JOIN USUS, Australia announce new AUKUS alliance with UK, leaving aside Quad partners India,Japan
Just days before hosting the first in-person summit of the Quad, the United States has announced a new trilateral security alliance with Australia and the United Kingdom to counter China in the Indo-Pacific region – leaving aside India and Japan.
The new Australia-UK-US alliance – or the AUKUS – will create a framework for the three nations to enhance sharing of defence capabilities. It will also allow the US and the UK to support Australia acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, a move that will signal greater strategic convergence between the three nations in the Indo-Pacific region and may rile up China.
President Joe Biden announced the launch of the AUKUS from the White House in Washington DC, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the UK joining him virtually from Canberra and London.
The AUKUS has been launched even as Biden has invited Morrison, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan to the White House on September 24 for the first in-person summit of the ‘Quad’, a four-nation coalition, which too was intended to build a bulwark of democracies to counter the expansionist aspirations of communist China in the Indo-Pacific region.
“The US, Australia, and the UK have long been faithful and capable partners and we're even closer today,” Biden said after launching the AUKUS with Johnson and Morrison, adding: “Today, we're taking another historic step to deepen and formalise cooperation among all three of our nations because we all recognise the imperative of ensuring long-term peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific (region).”
New Delhi has been quietly working with Canberra, Washington DC and Tokyo to add military heft to the Quad – in view of China’s growing belligerence, not only along its disputed boundary with India but also in the South China Sea, the East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.
But the Modi Government last year resisted pressure from Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump’s administration to formally turn the Quad into a NATO-like military alliance for the Indo-Pacific region.
New Delhi declined to go the whole hog, as it was concerned over the implication of such a move on India’s strategic partnership with Russia and its own negotiation with China to resolve the military stand-off in eastern Ladakh.
The US apparently went ahead and launched with Australia and the UK the AUKUS, which appeared to be more like a security alliance, focussed on the development of joint military capabilities and defence technology sharing. The AUKUS will also foster deeper integration of science, technology, industrial bases and supply chains in the defence sector.
China slammed the Australia-UK-US alliance stating that it will gravely undermine regional stability and aggravate the arms race and hurt international non-proliferation efforts.
The Modi Government, however, said that the AUKUS would not undermine or eclipse India’s partnership with the US, Japan and Australia.
“The Quad summit stands on its own. It is extremely important,” Arindam Bagchi, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), said in New Delhi. He underlined that the four nations attached great importance to the Quad and that was why decided to hold the first in-person summit in Washington DC despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
New Delhi has been insisting on keeping the Quad as a benign coalition of democratic nations to counter China’s geopolitical influence in Indo-Pacific, primarily by promoting connectivity, funding infrastructure development projects, supplying anti-Covid-19 vaccines and supporting post-pandemic economic revival in the countries in the region.
India repeatedly stressed that its own vision for the region remained inclusive in nature, not targeted at any country, but supportive of freedom of navigation and overflight and peaceful settlement of territorial disputes.
Morrison called up Modi on Wednesday to inform him about the imminent launch of the AUKUS.
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