AUKUS is a threat to global order

Syed Badrul AhsanSyed Badrul Ahsan
Published : 17 Sept 2021, 12:43 PM
Updated : 17 Sept 2021, 12:43 PM

It was not just an unwise move. It was a bad one. When the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom went for that sudden decision for Canberra to be supplied with nuclear-powered submarines as a way of deterring China, it was a reminder for the world of all the folly which once characterised Western diplomacy in the Cold War. Memories are yet alive of SEATO and CENTO, of Washington's determination to combat and defeat communism in Asia. Those two regional bodies, with the US leading the show, eventually died a slow but necessary death. And there has been ANZUS, today as good as dead. In the course of the Vietnam War, the Australians heeded America's call to prevent Saigon from falling into the hands of communist North Vietnam. The Johnson administration endlessly drew the world's attention to what it called the domino effect, its misplaced belief that if one Asian nation fell to communism, others would swiftly follow. That did not happen.

For more than two decades, successive administrations in Washington refused to acknowledge the primacy of Mao Zedong and his Communist Party in China and instead kept up the refrain of Chiang Kai-shek's regime on the island of Formosa as the legitimate representative of the people of China. That policy too ended in failure when in late 1971, Beijing made a triumphant entry into the United Nations and Richard Nixon went to China in February 1972. Over a period of years, a good number of years to be exact, the Cold War sputtered to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev. And the United States, to its deep satisfaction, found itself in the role of the only remaining superpower through the death of the Soviet Union.

All of that is in the past. The present matters. And the present speaks of the unstoppable rise of China as a major force in global politics. With its Belt-and-Road Initiative, it has been making deep inroads into Asia and Africa, rolling out drumfuls of money in helping nations in the two continents build infrastructure that might or might not be of benefit to their peoples. There have been all the fears of indebtedness voiced in recent times, with Hambantota in Sri Lanka and Gwadar in Pakistan cited as instances of the straitjacket Chinese economic assistance has been putting countries to. While one could argue the pros and cons of such Chinese policies, while one knows that the new Silk Roads lead to Beijing, the plain fact is that China today is a major power and Washington and its allies are right to be worried about the increasingly long shadow it has been casting over international politics. Before we know it, China could come level with the United States as the world's new superpower. Its future as the world's largest economy is a distinct possibility.

History informs us that bellicosity in diplomacy has paid little in terms of dividends. If today in hindsight one argues that the end of the Cold War had much to do with the fall of communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, it can equally be suggested that the objectives Washington and its allies sought to achieve during the Cold War did not reach fulfilment. The reunification of Vietnam remains a prime example. The unipolar world a lot of historians and political analysts thought had arrived following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the fall of Gorbachev was a mistaken comprehension of reality. The tragedy of Afghanistan is but the latest pointer to the waning influence in global politics of Washington and its friends everywhere.

And yet this new venture into bellicosity, through what has rapidly come to be known as AUKUS — Australia, UK, US — now threatens to have diplomacy stand on its head. The French are upset, fundamentally for economic reasons. The $64 billion deal they had reached with Australia for the supply of diesel-powered submarines to Canberra has simply been cast to the winds by Scott Morrison's government. That, again, is unethical behaviour on the part of a government. Deals between nations are simply not jettisoned in a cavalier fashion. These are not pre-modern times, when states could act with impunity and with defiance of the world beyond their frontiers. In this particular instance, the men and women who run the government in Canberra failed to inform Paris as to what they were up to. Quite naturally, therefore, Emmanuel Macron and his government are not just upset. They have gone ballistic. The point is not to be missed. Joe Biden, Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson have rattled France and have likely jeopardized the rest of Europe vis-à-vis Nato and the EU.

Now, there is little question that the Chinese have been doing things they should not have in the South China Sea. Beijing's posture toward its neighbours, who claim with justification that the Spratly Islands are disputed territory, has been threatening of late. The Vietnamese, the Malaysians, the Filipinos, the Taiwanese, indeed everyone in the Pacific region is worried about all that growing Chinese ambition to dominate the eastern perimeters of Asia. But problems of this sort are never resolved by creating newer problems. Diplomacy is never a matter of fighting fire with fire. One of the problems in the wake of AUKUS is a sure worsening of ties between Beijing and Canberra. Australia is now in the position of a nation acting as an Anglo-American proxy in the rising conflict between Washington and Beijing. One can be sure that rather than being frightened of the deal reached by Washington, London and Canberra, Beijing will get to be more belligerent. AUKUS aims to keep an eye on China and so ensure security in the Pacific, through those nuclear-tipped Australian submarines. How will AUKUS react if Chinese submarines, armed to the teeth with nuclear power, directly confront the Australians under the waters?

It is an uncomfortable thought, but a very real one. And given the harshness China has demonstrated toward pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong in recent times, it would be wrong to suppose that it will be intimidated by AUKUS. Hypothetically speaking, if the Chinese, with their increasing military power, were to move to reclaim Taiwan in swift surgical action, would the AUKUS nations hit back in an equal manner and so cause a forest fire around the globe? Would a Chinese assault on the Spratly Islands propel AUKUS into coming to the defence of the other claimants — Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines — to the archipelago?

After four years of a Trump administration operating through unbridled insanity in global affairs, the Biden administration ought to have restored modern-day diplomacy to its proper place. That it has not, that foreign policy is an area where the new men in Washington are feeling their way in an amateurish manner is regrettable. AUKUS has damaged diplomacy. And in Asia, it has pushed the continent's many governments into a quandary. Their foreign policies will be pushed to the extreme, especially when they have so long tried keeping a balance in their ties with Washington and Beijing.

Briefly, AUKUS is a bad journey back to a sordid past. The ghosts of SEATO and CENTO may well have taken rebirth in AUKUS, albeit in more worrying, which is nuclear, form. AUKUS is an unimaginative, short-sighted alliance that threatens the health of the planet, for it has given militarism a higher perch than diplomacy.