Only weeks after US President Joe Biden ended the war in Afghanistan, despite the bitter opposition from Congress and the dismay of his European allies came the announcement of the formation of AUKUS, a new trilateral security alliance between the US, the UK and Australia.
AUKUS is a foundation for an Indo-Pacific version designed to confront growing Chinese power in the Indo-Pacific region along the lines of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) which was meant as a response to East Bloc power under conditions of the Cold War.
However, the louder outcry against the new alliance was not coming from Beijing.
The burning rage was coming from the US European allies who felt insulted, betrayed and humiliated.
The AUKUS added insult to the injury that was caused by the Afghanistan pull-out. It hightened the European feelings that the US is going its own way, caring not about allies if it ever considered them so. Some of the European officials described it as a big loss of trust, expressing disappointment at the attitude of Biden that for some of them is no different from that of his predecessor Donald Trump.
One of the early tremors of Aukus was felt in Paris, where a deep plunge in relations with the US led Paris for the first time in history to recall its ambassador from Washington in protest. Paris was angry that as part of the agreement, Australia said it was cancelling a AUD$50bn-worth Franco-Australian contract for 12 diesel submarines that had been five years in the making, and would instead develop at least eight nuclear-powered subs with the US and UK.
Submarines are just a part of what will be a far wider collaboration. As a defence alliance, the three countries will also begin working together on other undersea capabilities, new quantum technologies, cyber and applied artificial intelligence, pursuing “integration of security and defense-related science, technology, and industrial bases and supply chains.”
Hence, came the other important factor for the French and European anger, why they had not been informed about — and had been excluded from — such a security pact.
The pact in all means can be an important geopolitical development that will not only reshape the strategic landscape of the Indo-Pacific but also within the old NATO alliance as European media recalled what the French President Emmanuel Macron has been saying for almost four years that NATO is “brain dead” and Europe can no longer rely on the United States to defend, or even consider, European interests.
The same sentiments are growing in other EU capitals that drew a line between the AUKUS deal and the US decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.
AUKUS deal also gives force and more credibility for calls for creating the EU rapid reaction forces to react to conflicts beyond its borders and especially when the US and European interests are not the same.
Some even go further with expectations for France to pull out of NATO or for Europeans to further consolidate their relations with China.
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