AUKUS deal angers France and China, spawns anxiety

The Biden administration unveiled a three-way deal, 15 September 2021, challenging China’s capacious maritime claims in the Pacific by announcing that the United States and the United Kingdom would help Australia deploy nuclearpowered submarines, thereby reinforcing the Western presence in a region now referred to as the ‘Indo-Pacific’.

[It has been dubbed the AUKUS pact, for Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The ‘Indo-Pacific’ is generally conceived as spanning oceanic waters from India, China and Japan to Southeast Asia, past Australia into the Pacific Ocean.]

No sooner than that announcement was made, a fierce international backlash targeting the Anglo-Saxon threesome was unleashed, two angry reactions emanating from France, which accused Australia of being ‘stabbed in the back’, and the other from China which blamed the three powers of having revived a ‘Cold War mentality’, though China was not specifically mentioned in the relevant policy utterances on the occasion. AMBASSADORS RECALLED

In any case, days later, following a decision by French President Emmanuel Macron, France’s ambassadors in Washington and Canberra were recalled ‘for consultation.’ As Washington Post reiterates today (20 September), a French official admitted yesterday that the AUKUS deal had been met with “shock” and “anger” in Paris.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian not only called the announcement “a stab in the back” but publicly compared President Joe Biden to Trump “without the tweets, but with a sort of solemn announcement that is rather unbearable.”

In an interview on France 2 television, Le Drian noted that this is the first time that in the countries’ 250-year history that France had recalled its ambassador to the United States for consultations. He described it as a grave political act that shows the intensity of the crisis today not only between France and the United States but also with Australia. “There has been duplicity, contempt and lies – you can’t play that way in an alliance.”

The Franco-Australian deal would have supplied Australia with dieselelectric submarines, as compared with the nuclear powered technology from the United States which makes submarines faster, more capable, harder to detect and potentially much more lethal. As the Post explains:

The matter has attained more urgency as U.S. defense officials have warned that China is building up its naval presence, with Beijing now thought to have six nuclear attack submarines. The U.S. decision to share its nuclear technology with Australia is also evidence of Biden’s increasing focus on China, and U.S. officials see equipping Australia as a crucial step in bolstering its allies’ effort to deter China in the IndoPacific. Notably, Le Drian dismissed Great Britain as of having little influence, “a bit like having a fifth wheel on the carriage.” OTHER REACTIONS/ FACTS

Some other reactions are worthy of note, including those of former British Prime Minister, Theresa May, who questioned Prime Minister Boris Johnson in parliament about whether the deal could lead Britain to be dragged into war with China. As per a BBC report, she asked him about the “implication” of the partnership in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

To that Johnson replied: “The United Kingdom remains determined to defend international law and that is the strong advice we would give our friends, and the strong advice we would give the government in Beijing.” Also noteworthy is a comment by New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta who declined to join in the Western condemnation of Beijing saying that “it felt uncomfortable with expanding the alliance’s putting pressure on China in this way.”

Although New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern admitted that its differences with China are becoming “harder to reconcile”, New Zealand still pursues its own bilateral ties with Beijing, she said. China is New Zealand’s largest export market, with close to 30 percent of its exports, mainly dairy products, going there. So does Australia, one is informed though the two Antipodean neighbours clearly view China’s policies in a very different light.

Now, let’s get some relevant Chinese perspectives. According to a BBC report, 17 September, quoting Chinese state media, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in anodyne terms: “The future of our country’s development and progress should be firmly in our own hands.”

Chinese media has, not surprisingly, been far more forthright in its comments. The Global Times, for instance, warning of the dangers implicit in an arms race for nuclear submarines, grimly predicting that Australians were likely to be the “first to die” in a Chinese “counter-attack.” As the Wall Street Journal reported, shortly after the AUKUS deal was showcased in Washington, a Chinese Embassy spokesman urged the United States and others “to shake off their Cold War mentality and ideological prejudice”, saying that “exchanges and cooperation between countries should help expand mutual understanding and trust.” He went on to warn: “They should not build exclusionary blocs targeting, or harming, the interest of third parties.” Another revealing point of view is provided by Nicole Bacharon, researcher at Sciences Po in Paris, who observed: “To confront

China the United States appears to have chosen a different alliance, with the Anglo-Saxon world separate from France.” She predicted a “very hard period in the old friendship between Paris and Washington.” She also recalled that there had “not even been a phone call” from Washington to Paris, in the context of U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Interestingly, in a policy paper entitled “EU strategy for Cooperation in the IndoPacific”, it was indicated that France and the rest of the European Union are intent on avoiding a direct confrontation with China, as underscored in their 16 September document, whose release was planned before the fracas erupted. It will now be useful to take note of some point observations by Rick Noack of the Washington Post, 19 September. One compares the economic significance of the FrancoAustralian deal, now scrapped, to the landmark 2015 deal between India and the French company Dassault Aviation to supply 36 Rafale fighter jets; the other is that France sees itself “not only as a European nation” but also one deeply anchored in the Indo-Pacific region, according to Pierre Morcos, a French visiting fellow at the D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

France may not be commonly perceived as a key player in the Pacific and Indian oceans, but the country has significant interests as the advance team of Europe in the region, he argues. Around 2 million French citizens live across a number of French island territories or departments, which include New Caledonia and Reunion. Besides, more than 7,000 French soldiers are stationed there.

MY TAKE

What, in my view, is the most glaringly underreported aspect of the AUKUS pact is that its timing was almost certainly calculated to offer the embattled Biden administration an effective and convenient policy ploy to distract or pivot public attention away from the sheer foreign/ security policy fiasco of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, last month. Additionally, it was doubtless designed to advertise to the world how determined it is to take on China – besides placating America’s influential military/industrial complex in the process. One should note its striking timing in the immediate aftermath of the crescendo of domestic criticism on Afghanistan not only from the GOP but also from segments of the Democratic Party itself. Equally noteworthy is that although it is now clear that the triangular deal had been on the anvil for months, negotiations had proceeded under a shroud of secrecy even from its traditional treaty allies. Phrased differently, AUKUS’ unveiling, practically on the heels of the Taliban’s swift embarrassing takeover of Kabul, could have been planned that way, all along. What is another tell-tale dimension of the AUKUS pact is that though it is obviously related among other things to the antiChina Quad security arrangement, there was no reference to that in the relevant announcements on 15 September. Apparently, even India and Japan were left out in the cold, until the very end. Indeed, as reported in the Indian Express, 17 September, the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called Indian Prime Minister Narendra

Modi just hours before the deal was unveiled “to inform him about the pact that was going to be announced.”

In any case, it is significant that a Quad summit is scheduled for 24 September in Washington, just days after President Biden’s maiden address to the United Nations General Assembly, on Tuesday 21 September in New York, where U.S.-French tensions are likely to overshadow the global annual event. According to the Post, President Macron is not attending but U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to meet with his French colleague Le Drian along with other European foreign ministers.

Clearly, Afghanistan – including humanitarian aid and issues relating to the recognition of the Taliban regime – should also figure prominently. No doubt enormous attention will focus on China’s worldview, including, one now presumes on AUKUS. It should also be hugely edifying to note the stateof-the-world presentations at UNGA by Russia, Iran, Pakistan and India, among others, not least in relation to the Afghan situation.

I am vastly interested in the impact of India’s inexorable anti-China and pro-American proclivities, domestically and globally, even though it was not consulted either in the context of the U.S. exit from Afghanistan or in the shaping of AUKUS. It seems to be a case of being more Catholic than the Pope!

BIDEN, ANOTHER TRUMP?

Among thought-provoking recent media outpourings is a column in the Post by Fareed Zakaria, entitled ‘Is Biden normalizing Trump’s foreign policy?’ (18 September) which opens, thus: “After almost eight months of watching policies, rhetoric and crises, many foreign observers have been surprised – even shocked – to discover that, in the area after area, Biden’s foreign policy is a faithful continuation of Donald Trump’s and a repudiation of Barack Obama’s.” Without detailing Zakaria arresting piece, it is worthwhile to record his concluding sentence: “If Joe Biden continues his current course, though, historians might one day look back on him as the president who normalized Donald Trump’s foreign policy.”

Biden’s UNGA address should be most helpful in assessing whether it indeed validates Zakaria’s thesis.

Incidentally, Post columnist David Ignatius’ column the same day draws attention, among other things, to the fact that, “even as the AUKUS alliance binds three Englishspeaking countries, the administration is also deepening ties with the Quad partnership which also includes India and Japan as well as Australia and the United States… “Biden’s approach to China has two faces much like China’s own stand towards the West. On the conciliatory side, Biden called President Xi Jinping last Thursday to stress the U.S. desire for cooperation on issues such as climate change and halting nuclear proliferation. But this week after Biden’s outreach, he announced the new military pact aimed at deterring China’s growing power. The AUKUS announcement drew a blistering initial reaction from Beijing