The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Defence pact ‘not aimed at China’ – PM
Boris Johnson has insisted Britain’s new defence pact with the United States and Australia is not intended as an “adversarial” move against China.
In a ground-breaking agreement, dubbed Aukus, the three allies agreed to co-operate on the development for the first time of a fleet of nuclearpowered submarines for the Australian navy.
The move, widely interpreted as an attempt to check China’s growing military assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific, was swiftly condemned by Beijing as a “geopolitical gaming tool”.
But in a Commons statement, the prime minister said that, while the agreement to share nuclear submarine technology with Australia represented a “huge increase” in the levels of trust between the three countries, it was not “revolutionary”.
“Aukus is not intended to be adversarial towards any other power,” he said.
“It merely reflects the close relationship that we have with the United States and with Australia, the shared values that we have and the sheer level of trust between us that enables us to go to this extraordinary extent of sharing nuclear technology in the way that we are proposing to do.
“It is a fantastic defence technology partnership that we are building. But it is not actually revolutionary.”
In Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the move “seriously undermined regional peace and stability”.
“The export of highly sensitive nuclear submarine technology to Australia by the US and the UK proves once again that they are using nuclear exports as a tool for geopolitical game and adopting double standards. This is extremely irresponsible,” he said.
He said the three allies needed to abandon their “outdated Cold War zerosum mentality” otherwise they would “only end up shooting themselves in the foot”.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace insisted the Chinese were “wrong” to see the agreement as an attempt to engage in a new cold war.
However, he acknowledged that China’s military expansion – and its involvement in a series of disputes with neighbouring nations over navigation rights in the South China Sea – inevitably led to a “reaction” elsewhere.
The pact was announced in a joint statement on Wednesday by Mr Johnson, US President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Mr Johnson said the agreement would deliver hundreds of highly skilled jobs to Scotland and parts of the north of England and the Midlands.
The news is a blow to France which had a contract with Australia to supply a new fleet of conventional diesel-electric submarines, which has now been scrapped.