The AUKUS agreement exposes China's greatest weakness
USS Santa Fe with HMAS Collins, HMAS Farncomb, HMAS Dechaineux and HMAS Sheean off Fremantle, Australia, 2019.
If the sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan gave the impression that “the West” was in retreat, then yesterday’s announcement of a new security and defence agreement between Australia, the UK and US — AUKUS — says otherwise. The “West” is not finished, but recalibrating, resetting itself to confront the new challenge — China.
The joint statement made yesterday by the three western leaders didn’t mention China by name, but this is a clear attempt by the Anglosphere to check Beijing’s attempts at regional expansion. It makes clear that the West will not leave China to dominate the Pacific rim. This latest agreement will be seen as a setback in Beijing. But it also undermines China’s long-term intentions in a much more profound way. Quite simply, it shows up Beijing’s chronic shortage of allies.
According to a UK government statement, the aim of the AUKUS agreement is to “foster deeper integration of security and defence-related science, technology, industrial bases and supply chains”. This new agreement “reflects the unique level of trust and cooperation between our three countries, who already share extensive intelligence through the Five Eyes alliance”.
“Five Eyes” is an agreement on intelligence sharing between the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, and it seems that what we are seeing here is the creation of something more like a Three Eyes, a new inner sanctum. But what is going on here? A signal to Beijing — but saying what?
It certainly makes clear that the US is moving into China’s neighbourhood with renewed intent. But taken alongside the sudden Afghan withdrawal, it says something else too: that President Biden is willing to reinvigorate a project that Barack Obama never quite completed.
Obama once described himself as “America’s first Pacific President”, and when he undertook his “pivot to Asia”, he framed it in terms of economic opportunity. He visited ASEAN countries to talk up the potential benefits of the Trans Pacific Partnership, a huge trade and investment vehicle that looked to plug the US into the Asia Pacific region. Throughout all this time, it should be remembered, Biden was Obama’s deputy.
Obama’s pivot was not without consequence. Looking across the Pacific meant less attention was paid to what was going on across the other side of the Atlantic. The Obama administration’s focus seemed to slip somewhat from Europe and the Middle East. When Syria collapsed into war, the US stayed out of it. When Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed the Crimea, again, the US seemed unable or unwilling to respond. The consequences of Obama’s pivot were mixed at best.
Biden’s pivot mirrors that of Obama, but differs for being essentially a security arrangement, one that involves sharing, among other valuable defence know-how, highly sensitive submarine propulsion technology with Australia. (In time, the West’s overtures may even extend to India). It is militarily assertive in a way that Obama’s pivot was not. The Trump White House, for all its overblown language about China and trade deficits, produced nothing so strategically significant.
The Chinese government, not surprisingly, does not like the AUKUS agreement and has accused the three participant nations of having a “Cold War mentality”. It’s an odd remark, especially as it appears to cast China in the role of the Soviet Union, which was surely not the spokesperson’s intention.
Even so, it’s an analogy that feels increasingly apt. Beijing is beginning to look and feel like late-stage Soviet Moscow. In its brutal treatment of dissentors, its Uighur gulag, its suppression of the Hong Kong uprising and evident eagerness to invade Taiwan, the Chinese government is repeating many of the USSR’s crowning mistakes.
Worst of all, the AUKUS agreement is a reminder to Beijing that democracies are infuriatingly adept at striking agreements with one another. Authoritarian states such as China don’t do this. And so AUKUS not only encroaches on what China sees as its own sphere of interest, but highlights the awkward fact that Beijing has no corresponding, globe-spanning defence arrangement.
If Beijing were to seek a comparable agreement, with whom would it seek it? Dictatorial, paranoid, politically and economically opaque, China is somewhat short on diplomatic charm — just how short of charm was demonstrated by the recent decision to ban China’s UK Ambassador from the Westminster Parliamentary estate.
Perhaps the most worrying thing of all for Beijing is the thought that, not only does it have no equivalent to AUKUS, but that it never will. There seems no sign at present that Beijing intends to change its belligerent attitude towards the rest of humanity. So long as that remains the case, other nations will form alliances, and China will become ever more friendless and isolated, its long-term global ambitions out of reach.
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