The leaders of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia have symbolized this Monday the relaunch of their military alliance, formed by the acronym in English of the three countries (Aukus), with a historic announcement: the oceanic country will buy nuclear submarines from its two partners with the objective of containing the Chinese expansion in the Indo-Pacific. “This unprecedented trilateral cooperation is testament to our shared commitment to ensure that the Indo-Pacific continues to be free and open, prosperous and secure,” US President Joe Biden said after signing the agreement.
First, Australia will buy three US Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines, worth $3.5 billion, with an option to buy two more in the future, and then another British submarine of similar technology, the most advanced to date. All of these will be delivered from the 2030s and Australia is expected to develop its own weaponry around this time based on the knowledge provided by both countries. In addition, they will deploy a fleet of submarines in Perth (a port city in Western Australia) to train Australian crews for when they have these ships. The final objective, with a view to 2040, is the manufacture of a new nuclear-powered submarine, the SSN Aukus, for which the three countries will contribute their own components.
This was announced by President Joe Biden, together with Prime Ministers Rishi Sunak and Anthony Albanese, at a joint press conference in San Diego (California), where their first trilateral meeting took place. The agreement reached represents the first concrete step of the alliance, sponsored in September 2021 between the three English-speaking countries. “We are at a turning point in history, in which today’s hard work to reinforce deterrence and promote stability will affect the prospects for peace in the coming decades,” the US president has magnanimously sentenced.
It is a historic pact: It is the first time the US has shared nuclear propulsion technology since the 1950s, when it partnered with the UK to fight the USSR during the Cold War. And it is momentous for Australia, which will become the seventh country in the world to have a fleet of nuclear submarines, after the US, the UK, France, Russia, China and India.
Objective: contain the Asian Giant
This alliance seeks to strengthen the regional counter-power to China, which has been reinforcing its military investment for years, threatening to expand into the surrounding seas and reiterating its sovereignty over Taiwan and Hong Kong. To contain his influence, the Biden administration has announced in recent months that they will help Japan rebuild its military and set up new military bases in the Philippines. In addition, he is increasing their cooperation within the framework of another alliance, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), which brings together the US, India, Japan and Australia.
For its part, for the moment, China has deployed its military arm in the South China Sea (also called the East Vietnam Sea or the West Philippine Sea, depending on who names it), where up to five countries consider that they have rights over different parts of the water and claim it as part of their territory. In a clear reference to this point, the Australian Prime Minister, Albanese, has said that the three nations “are linked by a common belief in a world in which the sovereignty of each nation is respected” and where “peace, stability and security make it easier for all countries to act in the interest of their sovereign interests, without coercion”.
China, as well as Taiwan, considers that it has a “historical right” over the group of islands located in its southern sea. It bases its sovereignty on the line of nine points, an imprecise set of lines that indicates on the map everything that it considers its historical territory and that has been knocked down by various UN resolutions. However, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei claim their share, protected by international law, as established in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982: the sovereign zone of a coastal country goes 12 miles beyond from its coast and the Exclusive Economic Zone, up to 200 miles, in which the country has “exclusive rights of exploitation” of resources and trade in the territory.
With an area of 3.5 million square kilometres, this sea is a key point for maritime trade, since more than 50% of the world’s containers pass through and it is very rich in gas and oil reserves. It is a strategic position for China, which the Aukus countries want to avoid at all costs. To ensure control of the sea, and gain positions when it comes to claiming its sovereignty, China has spent years building artificial islets, on which it has placed military bases to expand its footprint on this first-order geopolitical point.
For its part, the US, which did not sign the Convention of the Seas at the time, has been since the era of Barack Obama – who designed the military strategy Pivot To Asiashifting the geostrategic focus from the Middle East to Asia Pacific – warning of the Chinese advance in the region and expanding its alliances and military bases in Singapore, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea and Australia, as well as increasing its resources at the Guam base , territory belonging to the USA.
Australia, between two waters
In this scenario, Australia navigates a complex balance, since China is its first trading partner, despite the fact that it disapproves of its actions in the region and has the US and UK as its main geopolitical and military allies. The Chinese government has already denounced that the Aukus is part of a “Cold War mentality” and has said that sending nuclear submarines is contrary to the “international system of non-proliferation”, said Foreign Minister Mao Ning.
The Australian Prime Minister has reiterated his intention to avoid rhetorical and military confrontation with China -despite the fact that this will probably be the main result of the agreement-, stating that “my government is determined to invest in defense capabilities, but also to promote security by investing in our relationships throughout the region.”
Furthermore, China is not the only country unhappy with the alliance: it has also riled up a major Western partner, France. The creation of Aukus already generated tensions at the time with this European country, which called the ambassadors of the US and Australia for consultations, in an unprecedented gesture. France had been planning for months to send up to 12 nuclear submarines to Australia for around 60 billion euros. But it was excluded from the military pact of the three powers, something that angered its president Emanuel Macron, who saw how Australia canceled the contract with the Naval shipping company to prioritize the purchase of submarines from the two English-speaking countries.
Sunak reaffirms British commitment against China
The pact reached relaunches the Aukus alliance and confirms the interest of the British “premier”, Sunak, to continue with the pact sponsored in September 2021 by his predecessor, Boris Johnson. The English prime minister smoothed over him and Macron three days ago at their bilateral meeting in Paris, where the two leaders embraced a new era of cooperation after the confrontation fueled by Brexit. The visit to the US, in addition to the meeting in the framework of Aukus, will also include bilateral meetings between the three leaders.
On the way to San Diego, Sunak spoke of China as “a challenge that could define an era and the global order,” distancing himself from the pressure he is receiving from the conservative wing of his party, including Liss Truss, who seek to qualify the giant Asia as a “threat” in the new British defensive foreign policy strategy. Within this plan, the “pemier” has announced that it will increase the investment for the Department of Defense by more than 6,000 million euros, in part, to finance the “next phase” of Aukus.
During his speech this Monday, he confirmed this rhetoric: “Today we are united by the same common purpose: the maintenance of freedom, peace and security”, he reiterated. “Over the last 18 months, they have only increased the challenges we face, such as Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, China’s growing hostility, or the destabilizing behavior of Iran and North Korea.”