New Australia, Britain, and U.S. military alliance—AUKUS— a serious escalation of the new Cold War on China.

‘Anti-China’ Military Pact ‘Threatens Peace and Stability’ in Pacific, Groups Warn

“The announcement of the new Australia, Britain, and U.S. military alliance—AUKUS—represents a serious escalation of the new Cold War on China.”  Common Dreams , KENNY STANCIL, September 16, 2021 Anti-war advocates are denouncing Wednesday’s formation of a trilateral military partnership through which the United States and the United Kingdom plan to help Australia build a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines—a long-term initiative broadly viewed as a challenge to China by Western powers determined to exert control over the Pacific region.

Although Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and U.S. President Joe Biden did not mention Beijing during their joint video announcement of the so-called AUKUS alliance, “the move is widely seen as a response to China’s expanding economic power, military reach, and diplomatic influence,” the Washington Post reported. “China is believed to have six nuclear attack submarines, with plans to increase the fleet in the next decade.”

The Guardian noted that it could take more than a decade for AUKUS to develop submarines propelled by enriched uranium—which allow the attack vessels to operate more quietly and remain deployed for up to five months—”but once at sea, the aim is to put Australia’s currently diesel-powered navy on a technological par with China’s navy, the world largest.”

In addition to “cooperation on naval technology,” the newspaper reported, “the partnership will involve closer alignment of regional policies and actions, and greater integration of the militaries and the defense industries of the three allies,” which “also intend to work together on cyberwarfare and on artificial intelligence capabilities.”

In response to the development, the British chapter of the No Cold War coalition said Thursday in a statement that “the new anti-China military alliance forged between Australia, Britain, and the U.S.—AUKUS—is an aggresive move which threatens peace and stability in the Pacific region.”

According to the coalition of nearly two dozen peace groups, the creation of AUKUS “follows the recent sending of a British warship to the South China Sea in an aggressive and provocative gesture of support for the U.S.’s massive military build-up against China.”

“It should be noted,” the coalition continued, “that New Zealand is not participating in this aggressive military alliance and it’s no nuclear policy means that Australian nuclear-powered submarines will be banned from New Zealand’s ports and waters.”

“It is against the interests of the British people, the Chinese people, and all of humanity for Britain to join the U.S. and Australia in racheting up aggression against China,” No Cold War added. “The world needs global cooperation to tackle shared threats of the pandemic and climate change, not a new Cold War.”

Anti-war progressives from Australia and the U.S. have also condemned the new military alliance.

“It was only a few weeks ago that a generation-long war in Afghanistan came to an end,” Alison Broinowski of the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network, said in a statement shared prior to the official launch of AUKUS. “Instead of reflecting on the pointlessness and horror of U.S. militarism, Australia and the U.S. are already talking about their next military adventure.”

“How can Australia assert an independent and peaceful foreign policy with a military that is so integrated into the U.S.?” Broinowski asked.

During his remarks publicizing the pact, Biden claimed that “we need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region, and how it may evolve, because the future of each of our nations, and indeed the world, depends on a free and open Indo-Pacific enduring and flourishing in the decades ahead.”

China Is Not Our Enemy, a project of U.S.-based peace group CodePink, responded by asserting that “if Biden and the Pentagon really want to ‘ensure peace and stability’ in the region, they could simply stop dealing missiles, weapons, [and] nuclear tech to Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan that escalate conflict and threaten global safety.”

Officials in Beijing also criticized the agreement, with China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian reportedly calling the U.S. and U.K.’s decision to export extremely sensitive nuclear technology to Australia an “extremely irresponsible” move that exposes “double standards.”

AUKUS “seriously undermines regional peace and stability, aggravates the arms race, and hurts international nonproliferation efforts,” Zhao added.

Describing AUKUS as a “disastrous” deal, CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin tweeted Wednesday that Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. “are ratcheting up the tension that could easily lead to a nuclear war with China.”

Amid growing concerns that Washington’s increasingly hostile approach to China could escalate into a full-blown military conflict, nearly 50 advocacy organizations in July sent a letter to Biden and members of Congress in which they argued that “nothing less than the future of our planet depends on ending the new Cold War between the United States and China.”  https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/09/16/anti-china-military-pact-threatens-peace-and-stability-pacific-groups-warn

September 19, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Australian submarine agreement: Turning nuclear cooperation upside down

The Australian submarine agreement: Turning nuclear cooperation upside down, Bulletin By Ian J. Stewart | September 17, 2021 The UK and US have announced they will support Australia in development of a nuclear submarine fleet and will provide (conventionally armed) Tomahawk cruise missiles. This is one of those exceedingly rare and exceedingly significant announcements that come along only every decade or so. The announcement literally turns existing precedence and practice on their heads in order to extend traditionally northern hemisphere cooperation to Australia and bolster its role in countering an increasingly assertive China. While much is not yet known, some of the ramifications and implications of this development are discernable.

Before considering the announcement’s specific implications, it is worth reiterating how exceedingly rare and significant it is. Many in the nonproliferation and strategic studies field will draw a parallel between this announcement and the 2005 announcement that the United States would renew civil nuclear cooperation with India. The so-called AUKUS declaration, like the other, was made with the grand purpose of securing an additional strategic ally against the rising China. However, neatly associated with both is also an expectation that domestic industries will benefit from access to a new market.

…. In this announcement, the United States and UK are overturning decades of accepted practice to support the transfer of a strategic capability to another country. The decision is sure to irk China and accelerate the spiral towards a Cold War-style standoff, with renewed strategies of containment against the revisionist power. The initiative has also offended France, which had become closer to the UK and, to a lesser extent, the US on nuclear matters in the last decade or so.

…….  The Australian breakup with France is clearly not a happy one, with the French Embassy tweeting its contempt for how the announcement was made. On Friday, France announced it was recalling its ambassadors to the United States and Australia, calling the US-Australia agreement “unacceptable behavior between allies and partners.”

A second implication is for the nonproliferation regime itself. Much like the announcement of the US-India deal, AUKUS is already dividing the international security community. Many nonproliferation practitioners call foul, on the basis that, on the face of it, the announcement appears to cut across several norms, agreed rules, and accepted practices. The cooperation may be used by non-nuclear weapons states as more ammunition in support of a narrative that the weapons states lack good faith in their commitments to disarmament……..

A third implication involves precedence. There has been constraint in terms of naval nuclear reactor exports for many decades. However, several countries have been working to acquire naval nuclear reactors. Brazil is perhaps the first country that comes to mind. It will be argued by many that AUKUS reaffirms Brazil’s legitimacy in pursuing nuclear-powered submarines.

……….  the British government is almost certainly thinking about it as a means to bolster Rolls Royce. The United States by law and by practice is particularly protective of its reactor technology. As such, the prospect of an independently designed UK reactor being sold to Australia could check a number of boxes.

The agreement may have an additional casualty in UK/French nuclear cooperation. …….. https://thebulletin.org/2021/09/the-australian-submarine-agreement-turning-nuclear-cooperation-upside-down/

September 18, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment