the region.
After SEATO became irrelevant and was eventually dissolved, and ASEAN became the central convening body for regional integration and cooperation in Southeast Asia that balanced off interference from the Eastern and the Western blocs.
Dino Patti Djalal, former Indonesian presidential spokesperson and ambassador to the United States, asks where the agreement leaves ASEAN strategically and what impact it might have on ASEAN centrality as a balancing force in Asia’s security equation? ‘Some Southeast Asians are worried that AUKUS could affect ASEAN’s stabilising role in a volatile geopolitical landscape’, he points out.
In the wake of AUKUS, Dino calls for Australia to follow through in practice on its assurances about the importance of ASEAN centrality because that’s at the heart of regional stability in Australia’s backyard. He also suggests that Australia and its AUKUS partners need to engage in serious confidence building in the region. That confidence-building, he urges, needs to embrace China despite the significant elevation of diplomatic statecraft and political courage that will be required, because it is crucial to Asia’s economic and political security.
More than ever, a redoubled effort to engage with ASEAN should remain the highest priority. Australian engagement with Southeast Asia that strengthens ASEAN is a critical complement to the political-security hedge that the Quad and AUKUS provide. By this approach, it would better entrench ASEAN’s multipolar regional order of rules, openness and stability and a lowering regional security risk.
5] QUAD AND AUKUS
The Quad partnership between four of the major powerful democracies in the Indo-Pacific has a security and technology dimension, but it’s central purpose is, as India’s Prime Minister Modi has said, promotion of a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific region. This means that the Quad’s agenda is as much about “public goods” that bind the region together and promote open and transparent values and behaviours as it is about hard-edged security cooperation aimed at deterring Beijing’s leaders from using military force and intimidation to achieve their ends. To the extent that AUKUS increases the military power of the US, Australia and the UK and shifts the military balance away from China in the Indo-Pacific, it is deeply complementary to the Quad, and a foundational contribution to a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific. No doubt, this is why new Japanese Prime Minister Kishida has welcomed AUKUS.
[see the AUSTRALIA-JAPAN RESEARCH CENTRE on reimaging the Japan relationship, too. On the other hand, South Korea is balking at the Quad; see The view from Jakarta, Brookings Institute and QUAD in Asia, firesstorms]
If Australia getting nuclear subs is central to AUKUS, then won’t stronger deterrence have to wait until the 2040s?
Australia will continue to be an engaged member in the regional architectures for diplomacy and dialogue on security and economics in the Indo-Pacific, notably the ASEAN-centred architecture that includes the East Asia Summit and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). However, AUKUS is equally a message that, as with the Quad, Australia and the US see a crucial need to add real weight to a balancing strategy. Dialogue and cooperation are essential, but without real deterrence and a serious balancing counterweight, dialogue will achieve little and genuine cooperation will have limits.
The Five Eyes intelligence partnership between the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand has a healthy overlap with the technology focus areas of AUKUS. High end intelligence capabilities must involve an understanding and application of artificial intelligence, cyber and quantum technologies, (see Anthony R. Wells, Between Five Eyes: 50 Years of Intelligence Sharing, Oxford: Casemate, 2020).
However, the purpose of the Five Eyes partnership in these technology areas is an intelligence one, and much of the cooperation is within highly classified boundaries. So, approaches inside this domain don’t naturally bleed out to the militaries or national security communities of the Five Eye partners. With AUKUS, the US, UK and Australian leaders have recognised this and set out a path for faster progress for their militaries that does not depend on the intelligence community.
The obvious problem for AUKUS if it were mainly about nuclear submarines as the key to shifting the military balance in the Indo-Pacific is that eight additional nuclear attack submarines by themselves in the hands of the US and its close allies in the Indo-Pacific will not shift that balance enough. Furthermore, even the contribution it will make to deterrence of conflict is some way off. Public statements from Australian naval officials since the AUKUS announcement state a goal of having at least one Australian nuclear submarine before 2040 and an ambition to have more than one by that time. The 19 years between now and then are almost certain to see continuing rapid growth in China’s military power and deployment of novel weapons systems (an example being the developmental hypersonic glide vehicle launched from space in two tests earlier this year).
It’s no coincidence, then, that AUKUS has a two-speed timetable. The slow speed program is about nuclear submarine cooperation. Whereas the rest of the AUKUS agenda relating to AI, cyber, quantum and undersea technologies other than the submarines is designed to shift the military balance over the 2020s and through the 2030s, with the nuclear submarine element adding further deterrent power after that.
There is little doubt that the leaders’ direction to their defence organisations to accelerate getting applications of these technologies into the hands of their military personnel is a sign of frustration that this was not already happening at speed and scale.
[Defense One has this analysis in that the AUKUS technology exchange agreement is a unique opportunity for Australia to rapidly join an extremely elite group of navies that operate long-range, high-endurance, quiet, lethal submarines—a group that currently includes the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, and France. (Beijing is working to produce quieter SSNs.) The technology will provide Australia with the optimal submarine to address the most likely naval threat to their interests: China. That submarine will constitute a significant upgrade from whatever diesel submarine Australia would have eventually received under its deal with France.
However, the Global Times had cited an unnamed military expert as suggesting Australia’s acquisition of the submarines could make it a target of a nuclear strike from China.
Added to that probability problem is the growing challenge for the United States submarines’ capacity. The U.S. Defense Department publicly states it needs at least 66 attack submarines to meet its operational requirements as the Virginia-class submarines are being retired. Further, the U.S. Navy’s SSN fleet is well below that requirement and expected to dip to 50 submarines by 2026.
The declining size of America’s attack submarine fleet is particularly problematic given that the People’s Liberation Army Navy fields more than 60 attack submarines with at least seven SSNs and is working hard to increase both quality and quantity. To make matters worse, the United States must deploy its SSNs around the world, whereas Beijing focuses almost all of its attack submarine deployments in the Indo-Pacific. That provides Beijing a numeric advantage in attack submarines in locations where U.S.-China conflict is most likely to occur.]
6] AUKUS AND NATO
Most obviously, AUKUS is a powerful statement about the priority of the Indo-Pacific—and the systemic challenge of China for the three partners, reinforcing the assessments driving the Quad partners’ increasingly deep cooperation. The tension AUKUS has provoked between each of the partners, most notably Australia, and France flowing from the loss by the French of a $90 billion conventional submarine program has been playing out in ugly, angry and personal ways between the leaders, including in the margins of the recent G-20 and Glasgow COP26 events.
In the short term, this tension has disrupted the growing cooperation on the China challenge between the AUKUS partners and France, and complicated EU and member state engagement also, despite the growing number of European nations with Indo-Pacific policies, strategies and guidelines and the recent EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. This is likely to be a less important disruption in the medium term, however, as the force driving convergence between the EU, individual European states and the AUKUS partners is a common assessment of the systemic challenge from China.
In the region, ASEAN members have expressed mixed views on the new partnership, with Indonesia and Malaysia expressing concern about the potential destabilisation that nuclear submarines might cause, while others are at least quietly welcoming the partnership, despite low key official statements. There is an underlying understanding of the value of balancing Chinese power, with this being done outside the existing dialogue and engagement architecture. This mindset will be equally applicable for European partners to appreciate as they implement their various Indo-Pacific directions.
AUKUS is also a new ‘minilateral’ that joins a small set of other Indo-Pacific-focused minilateral partnerships Australia works within. The Quad and the Australia-Japan-US trilateral are key examples.
These minilaterals have different purposes and agendas but, managed well, are mutually reinforcing. They are a way of conducting “fast multilateralism”. They allow the particular groupings in each to pursue specific agendas where the partners have strong common interests and are willing to apply resources to advance these, with a sense of urgency. This means that the minilaterals can move faster and do more than wider multilateral groups. The UK’s deeper engagement and presence in the Indo-Pacific through its ‘Indo-Pacific Tilt’ set out in its recent Integrated Review makes it a welcome partner for these other non-AUKUS groupings.
The rise and increasing priority of these minilateral groupings is a challenge to existing broader groupings like NATO and the wider set of US allies, just as it is to the existing multilateral groupings in the Indo-Pacific.
They are a statement that the larger institutional groupings aren’t acting with the common purpose and speed that the current strategic and technological environment demands, just as the current institutional arrangements for capability development and delivery within the AUKUS partners has also not delivered what is now required. How NATO responds, and whether small partner groupings within NATO and the EU will likewise seek a ‘minilateral’ approach, while also working within the larger groupings, is probably the subject of analysis and perhaps decision to be made in various capitals.
South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong was in Brussels to attend a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) foreign ministers in April, 2022. He was the first South Korean foreign minister to join a high-profile NATO session, Yonhap News reported. Aside from South Korea, three countries – Japan, Australia and New Zealand— also attended the NATO session. Nikkei Asia reported this was the first time a Japanese minister attended such a meeting.
By inviting the four Asia-Pacific countries, NATO and the US wanted to draw more countries to form a united front against Russia over the latter’s conflict with Ukraine (newleftmalaysia), such a move will also help NATO’s global expansion, especially to Asia, as the US has always sought to build a more effective framework to contain China in the Asia-Pacific region, Li Kaisheng, a research fellow and deputy director at the Institute of International Relations of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times, 07/04/2022.
The US and NATO are using the conflict for their own strategic purposes, exploiting the crisis to revive NATO’s influence and turning it into a “battle” between so-called “democracy” and “autocracy,” Yang Xiyu, a senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, also expressed forcefully.
Yang said that since the beginning of this century, the US has used NATO to shift its global strategic focus and alliance system to the east. From the Iraq war to the Afghan and Syria wars, besides the Libyan air-bombings, we have witnessed NATO’s more frequent military operations outside NATO and more NATO members’ presence in the South and East China Sea and the Asia-Pacific region. The strategic purpose for the NATO meeting is to start its global expansion.
As a product of the Cold War, NATO represents confrontations and targets certain countries. Its global expansion brings polarization and clashes. Its expansion in the Asia-Pacific region will surely target China, undermine the regional security environment and bring turbulence, Li said, urging regional countries to have a clear understanding of the disastrous results ahead.
7] AUKUS STRATEGIC AMBIGUITY
AUKUS may well represent the death knell for strategic ambiguity in Australian foreign policy. Although Canberra may have a record of uncanny alliance coordination in the past, it is not too much to presuppose that in any future military conflict with China, especially over Taiwan, the United States will not expect Australia to play a definitive role in the ensuing conflict.
Will a future Australian government of either political persuasion be able to resist U.S. pressure to be part of any such conflict? History suggests not. Afterall, Australia has been the U.S.’s poddle in major conflicts since the First World War.
Yet the irony, of course, is that by the time Australia’s submarines are deployed, the region’s strategic contours may be landscaped differently by then.
AUKUS, indeed, can be described as the latest example of that reflexive reaction in Australian strategic psychological posture. This is to say that when an Asian threat or even a menace appears on the horizon, Canberra’s impulse is to look to its Anglosphere cousins for protection. The history of Australian defense and foreign policy is repleted with such moments. Therefore, AUKUS is clearly a baggage stuffed with powerful downunder cultural assumptions and soundbite didjeridu. While the partnership is expected to see a clasing of the AUKUS embrace, but Aussie needs to be reminded that great powers can turn on a dime.
We conclude by saying if there is some division on security issues like the formation of AUKUS, it is in the interest of all ASEAN member states to protect the organisation’s centrality to regional diplomacy.
In the final analysis, there are more salient, and silent, issues regarding peace and security in Asia than churning of the AUKUS submarines’ turbulence.
Firestorms 