AUKUS-Pocus Down Under & Its CACHUS-Pocus Sequel!

Anglo Musketeers of the South China Sea

By Rajan Philips –SEPTEMBER 26, 2021

Rajan Philips

[Breaking News: This article was written on Friday (September 24) morning (10:30 UTC). News broke out later in the afternoon that a dramatic breakthrough had been achieved in the long standoff involving the detention in Canada of Meng Wanzhou, the high-profile Huawei executive, and the imprisonment of two Canadians, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig (the two Michaels) in China. Within hours of the announcement, Ms. Meng flew to China from Vancouver and the two Michaels were flying back to Canada. Meng had been detained in Canada since December 1, 2018, on an extradition request from the US to face charges in America for allegedly violating US sanctions against doing business in Iran by companies registered in the US. China arrested and imprisoned the two Michaels in retaliation. The long-drawn-out legal battle over extradition had just been completed and the court ruling scheduled for October. Ever since President Biden’s election, Washington and Beijing had been under intense diplomatic pressure by Canada and allies to break the deadlock. But few expected the sudden announcement of a “deferred prosecution agreement” between the US government and Ms. Meng, without any admission of guilt on her part and free of any future prosecution. The prosecution deferral applies only to her company, Huawei. The Vancouver Supreme Court Justice took just 12 minutes to end the extradition process and let Ms. Meng go free. And fewer people expected China to release the Michaels simultaneously. Apparently, diplomacy worked. Within a week of AUKUS, that this article is about, there has been a diplomatic CACHUS – between Canada, China and the US.]

No, this is not hocus-pocus, the old parody of liturgical transubstantiation. AUKUS is the  awkward abbreviation of what Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison described as the “new enhanced trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.” Mr. Morrison was leading off the announcement of the partnership – joining by zoom from Australia, US President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at Downing Street in London. The announcement, separated by time zones, officially at 5:00 PM, Wednesday, 15 September in Washington (late evening in London and Thursday morning in Canberra), came as a surprise to practically everyone other than the three leaders and their officials who had been working seemingly secretly for nearly six months to create the new alliance.

Neighbours (Canada, New Zealand) and close allies (France, Germany, the whole EU and Japan) were notified only hours before the announcement. China was not mentioned at all in any of the opening statements but clearly China is the sole reason for the new global troika. China may not have had a clue of what was coming and was duly outraged. But it was France’s fury that momentarily upstaged the announcement of the new partnership. It was double French fury – the fury of a friend scorned and for a contract reneged.

For at the heart of the new partnership is the supply of a nuclear-powered submarine fleet by the US to Australia, and the unilateral scuppering of Australia’s $40-$60 billion contract to buy French diesel submarines. According to France, the French manufacturer had offered to switch to supplying (the easier) nuclear-powered submarines instead of (the cumbersome) diesel submarines, but there was no response from Australia. Until the announcement of the tri-lateral partnership and a new source for providing nuclear-powered submarine technology. The submarines are to be built in Adelaide, Australia, with technology and support provided primarily by the United States.

In an unprecedented move, France recalled its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra, an affront that the US did not risk suffering even under Trump. UK was spared, because France viewed the Breixiter as a minor player in the new Indo-Pacific region. Matters have cooled since, with President Biden speaking with French President Macron and France agreeing to return its Ambassador to Washington next week. Not so with Australia. Macron is still not taking calls from Morrison. Prime Minister Johnson, in Washington for the annual UN session, has playfully told France to “get a grip.” But that will not take away the undiplomatic sloppiness in the announcement of an initiative, which The Economist has called a ‘tectonic shift’ in geopolitics akin to such historic milestones as the Suez crisis (1956), Nixon’s visit to China (1972), and the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989).

Motivations

The motivations for the partnership are probably more parochial than what might be implied by its sweepingly consequential potentials. Of the three Anglo-musketeers, Australia probably was the keenest to pull this off. In recent decades, Australia has been trying to position itself quite comfortably on the fence with a policy of not choosing between the US and China. Australian governments have acknowledged that it was because of China that their continent was shielded from the 2008 global financial crisis. China is Australia’s biggest trading partner, and as a resource-based economy Australia has found an insatiable market in China.

Read More