In seeking to curb China, Aukus may well have launched a new cold war – and an arms race
Criticised in Australia and coldly received in Southeast Asia, the Aukus submarine pact is raising fears of a regional arms race, Taiwan risks and a new cold war
It also dashes any hope of Asean centrality shaping the regional security architecture
“We want to revitalise our relationship with Southeast Asia as well,” declared Richard Marles, Australia’s deputy prime minister and defence minister, during his maiden visit to the region last year. “Asean is completely central to Australia’s security interests and our economic interests, and you’ll see a focus on this region,” he added, underscoring the importance of bilateral relations under what was then a newly elected Labor government.
Around the same time, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong visited key Southeast Asian capitals, signalling a new era of cooperation after years of relative acrimony under the Scott Morrison government.
A year into office, however, the Albanese administration is facing criticism for broadly continuing its predecessor’s foreign policy predisposition, particularly vis-à-vis China. The newly announced nuclear-powered submarine deal under the Aukus alliance of Australia, Britain and the United States has not only enraged Beijing but could also complicate Canberra’s charm offensive in Southeast Asia.
For critics, the Aukus deal is both too provocative, in intensifying a regional arms race, and too little, too late, since it is unlikely to constrain China’s maritime ambitions.
In The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, historian Paul Kennedy wrote of “a noticeable ‘lag time’ between the trajectory of a state’s relative economic strength and the trajectory of its military/territorial influence”. China is the gigantic exception, having simultaneously modernised its economy and armed forces in recent decades – its “economic miracle” providing ample resources to modernise its once-antiquated armed forces.
When measured in purchasing power parity (relative costs) rather than market exchange rates, China’s defence budget, which is fuelling a sophisticated indigenous military-industrial complex, is comparable to the Pentagon’s. China’s armed forces have rapidly grown in both anti-access, area denial capabilities and conventional capabilities, developing aircraft carriers and fifth-generation fighter jet programmes.
Today, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) relishes the world’s largest fleet, churning out state-of-the-art warships at breakneck speed and deploying advanced nuclear submarines across vast areas. Against the backdrop of China’s burgeoning military capabilities, top American experts now consider the Asian powerhouse as nothing less than a “near peer” in the Indo-Pacific.
As primarily a regional military power, China can concentrate the bulk of its capabilities on a single theatre. In contrast, the US is seen by some as rapidly losing its military primacy and may struggle to defeat China in armed conflict.
Aukus is clearly a Washington-led attempt to confront a rising China. For the first time in decades, the US will share critical military technology with a foreign nation, namely Australia.
But, notwithstanding its long-term strategic logic, the Aukus deal raises three major concerns. First of all, there is stiff opposition at home, with at least two former Australian prime ministers lambasting the A$368 billion (US$247 billion) deal. Former Labor prime minister Paul Keating argued that it “screwed into place the last shackle in the long chain the United States has laid out to contain China”, and questioned how it “could have more than a token military impact against China”.
Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has raised operational and strategic concerns, noting that any US-supplied nuclear-powered submarine is unlikely to be “operated, sustained and maintained by Australia without the support or supervision of the US Navy”.
02:52
China warns Aukus against going down ‘dangerous road’ over nuclear-powered submarine pact
China warns Aukus against going down ‘dangerous road’ over nuclear-powered submarine pact
Moreover, the costly deal could jeopardise Canberra’s ability to invest in vital non-military strategic initiatives, including infrastructure development programmes in neighbouring Southeast Asia. If anything, the Aukus deal could undermine Canberra’s strategic reboot with Southeast Asia.
With the notable exception of the Philippines, which has a treaty alliance with the US and a visiting forces agreement with Australia, no Asean member has openly backed the pact. Almost two years since the submarine deal was first announced, many in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations remain apprehensive or deeply sceptical.
Despite Canberra’s reassurances, there are concerns that the deal goes against the Asean Declaration of the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality and potentially breaches the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, which proscribes an arms race among regional powers.
Malaysia has warned against “any provocation that could potentially trigger an arms race or affect peace and security in the region” while Indonesia has reminded Australia “to remain consistent in fulfilling its obligations under the NPT”, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Both in Australia and across Asean, there are also concerns over getting dragged into a conflict over Taiwan.
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China denounces US approval of US$619 million sale of missiles and military equipment to Taiwan
China denounces US approval of US$619 million sale of missiles and military equipment to Taiwan
No wonder then, that Indonesian officials are openly discussing how to invoke international law to potentially restrict, if not block, the movement of any Australian nuclear-powered submarines through its waters. In a strongly-worded editorial, The Jakarta Post lambasted Australia for “living up to its reputation as the self-appointed deputy sheriff in this part of the world for the US”.
Finally, Aukus could spell the end for any hope of Asean centrality shaping the regional security architecture. For instance, China is likely to resist any legally binding code of conduct or confidence-building regime with Asean nations if it could undermine the PLA’s ability to match the military countermeasures of the West.
In parallel, the US and other external powers are likely to be tempted to double down on military alliance-building, rather than helping to empower multilateral institutions such as Asean, which has sought to serve as the engine of regional integration since the end of World War II.
In many ways, Aukus may end up crystallising a new cold war rather than taming China’s naval ambitions.
Richard Heydarian is a Manila-based academic and author of “Asia’s New Battlefield: US, China and the Struggle for Western Pacific”, and the forthcoming “Duterte’s Rise”
