Opinion | What AUKUS means for the great power competition between the USA and China

This is a hallmark of great power competition: competition initiatives such as AUKUS offer visible opportunities to counteract or balance or complicate China’s military activities, but do not necessarily help the allies to achieve defined goals. More often, competition becomes an end in itself – an indefinite imperative that assumes that anything an opponent dislikes must be good politics.

Another common feature of competitive policies is that officials overlook their costs.

For one, AUKUS bears considerable diplomatic costs at a time when the United States urgently needs credibility with its allies. France sees AUKUS as “a knife in the back” because Australia sealed it by withdrawing a deal worth 66 billion US dollars in 2016 to buy French diesel-electric submarines. This perceived betrayal could create unnecessary friction within NATO and make it difficult to work with France on China.

In Asia, the deal exposes the Quad – an informal partnership between the United States, Japan, India, and Australia – as thin multilateralism, ready to coordinate on issues from health to military exercise, but apparently unwilling or not in that It is able to confront China directly. This was evident when a White House statement following a Quad meeting last week did not offer any concrete help to Asian nations facing interference from China.

There is also a danger that the deal will frighten Southeast Asian nations who, despite threats from China, fear they will find themselves in the midst of this great power competition and are less likely to cooperate with US initiatives that include Beijing, its largest and largest and most powerful neighbor.

In addition, the AUKUS Agreement with its shared use of nuclear propulsion technology could cause considerable damage to non-proliferation interests. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has rightly promised that the nation “does not seek to acquire nuclear weapons or develop civilian nuclear capacity”. But that promise will not necessarily deter or discourage other countries from exploiting the loophole in the Non-Proliferation Treaty that allows the diversion of nuclear material for marine reactors.

While AUCUS countries work out details of the agreement over the next 18 months, countries should consider two adjustments to ensure that it sets a strong precedent. First, Australia should commit to not enriching uranium or processing reactor fuel domestically while the reactors are in operation. Second, these nations should consider adding France to the deal to use its reactor designs that run on low-enriched uranium – which is seen as less of a proliferation risk than the high-enriched uranium in US or UK designs.

US officials will also have to work hard to ensure the deal doesn’t cause problems with South Korea, another ally that researches nuclear-powered submarines and with many politicians and nearly 70 percent of the public supportive of nuclear weapon development.