P Kharel

More than what Brexit did to the European Union and how the US President Donald Trump changed his political and diplomatic course so sharply, the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (Aukus) defence alliance, announced this month, set off a commotion and diplomatic spat in the industrially advanced West. The trilateral partnership stunned some of the traditionally closest allies.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison attributed the new alliance to his country's national interests. Apparently devastated by the forfeiture of a commercial contract signed in 2016 with Canberra for delivering a dozen submarines, France was the first to express displeasure and fiercely denounce it. Its President Macron fumed, fretted and condemned the pact as a “stab in the back”. Five years ago, France and Australia signed a commercial contract for a delivery of a dozen nuclear-powered submarines to Canberra. However, Canberra reneged on the 2016 agreement worth about $ 40 billion.

Macron’s Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian condemned the US and Australia for “lies” over the security pact. If British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss defended the security pact as “hard-headed”, French defence chief Florence Parly refused to oblige British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, with a pre-scheduled meeting. China, meanwhile, has accused the Aukus powers of nursing a “Cold War mentality” that could trigger global insecurity.
Such severe strategic drive by close allies brought Macron and his team to the harsh reality of individual state interests taking uncompromising precedence over everything else. The pain Aukus inflicted was too much for Macron not to make public his shock and displeasure. He promptly recalled French ambassadors to Canberra and Washington while attributing the decision not to recall his ambassador to London to British acceptance of being subordinate to the US.

Hard as it might be for the US to maintain composure when failing to anticipate the unfolding of some major events, the superpower unwittingly presents itself as among those prone to tossing up a surprise and, at the same time, being infected by it. Some surprises are real, others feigned. In recent developments, too, a large section of the international community was in the grip of unexpected events that stirred commotions, even as analysts sifted the same for any significance and ramifications.

Surprise wish
The nearly two scores of foreign states involved in the 2002 invasion of Afghanistan were, amazingly, surprised over having to quit Afghanistan not in victory over the Taliban but by making way for the armed group to march into Kabul. That the Afghan army, trained and equipped for 20 years by the major powers, collapsed like nine pins and in the twinkling of an eye turned out to be another torrent of surprises.
Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela and Recep Tayyip Edrogan in Turkey stand out for withstanding various shades of foreign onslaughts. Countries listed by Western agencies as the richest, most democratic, most liberal, biggest reformers and culturally the most advanced would celebrate the loudest if any of these three leaders were ousted from power by any means.

For that matter, quite a few foreign powers overlooking the Atlantic have been counting the days for President Rodrigo Duterte, of the Philippines, to mandatorily leaves office on completion of his six-year term next summer. For Duterte has taken a soft line toward China regarding claims over islands dotting the South China Sea. China’s rise from a basically poverty-stricken country in the 1960s to the No. 2 economy in the new millennium, and now set to replaces the US for the top slot within this decade, seems to have taken the traditionally dominant powers aback.

Likewise, Russia’s recovery as a superpower under President Vladimir Putin, too, was received by them as a shock-filled surprise. In addition, Putin’s public approval rating stands at more than 70 per cent even after 21 years at the helm of the state affairs. His American counterpart Joe Biden has the support of 50 per cent public approval only seven months in office.

The manner in which Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature project, the Belt and Road Initiative, is making notable progress, notwithstanding incessant propaganda reviling it, has harvested another big unpleasant surprise for its vehement critics. Included in the list of surprises is Beijing’s coming to grips with challenges posed by COVID-19 two years ago while most other countries are yet to cope with it.
Western scholars routinely dismissed the prospects of Russo-Chinese rapport making any substantial strides for close cooperation. History, they concluded, went against Moscow and Beijing becoming close allies. The Cassandras proved wrong. They forgot how Germany and Japan are so close to their World War II enemies, today. Aukus will enable Australia to be enlisted as the seventh nation to possess nuclear-powered submarines. It also lays bare Canberra’s perception of insecurity with China’s rise as an economic as well as military superpower. The pact negatively exposes Australia’s often proclaimed stance that its core interests rest on the Indo-Pacific region and not anywhere else.

That which binds
Well, when the crunch comes, the expediency of backtracking gets to the fore without qualms. The Aukus has created an abrupt about-turn whose costs will be high. If the EU sounds cross over the contract cancellations with France, the Association of South-East Asian Nations is amazed by Australia’s preference for the US at the expense of its international credibility.

Bruce Riedel, a senior officer who worked for the US Central Intelligence Agency for 30 years, recounts India’s defeat in the 1962 war against China, jointly planned with the CIA and New Delhi. When faced with advancing Chinese troops, independent India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru desperately solicited US air support, only to be turned down and suffer a humiliating defeat. 

The Aukus partnership is seen as a move to check China’s influence in the strategic South China Sea. Quad, officially composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia, has an undeclared rival in the Sino-Russian-Pakistani-Iranian rapport. The latest development is in response to the respective group’s perception of strategic interests and ambitions for assertive role as global powers.
Power equations are changing fast. The recent events might presage more serious conflicts between the traditionally dominant and the emerging dominant powers. But a complete repeat of the post-World War II domination by the West in setting international agendas is unlikely for years to come.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)