OpinionIn 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

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Published: 3:30am, 28 Mar 2023

“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.