The AUKUS has suddenly changed the global narrative on Indo-Pacific.
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AUKUS Agreement - a paradigm shift in geopolitics
- The story: The winds of change are blowing hard, with the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia announcing a new trilateral security partnership called the AUKUS (Australia + UK + USA). It aims to ensure that there will be enduring freedom and openness in the Indo-Pacific region.
- How big is this: Experts reckon this is as big the Suez crisis in 1956, or Nixon's going to China in 1972 or the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.
- Scope of AUKUS: It envisages a wide range of diplomatic and technological collaboration, from cybersecurity to artificial intelligence, but at its core is an agreement to start consultations to help Australia acquire a fleet of nuclear-propelled (though not nuclear-armed) submarines.
- Australia cancelled a contract, worth tens of billions of dollars, signed in 2016 with France for diesel-electric submarines.
- In announcing AUKUS on September 15th with the PMs of Australia and Britain, Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson, President Joe Biden stressed that it was about “investing in our greatest source of strength—our alliances”.
- But America’s oldest ally, France, reacted with fury, calling it a “stab in the back”. On September 17th President Emmanuel Macron withdrew France’s ambassadors from Washington and Canberra (though not London).
- For America it is the most dramatic move yet in its determination to counter what it sees as the growing threat from China, particularly the maritime challenge it poses in the Pacific.
- Not only is America sharing the crown jewels of military technology, the propulsion plant for nuclear submarines, with an ally for only the second time in 63 years (the other time being with Britain), it is also robustly signalling its long-term commitment to what it calls a “free and open Indo-Pacific”.
- Details of AUKUS: Under it, America and Britain propose to transfer technology to build a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines for Australia within 18 months. Australia will become the second nation after U.K. that the U.S. has ever shared its nuclear submarine technology with. The submarines are to be conventionally armed and are powered are powered by nuclear reactors. It will give Australia naval heft in the Pacific, where China has been particularly aggressive. The partnership complements several pre-existing similar arrangements for the region like Five Eyes intelligence cooperation initiative, ASEAN, Quad, etc. (The Five Eyes is an intelligence-sharing alliance consisting of the US, UK, Australia, Canada & New Zealand. The origins of the Five Eyes can be traced back to WW II)
- Nuclear subs: A nuclear-powered submarine is classified as an “SSN” under the US Navy hull classification system. Since SSNs are propelled by a nuclear-powered engine rather than by batteries, they don’t have to emerge on the surface except to replenish supplies for the crew. SSNs are able to move faster underwater than the conventional submarines. They have the capability to go into the South China Sea at a higher speed without being detected.
- Unhappy: New Zealand announced that under its 1984 nuclear-free zone policy, Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines would not be allowed into the former’s territorial waters. France, as said above, is very upset with Australia upon cancellation of the earlier struck deal worth $90 billion of conventional submarines. France takes pride in its role in the Indo-Pacific region, where it keeps some 7,000 troops and has nearly 2m citizens, including in its island territories such as New Caledonia and French Polynesia. It was building what it thought was an ever-closer relationship with Australia. China responded to AUKUS by criticising its “cold-war mentality”. The next day it applied to join the CPTPP, an 11-country transpacific trade pact that America helped to instigate as a way to limit China’s influence, but then abandoned.
- Quad: AUKUS is now a potent backdrop for the first in-person meeting of leaders of the Quad—America, Australia, India and Japan—in Washington, DC, on September 24th. In Australian eyes the developments that led to AUKUS were largely made in China. It was the heavy-handed pressure that China has applied on Australia, the most striking recent example being the response to its call for an independent investigation into the origins of Covid-19, that led to urgent interest in ways to push back.
- India’s nuclear-powered submarines: Only the US, the UK, Russia, France, India and China have SSNs. In 1987, the Soviet-built K-43 Charlie-class SSN was leased to the Indian Navy and was rechristened INS Chakra. In 2012 India got another Russian SSN called INS Chakra 2 on a 10-year lease. India commissioned the first Indian nuclear submarine, INS Arihant in 2016. A second Arihant-class submarine, INS Arighat, was secretly launched in 2017. INS Arihant is now classified as a Strategic Strike Nuclear Submarine or SSBN which means it is a nuclear-powered ballistic submarine. INS Arihant completes India’s nuclear triad which means that the country has the capacity to launch nuclear missiles from land, aircraft, and submarine.
- EXAM QUESTIONS: (1) Explain what changes will arrive in world politics once AUKUS goes mainstream. (2) What is India's role in the AUKUS? Explain.
#AUKUS #Quad #Nuclersubmarines #Geopolitics
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