My Take | The West is deluding itself about its moral prestige and geopolitical prowess
- Watching Aukus leaders these days is both intellectually amusing and morally offensive as their lofty rhetoric hides the ugly realities of their policies and politics
News stories from the leaders of Aukus are just too much these days. They would have been amusing if the issues at hand weren’t so serious, even tragic. Leading the trilateral security pact of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States must be so heady they seem to be mesmerised by their own rhetoric. Someone give them a reality check, please.
Aukus
In another one of his frequent anti-China jabs, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia would move in lockstep with its allies to sanction China if it provided military support to Russia in its war against Ukraine.
“And potentially what, if any, support has been discussed for military support for Russia? Because that would be an abomination,” Morrison said.
That’s the allegation that the tough men of Aukus have been telling each other and the world these days. Others who are in the know, such as lower-level officials in the US and their European colleagues, are more circumspect.
Wally Adeyemo, a US deputy treasury secretary, said this week: “China can’t give Russia what it doesn’t have. And what Russia needs most is it’s going to need things like semiconductors going forward, semiconductors that China doesn’t have and it can’t provide them.
“Chinese financial institutions and the Chinese state have been very cautious about violating not only American sanctions but the sanctions put in place by other countries. We haven’t seen any evidence that China’s done anything to violate our sanctions.”