AUKUS, un pacto controvertido

El acuerdo de defensa entre Estados Unidos, el Reino Unido y Australia, por el que Washington y Londres proveerán de submarinos nucleares a la armada australiana, provocó la reacción de China y Francia.
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AUKUS, as this security project between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia is known, surprised many, even though these three countries have been long-standing allies on several fronts. But this new association surprised in terms of objective, scope and characteristics. It basically consists of equipping theAustralian Navy with nuclear submarines to be deployed in the Indo-Pacific area, thereby expanding the Western military presence in the region. The target of this agreement is, of course, China, a country with which the United States is waging a full-scale trade war, and which is at the top of the hypothetical threats to its national security.The election of Australia as the recipient of this project is not a coincidence: Canberra has maintained a fierce dispute withBeijing for more than a year, which began with an Australian request to thoroughly investigate suspicions that the COVID pandemic may have originated in the laboratory of the Chinese city of Wuhan, followed by a harsh Chinese economic retaliation that halted Australian exports, the suspension of trade agreements associated with the so-called New Silk Road, and ended with a bitter diplomatic exchange in which the word "war" was openly mentioned.Behind the high-sounding words, there are domestic policy issues on the Australian side, associated with the need to divert the focus of discussions from the mismanagement of the pandemic. On the Chinese side, the fury of Beijing is increasingly difficult to conceal when it is insinuated that the coronavirus outbreak has an artificial origin and came from aChinese laboratory.But, also, in geopolitical terms, Australia has the ideal conditions to project itself as an American base to stop China’s expansion in the South China Sea. One of the main focuses of sovereign conflicts in the region are the Spratly Islands, a small archipelago of high strategic value because of its location at the center of the shipping routes between the Indian and Pacific oceans, and which are claimed at the same time by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines, countries that occupy some islands and reefs. Half of the world’s maritime trade passes through that area, which represents more than three trillion dollars a year. To defend its presence in the region China builds artificial islands that are virtual aircraft carriers that guarantee permanent military operation. It is not the only Chinese action to project a new maritime power, as it has been working for a long time and in an accelerated way to convert its navy into a "Blue navy", as naval forces with expeditionary and intervention capacity at global level are known, for which China is adding aircraft carriers and new submarine warfare capabilities. It should be noted that Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom were already partners in another controversial alliance ,alongside Canada and New Zealand, a global-scale espionage and signal intelligence project that began in the context of the war on terror which now targets China in particular. AUKUS also includes aspects related to cyberwar and intelligence. But the silent and autonomous nuclear submarines would give Australia the capability of remote attacks, even though Canberra does not possess nuclear weapons, as the country is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.This would not, however, prevent the United States or the United Kingdom from supplying future Australian nuclear submarines with nuclear missiles in case of need, as the international agreement only prevents the manufacture of nuclear weapons of mass destruction. China reacted immediately to the announcement of the AUKUS pact, calling for its repeal, considering it a direct military threat. But there was also another strong protest against the signatories to the understanding: France, ally of the three countries, called in consultation its ambassadors in Washington, London andCanberra because it had not received any prior information, and the deal turns obsolete Paris' plans to sell Australia submarines for a total of $90 billion, a business Macron cannot afford to pass up.Although the construction of Australian nuclear submarines will take time, the effects of AUKUS are already being felt, in the form of a radical shift in the balance of forces in one of the most disputed geostrategic areas in the world.