[China & SEA]The AUKUS Security Alliance Explained: Nature, Impact and Prospects
Li Haidong, Professor, Institute of International Relations, Diplomatic Academy
The original article is published here.
(https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/4yUC4DQ8G4HL4dfAmqnCyQ)
On 15 September 2021, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia suddenly announced the establishment of the AUKUS Security Alliance to strengthen the military capabilities and coordination of the three countries in the Asia-Pacific region and to ensure that they lead the process of building a maritime order in the region. Under the guise of "defence cooperation", the alliance is essentially a continuation of the Cold War mentality and aims to contain and suppress
China in a comprehensive manner, bringing more uncertainty to the already complex Asia-Pacific security landscape.
AUKUS security alliance highlights West's intensified strategic competitive posture towards China
Since the Biden administration took office in January 2021, the US has continued to strengthen its global alliance system, focusing more on a broad and deep geopolitical contest with China in the Asia-Pacific region. The AUKUS is a new security initiative launched by the Biden administration under this strategic plan, and its rapid conception and implementation is a clear reflection of the US and its allies' efforts to build a regional security order in the Asia-Pacific region that marginalises China.
First, the focus on great power geopolitical competition against China is a fundamental guiding principle for the US in planning and implementing its overall Asia-Pacific security strategy. Excluding China from the US-led process of building the Asia-Pacific security architecture and minimising China's regional security function are the most important criteria by which the US measures the success of shaping its Asia-Pacific security architecture. In addition to strengthening the five "spokes" of its existing bilateral alliances in the Asia-Pacific region and continuing to reinforce its control of the Five Eyes Alliance and the Quadripartite Security Dialogue (QUAD) mechanism, the US has launched and implemented a more defence-focused security alliance, the AUKUS Security Alliance. These initiatives mark the beginning of a new US defense strategy against the China. These initiatives signify that the US has built a system of containment against China that goes beyond the traditional spheres of military defence, security intelligence and diplomacy, and extends to a wider range of legal, economic, scientific and technological, and maritime navigation areas. The AUKUS constitutes the lead mechanism for the US geopolitical contest against China in the Asia-Pacific region and has the operational potential to link together a wide range of US alliance partners in the region.
Secondly, in order to gain a lasting advantage in competition with China, the US hopes to accelerate the shift of strategic focus and resource deployment to East Asia and the Western Pacific by its allies outside the Asia-Pacific region with the launch of the AUKUS security alliance. The Brussels Summit Communiqué, adopted at the NATO Leaders' Summit in June 2021, explicitly focuses on the so-called "systemic challenges posed by China to the existing international order", and the Biden administration has been pushing hard for a new NATO consensus to focus on China and the Asia-Pacific region. Its Strategic Concept Paper, scheduled for June 2022, will place China among NATO's priorities for the first time. Instead of slowing down its deployment of global strategic resources to the Asia-Pacific as a result of the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the US is accelerating NATO's move to the Asia-Pacific and focusing on transforming its systems and capabilities to compete strategically with China by placing the blame for the intractable Russian-Ukrainian conflict on the Chinese side and playing up the "China threat" in Europe. Given the ongoing disagreements between France, Germany and the United States and Britain over the organisation's focus and approach to Asia-Pacific affairs, NATO's move to the Asia-Pacific has not been smooth. Against this backdrop, the US hopes to accelerate the shift of NATO's strategic focus to the Asia-Pacific region with the AUKUS, in the service of its strategic competition with China.
Once again, the US is trying to apply the so-called "NATO experience" of NATO-led European security after the end of the Cold War to the process of building a security architecture in the Asia-Pacific. After the end of the Cold War, the US promoted the transformation of NATO and gradually built up a clearly layered security structure in Europe led by the US and NATO and supported by many bilateral or multilateral partnerships, and forcibly excluded Russia from Europe on the basis of the principle of "indivisible security" of the countries in the alliance. The Biden administration has attempted to apply this experience to the Asia-Pacific region, creating a comprehensive Asia-Pacific security structure with the AUKUS as the core, supported by other allies or partner mechanisms, and reflecting the dominant position of the United States, with the AUKUS playing the role of a "pioneering pawn".
Finally, the Biden administration is eager to bring in allies from outside the Asia-Pacific region to the East and West Pacific regions in order to make them more committed to its Asia-Pacific strategy. Since the Obama administration launched its "Pivot to Asia" global strategic refocus in November 2011, the US has gone through different phases of the Asia-Pacific rebalancing strategy and the Indo-Pacific strategy, and its policy towards its allies in the Asia-Pacific obviously lacks coherence. The Obama administration created regional crises by expanding the geographical scope of the US-Japan defence alliance to include the Diaoyu Island and speculating on the so-called South China Sea arbitration case proposed by the Philippines, with the intention of strengthening its Asia-Pacific alliance system. However, the Trump administration's policy shift to require allies to increase defence spending and assume responsibility for their own defence has interrupted this process. Although the Biden administration is currently returning to the Obama administration's policy track of revitalising the Asia-Pacific alliance system, the current situation in US domestic party politics shows that the Republicans are more likely to win in the 2022 mid-term elections and the 2024 elections. Once the Republican Party makes a comeback, the US policy towards its Asia-Pacific allies will certainly be in turmoil again. Therefore, the questioning of the continuity of US policy by the Asia-Pacific allies has directly prompted the Biden administration to bring reliable allies outside the Asia-Pacific region into East Asia and the Western Pacific in order to ensure the durability of the regional alliance. It can be said that the AUKUS is a very strategic step for the US to restore the confidence of its allies, to use its strengths to compete strategically with China, and to shape the security landscape of the Asia-Pacific region.
The AUKUS Security Alliance undermines overall Asia-Pacific and global security
The formation of the AUKUS security alliance reflects the strategic tendency of the US, UK and Australia to plan the Asia-Pacific security architecture with ideological lines and group confrontation thinking, which is highly destructive to the evolution of the regional and global security order.
Firstly, the AUKUS is the prelude to the US bringing its allies from outside the Asia-Pacific region into the region to optimise the current alliance system it dominates in the Asia-Pacific region. The United States has consolidated its bilateral alliances with the United Kingdom and Australia into a multilateral alliance focused on the Asia-Pacific region, effectively starting the process of establishing its dominant multilateral security architecture in the Asia-Pacific region through the AUKUS by gradually bringing together the many existing US bilateral alliances and the Quadripartite Security Dialogue and other mechanisms in the region. The US has continued to promote trilateral intelligence and security cooperation between the US, Japan and South Korea, encouraged Singapore and the Philippines and other ASEAN countries to strengthen their coordination with Japan and South Korea, accelerated the involvement of New Zealand and Canada in East Asian and Western Pacific affairs, and made every effort to pull NATO to establish various partnerships with Asia-Pacific countries in order to ultimately achieve the goal that the overall security architecture of the Asia-Pacific region must reflect the hegemonic position of the US.
In the current process of dramatic reshaping of the security landscape in the Asia-Pacific region, the US has used the AUKUS as a key engine to promote the formation of a multi-layered and comprehensive "alliance+partnership" institutional structure in the Asia-Pacific region, with the US-led Deep Transformation Alliance as the backbone, supported by a broad partnership between the US and NATO countries in the region. It is interlinked with and linked to the NATO-led security architecture established by the US in the Euro-Atlantic region, and has become the cornerstone of the new global security system built by the US. This approach directly undermines the international rules and universal moral concepts that ensure the stable evolution of the international order, challenges the fundamental spirit of the indivisibility of security for all countries in the world under the UN framework, and weakens the authority and legitimacy of the UN in international security. Secondly, the AUKUS has intensified the arms race and the struggle for maritime dominance in the Asia-Pacific region, which will inevitably lead to more crises and strife. The alliance is focused on improving the military capabilities and coordination among its members, promoting the rapid militarisation and alliance of new technologies such as cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence and quantum technology, and is becoming the security organisation with the strongest nuclear strike capability, the most advanced military technology and the strongest naval power of any US alliance in the Asia-Pacific region. The strategic offensive philosophy underpinning this alliance is evident in the transformation of Australia's defence policy. The provision of nuclear-powered submarines and other related technology to Australia, as well as the enhancement of its ability to maintain and use nuclear-powered submarines, will inevitably lead to Australia eventually meeting US requirements for forward deployment of its maritime strategic forces in East Asia and the Western Pacific. Australia's navy would then make a profound shift from a focus on coastal defence to a forward offensive deployment in the ocean, which would trigger an increasingly intense arms race between countries in the Asia-Pacific region and materially undermine the peace and stability the region has enjoyed for more than 40 years.
Thirdly, as a key component of the US Indo-Pacific Strategy, the AUKUS is a great challenge to the maritime order and security of the Asia-Pacific region. The US hopes to use the overwhelming naval power of the AUKUS to build its own dominant maritime order in the Asia-Pacific and thereby strengthen its world hegemony. The US strategic focus on the Asia-Pacific region goes hand in hand with the creation or instigation of maritime disputes in East Asia and the Western Pacific and the strengthening of ties with maritime allies. The repeatedly manipulated disputes in the South and East China Seas, as well as the elevated level of official exchanges with the Taiwan authorities and the promotion of its membership in the UN system, indicate that the battle between forcing a maritime order by virtue of maritime power and building a maritime order based on international law and rules will become more acute. The objective pursued by the AUKUS is precisely to promote the evolution of the maritime order in the Asia-Pacific region in accordance with power rather than universally agreed international rules, which will certainly undermine the prospects for the development of a benign evolution of the maritime order in the Asia-Pacific region.
Fourthly, the AUKUS is the latest step in the reshaping of the international landscape by a coalition of Anglo-Saxon states whose habitual civilisational and "racial superiority" and strong sense of actively seeking confrontation with other civilisations and ethnic conflicts have had and continue to have a profound impact on the Asia-Pacific region and the international security order. The impact has been and will continue to be profound on the Asia-Pacific region and on the international security order. From the 1940s to the present, the US, Britain and other Anglo-Saxon countries have considered themselves to be natural allies of each other, with the Atlantic Charter against Nazi Germany in 1941, the "Iron Curtain Speech" against the Soviet Union by Churchill, who was British Prime Minister in 1946, the NATO expansion to the east against Russia in 1999, and the NATO expansion in 2003. The Atlantic Charter of 1941 against Nazi Germany, the Iron Curtain speech of Churchill, who was British Prime Minister, against the Soviet Union in 1946, the expansion of NATO against Russia in 1999, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and many other landmark events that triggered a shift in the regional or global landscape were all the result of close coordination between the US and Britain. At the same time, Australia has never been absent from any of the rivalries or conflicts initiated by the US and Britain over the past 70 years, and has always been the most loyal follower of the former two. So strong is the US, UK and Australia's 'sense of purpose' for the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon race and civilisation in the global order that they simply cannot tolerate the emergence of any state that might shake their position as the dominant player in global affairs. The AUKUS Security Alliance is the latest example of the Anglo-Saxon state's obsession in the Asia-Pacific region.
Fifth, the AUKUS security alliance has seriously undermined the international nuclear non-proliferation system and exacerbated the risk of nuclear proliferation in the region. Under the framework of the alliance, the United States and Britain have assisted the non-nuclear-weapon State of Australia in building eight nuclear-powered submarines, which has substantially undermined the authority and effectiveness of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which has been in force since 1970 and has laid the foundation of the international nuclear non-proliferation system. The export of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium-fuelled nuclear submarines from the United States and Britain to Australia and their use in maritime power struggles in the Asia-Pacific region are in direct contravention of the relevant provisions of the Treaty, which stipulate that "States parties may provide fissile material to non-nuclear-weapon States for peaceful purposes only under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency". The transfer of highly sensitive nuclear material and technology from the United States and Britain to Australia and the possible future deployment of nuclear weapons directly to Australia will inevitably lead to the deactivation of the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.
In addition, the United States and Britain have restricted Iran's peaceful development of nuclear energy to the best of their ability, while offering to provide highly enriched uranium nuclear materials to Australia, a non-nuclear country whose security is not threatened in any way. This policy of alliance between the two sides in the development and use of nuclear capabilities of various countries has undermined the relevant international system and rules in the nuclear field, and is likely to encourage more countries to seek to possess highly enriched uranium nuclear materials and even develop nuclear weapons. The complete abandonment of the international responsibility for nuclear non-proliferation by the United States, Britain and Australia for the purpose of dominating the maritime order has seriously hampered the current efforts of the world to promote the establishment of a "nuclear-weapon-free zone", which may eventually lead to a serious international tragedy.
The future of the AUKUS is hardly promising
While the US, UK and Australia continue to increase their efforts to build the AUKUS, the alliance also faces many challenges and its development prospects may run counter to the wishes of its promoters.
Firstly, the divisive effect of the AUKUS on allies within the US global alliance system makes it difficult to secure lasting support from the majority of allies in the region. The apparently xenophobic Anglo-Saxon membership of the alliance itself will inevitably lead to a deep rift in relations between many of the US NATO allies and those in the Asia-Pacific region, counterproductive to US efforts to push the countries concerned towards the Asia-Pacific region, and making the US strategy of mobilising its Eurasian allies to focus on great power competition with the AUKUS uninspiring. The US and Britain had previously secretly supplied Australia with nuclear-powered submarines and encouraged it to break up a huge contract with France to build them, directly triggering strong condemnation and protests from France. This incident reveals a deep rift between the NATO countries, represented by France and others, and the US, UK and Australia, who only want to draw France and other European allies into the great power competition against China in the Asia-Pacific region, rather than sharing the economic opportunities for mutual benefit.
Secondly, the AUKUS views the construction of a security order in the Asia-Pacific region in the same way as the European security order, so that the vast majority of countries in the Asia-Pacific region will not only not be happy with it, but will also distance themselves from it because of its strong exclusivity. After the end of the Cold War, the United States forced Russia out of the European security process by intervening in the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, launching the Kosovo war and instigating the civil war in Ukraine, thus plunging Europe into a vicious circle of military bloc confrontation once again. The failure of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has not prompted the US decision makers to seriously reflect on their own strategic planning mistakes, but rather to apply the so-called "NATO experience" to the Asia-Pacific region. The establishment of the AUKUS can be considered the starting point for the US to promote the process of building an "Asia-Pacific version of NATO" security architecture in the region. The military force-based approach to forcibly shaping a regional or even global security structure dominated by the US, Britain and Australia and dependent on other countries has been repeatedly proven by the dismal practice of the US over the past 30 years to bring only tragedy and disaster.
Again, the idea of the US and Britain providing nuclear submarine technology to Australia to help it develop its long-range missile strike capability, thereby reshaping the order of the Asia-Pacific region with the strong military power of the three countries, is totally contrary to the general trend of strengthening economic integration and increasing mutual trust in politics in the Asia-Pacific region, and is bound to meet with widespread alarm or opposition from most countries in the region. Most ASEAN countries have always been concerned that the AUKUS will lead to a nuclear-armed region in Southeast Asia. China and Russia, for their part, believe that the AUKUS will create artificial hostility among Asia-Pacific countries and will undermine regional stability. Many more Asia-Pacific countries have reservations about the AUKUS because they fear it could lead to new military conflicts. Almost all Asia-Pacific countries are wary of the potential for the AUKUS to exacerbate the regional arms race. This means that there is a serious lack of legitimacy for the continued existence and strengthening of the alliance in the Asia-Pacific region.
Finally, with the declining ability of the U.S. policymakers to manage the complex alliance system, the AUKUS security alliance is bound to backfire and undermine the process of reshaping the Asia-Pacific security order. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. policymakers have misjudged the situation in Europe, the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific and other regions, and committed a series of strategic failures such as driving Russia away and causing a major split in Europe, hastily launching the Iraq War and causing major turmoil in the Middle East, and pushing the "Asia-Pacific rebalancing strategy" and causing constant strife in the Asia-Pacific region, which has substantially weakened its The "Indo-Pacific Strategy" has substantially weakened its strength base. In recent years, the
United States has launched new security mechanisms such as the Quadripartite Security Dialogue and the AUKUS Security Alliance, which have led to overlap in the functions of different types of alliance systems and more complex and chaotic operations, making it more difficult for the United States to effectively manage its global alliance system.
Based on the above analysis, it can be seen that the AUKUS has weakened the central position of the United Nations in international security affairs and attempted to establish a US-led regional security structure in the Asia-Pacific region with bloc politics and military confrontation, posing a comprehensive and serious threat to China's national security and the stability of the international order. The establishment of this alliance not only runs counter to the trend of peace and development of the times, but also has many limitations of its own that make it difficult to achieve much. For China, as long as it continues to steadily build up its strength, maximise its openness to the outside world and create a strong balance against the US, more countries will choose to cooperate with China, which is committed to mutual benefit and win-win cooperation, and stay away from countries that stubbornly create division and confrontation. Only then will the future of simultaneous economic and security integration in the Asia-Pacific region be brighter.