The United States, Britain and Australia have
forged a historic security alliance to strengthen military capabilities in the
Pacific, allowing them to share advanced defence technologies and giving
Australian forces nuclear submarine technology. The move, announced on
Wednesday, extends Washington’s drive for military cooperation.
To begin the “Aukus” security partnership, naval officials
and technical specialists from the three countries will work together over the
next 18 months to give Australia the nuclear technology that will allow it to
deploy submarines “to improve deterrence across the Indo-Pacific”, said a
senior official from US President Joe Biden’s administration.
“We undertake this effort as part of a larger constellation
of steps, including stronger bilateral partnerships with our traditional
security partners in Asia – Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines – and
also stronger engagements with new partners like India, Vietnam and new
formations like the Quad,” the official said, referring to the security
grouping of the US, India, Japan and Australia.
“This is an historic announcement. It reflects the Biden
administration’s determination to build stronger partnerships to sustain peace
and stability across the entire Indo-Pacific region.”
The three countries will also cooperate on integrating
artificial intelligence, quantum computing and undersea capabilities into their
military operations.
At a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister
Scott Morrison and British leader Boris Johnson, Biden said the initiative was
needed to ensure the US and its allies had the “most modern capabilities we
need to manoeuvre and defend against rapidly evolving threats”.
“We need to be able to address both the current strategic
environment in the region and how it may evolve because the future of each of
our nations, and indeed the world, depends on a free and open Indo-Pacific
enduring and flourishing in the decades ahead,” Biden said.
The nuclear-powered submarines will be built in Adelaide
with “in close cooperation” with Britain and the US, said Morrison.
Johnson called the undertaking “one of the most complex and
technically demanding projects in the world”.
“Only a handful of countries possess nuclear-powered
submarines,” he said. “And it is a momentous decision for any nation to acquire
this formidable capability, and perhaps equally momentous for any other state
to come to its aid.”
While all three leaders cast the initiative as an effort to
bring “stability” to the Indo-Pacific region, none made any explicit mention of
China.
Asked whether the formation of Aukus was meant to
counter China’s military build-up, the US official said the move “is not
aimed or about any one country”, adding that “it’s about advancing our
strategic interests, upholding the international rules-based order and
promoting peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific”.
The official said that Biden did not mention the Aukus
initiative specifically when he spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping last
week, but that the US leader “did underscore our determination to play a
strong, strong role in the Indo-Pacific”.
Asked on Wednesday about the new security alliance, Liu
Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said that countries
“should not build exclusionary blocs targeting or harming the interests of
third parties”.
“In particular, they should shake off their Cold War
mentality and ideological prejudice,” Liu said.
While Beijing may seek to downplay the new pact by calling
it an outdated ideological move, there was “no doubt” about the initiative’s
significance, said Oriana Skylar Mastro, an expert in Chinese military and
security policy at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for
International Studies.
“Not only for the content of the deal, but it shows
innovation in how US allies and partners are thinking of working together,” she
said. “It’s more than the usual exercises and air shows.”
News of the trilateral alliance comes as China’s People’s
Liberation Army steps up aerial drills near Taiwan and in the
South China Sea, where China’s territorial claims have been contested by
Washington and other countries in the region.
Against this backdrop, Beijing will not buy the Biden
administration’s assertion that Aukus is not a specific reaction to China’s
military rise, said Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia program at the German
Marshall Fund of the United States.
“Beijing will see this as part of US efforts to forge
coalitions aimed at pushing back against China, and they aren’t wrong,” she
said. “The Chinese need to recognize that this assertive behavior is drawing
democratic countries to cooperate in new ways to defend their interests.”
Charles Edel, an expert in Indo-Pacific security issues,
viewed Wednesday’s announcement as the latest example of Biden’s rejection of
the go-it-alone approach that characterized his predecessor’s China policy, and
“a signal that the United States is willing to invest more responsibilities
into its allies than it has in the past”.
“The bet that’s
clearly being placed here is that, in response to increasing Chinese
capabilities and the turn to a more threatening Chinese foreign policy, more
allies are going to become more capable, and that that will serve as a greater
deterrent to the Chinese, both militarily and politically,” said Edel, a global
fellow at the Wilson Centre in Washington and senior fellow at the University
of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Morrison stressed that the
submarines would be nuclear in propulsion only, rather than carrying nuclear
weapons. “We will continue to meet all our nuclear weapons,” he said.
But nuclear power alone carried with it significant tactical
advantages that had obvious applications when it came to countering China’s
military presence in the Indo-Pacific, said Edel.
Besides increased payload capabilities, nuclear-powered
submarines had greater endurance and could remain in deep waters for longer
periods of times, said Edel. “They are, at depth, less detectable, so that’s a
deterrent,” he said. “When we think about the extraordinary production of
Chinese ground-based missiles that basically blanket the entire South China Sea
– without necessarily a counterbalancing force other than the US – this then, I
think, is a partial answer to that.”
Biden’s other geopolitical initiatives since taking office,
including his efforts to bolster ties with NATO and the G7 and the shaping
of the QUAD, have specifically included language about countering China’s
growing influence.
The administration official cited Biden’s planned in-person
meeting with Morrison and the other Quad leaders next week at the White House,
and suggested that the presence of British aircraft carriers in the South
China Sea in recent months figured into the strengthening military
alliance.
“You have just seen the substantial deployment of British
forces throughout the Indo-Pacific very successful deployments of the aircraft
carriers, supporting ships, lots of valuable port engagements,” he said. “Our
strategic discussions … transcended several months of very deep, very high
level engagements with both our military commands, our political leadership and
the people closest to our leaders in order to chart a common path on the way
forward.”
The establishment of Aukus follows a warning on Tuesday by
Glaser, former US National Security Council, Deputy National Security adviser
Zack Cooper and other military analysts that the US needs stronger military
partnerships in region.
“China’s modernizing military … poses the greatest challenge
in the world,” they said in a white paper on how Washington should
respond to challenges posed by Beijing. “China is not a global military peer
competitor of the US … but it has developed a robust capability to fight
effectively in the areas within the first island chain, which runs north to
south from Japan in the East China Sea, to Taiwan, to the Philippines in the
South China Sea.”
“Long-term success will depend on the US making significant
advances in its regional diplomacy with new partners who feel threatened by
Beijing’s military modernization and grey zone assertiveness, even as many have
strong trade, investment and financial ties with China,” they said.
But in the wake of Wednesday’s announcement, it remains a
possibility that Beijing will respond to Washington’s growing alliances with
increased assertion, said Ali Wyne, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group and an
expert in US-China relations.
“A big question is whether China will recalibrate, recognizing
that it is engendering greater resistance among advanced industrial democracies
or instead adduce that resistance as evidence that it needs to double down on
its current course of diplomacy.”
