Opinion | AUKUS: Absurd, Asinine, Apocalyptic!

By Philip Yeung, A university teacher

PKY480@gmail.com

Of all military alliances, none is more asinine than AUKUS, a new partnership between Australia, the UK, and the US, whose unspoken target is China.

Boris Johnson, the buffoon who bets Britain’s future on an act of utter foolishness, calls his harebrained move a “downpayment” on Global Britain. It is more like a downpayment on its hastened decline and demise.

First of all, Britain is global no more--out of Europe and out of touch with the new global reality. With few friends, it now counts two major powers, China and Russia, as enemies.

Post-Brexit, Britain is searching frantically for a role in global affairs. For shallow men, nothing gives them the halo of a hero like flexing military muscle. The US is only too happy to oblige and lure the two military monkeys into this circus act.

Britain is a shadow of its former self. Boris, the showman who loves the limelight, whatever the costs, believes that military prowess demonstrates his leadership. He will only see the unflattering image of a US lapdog if he checks the mirror, as Blair did before him.

Remember Tony Blair and his debacle in the US-led war in Iraq? He exited with his tail between his legs and his reputation in tatters. Afghanistan is another nail in Britain’s coffin after another bout of military adventurism. A war with China is in a different category and will dispatch Britain to the footnotes of history. Boris wrote a book on Churchill, but he learned the wrong lessons from history.

Wake up Boris and smell the coffee. The future is China, the first country in human history to battle poverty on an epic scale successfully. It is zeroing in on the Confucian ideal of “universal peace and shared prosperity.”

While China is busy building up, America is busy tearing down. It suddenly wakes up and sees China looming large and gets spooked by the size of the China dream.

But what exactly has China done to earn their ill will? China’s only crime is in being communist and super-successful.

China the enemy exists only in the imagination of dimwitted western players. By rushing into this provocative security alliance, they turn China from an “imaginary” foe into an actual adversary.

They are parroting American propaganda, accusing Beijing of “expansionism” and “aggression”, pointing to China’s militarization of the South China Sea islands, not realizing that this is in direct response to American attempts at encirclement and choking off its vital trade route. If you were in China’s shoes, in the face of ceaseless American provocations, wouldn’t you act likewise? China is not a bi-coastal country, its eastern and southern coastline is a vital and vulnerable lifeline.

China’s defensive actions have been falsely twisted into “expansionism” when in fact they are a life-or-death fight against an “existential” threat.

Australia and Britain have no dog in this fight, with neither territorial nor strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific region.

But they do have vital trade links with China, especially Australia. Both are asking for the impossible: they want the China trade without the China ties. For China, either you are a partner, or you are not. You can’t talk trade out of one side of your mouth, and talk war out of the other. By signing this alliance, Britain and Australia can kiss the huge China market goodbye.

Their strategic gain is iffy, but their material loss is painfully certain.

AUKUS is an in-your-face provocation, turning a non-existent conflict into a high-risk confrontation. The Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea have become the world’s likeliest next flashpoints. This manufactured crisis pushes China into bulking up its military muscle, believing that “If you want peace, you must prepare for war.”

If war breaks out in the Asia Pacific, AUKUS leaders can take full credit for it.

US, the global trouble-maker and war-monger, is crying wolf on China—a country that is minding its own business. What kind of twisted moral standards are these?

Australia’s entry fee into this alliance is steep. First, it is violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which Australia is a signatory. Second, the price tag for building nuclear-powered submarines is a whopping US$90 billion. Third, New Zealand, a smaller but much wiser country, will ban any future Australian nuclear submarines from its waters.

Never an enemy of China, why should Australia become an American appendage and antagonize its biggest trading partner? Why not enjoy the benefits of being a player in the Pacific Century? Why let America drag it into one disastrous war after another?

Australia is paying a heavy price in bilateral trade with China over needless provocations. It is now upping the ante, turning China into a military adversary. It is utter idiocy.

As for Boris, he is zoned out in fantasy-land, dreaming of past imperial glory in a region where Britain is not even a minor or marginal player.

I feel bad for Britain. Are all Etonians, like Cameron and Johnson, this strategically useless?

Where is the payoff in this military partnership? It is sheer lunacy.

China doesn’t need containing. Mad-dog America is the one that needs a leash. Enough of US meddling and bullying, and playing judge, jury, and executioner.

America is turning inwards. Unfortunately for Asia, it is also turning eastwards. And where America turns, death and destruction follow.

Paul Keating, a former prime minister of Australia warns that by signing on this toxic military alliance, Australia is signing away its sovereignty, sheepishly tied to America’s apron strings.

What is the future of an alliance that targets one-fifth of humanity? You don’t have to like China’s communist label. But you do have to admit that China has done a superb job reinventing itself from its ideological past. Evil it is not. Creative genius it is.

Boris Johnson is living in a nostalgic fantasy, and Scott Morrison is suffering from acute paranoia. Both are way too dumb and blind to lead a modern democracy.

AUKUS is apocalyptic. There is no other word for it.

 

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