These Are the Objectives of the Washington–Britain–Australia Partnership in the Pact of AUKUS

An Italian website considered that the AUKUS security partnership pact, between the U.S., U.K., and Australia, as an “arrow” added to Washington’s group of weapons and alliances, such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) vision, as well as the Five Eyes alliance, which brings together five English-speaking countries.

In an online press conference, in mid-September 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the establishment of a new security cooperation under the name AUKUS, among its goals, the participation of the United States and Britain in nuclear-powered submarine technology with Australia.

 

Two Strategic Goals

The InsideOver website explained that this alliance was created specifically to achieve two strategic goals.

The first is related to controlling the situation in the Indo-Pacific region, that is, in the Asian region that extends from the coasts of the Indian Ocean to Japan.

The second goal is to send a warning to China, which in turn wants to play a major role in what it has always considered its “backyard.”

In short, the site sees that the dual task that Washington seeks to achieve in the shortest possible time is to increase the strategic weight in Asia and contain the rise of the Chinese dragon.

Especially since the latter, while Washington weaves its intrigues on the other side of the world, continues its continuous (and legitimate from its point of view) modernization of the army, the economy, and the technical-scientific sector.

This means, according to the Italian website, that the Chinese will not only create difficulties for the Americans in the near future, but are likely to outperform them in some strategic sectors, which is partially what is already happening.

So it seems that the United States, as if it were getting rid of any secondary distraction, is working to direct all its weapons at China, the growing danger from its point of view, which endangers the liberal democratic order that the Americans themselves built.

At the same time, Washington is declaring its distance from Afghanistan, the Middle East, or Russia as well, explains InsideOver.

 

Historic Alliances

He continued by saying that Washington can rely on historical alliances that are somewhat different, but they are theoretically adaptable in terms of the purpose of anti-China containment.

The most prominent of these alliances is the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, an informal strategic alliance that brings together Australia, Japan, India, and the United States.

The website indicated that this alliance has mainly aimed, since its establishment in 2007, to contain the expansion of China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region by focusing on cooperation among its members, and strategic meetings between leaders of the countries concerned, in addition to conducting joint military exercises.

He hinted that one of the major drawbacks of this alliance is related to the absence of a specific, real, and declared goal, which makes the entire structure more symbolic at the expense of its effectiveness on the ground.

He added that the Five Eyes alliance, which includes five English-speaking countries, is a historical intelligence alliance that dates back to the end of World War II with the aim of monitoring communications from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, and includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Over the years, by involving other countries more or less formally, the alliance has also shifted to anti-China.

At the beginning of 2018, it developed a framework dedicated to information exchange to counter the threat of the increasing moves of China and Russia.

It is worth mentioning here that the vision of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) region, put forward by Japan in 2016, aims to unify the Asian and African continents economically and politically along with the Pacific and Indian Oceans, by creating a platform limited to Asia that guarantees respect for an international system based on the rule of law, freedom of navigation, the promotion of free trade, and the peaceful resolution of disputes.

According to many experts, after the initial announcements, this initiative was not activated and failed to achieve its objectives and its plan and goals remained very vague.

As for the new AUKUS pact, InsideOver reports that it is another military alliance on the horizon that includes Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States and shares, to some extent, the same goal as other alliances, which aims to contain China’s activities.

The site emphasized that Washington can rely on many “diplomatic weapons” and strategic military alliances to halt the rise of Beijing’s hegemony and re-establish its presence in the Indo-Pacific.

If, thanks to these means, the U.S. administration does not succeed in preventing the rise of China, it will at least give it the opportunity to slow it down in a very strategic geographic area.