The US, British and Australian governments’ announcement on 15 September 2021 that they were forming a military partnership is a threat to China. The partnership, dubbed Aukus, goes beyond supplying Australia with eight nuclear-powered submarines, together with conventionally armed Tomahawk cruise missiles; it means the integration of the three nations’ militaries and security resources, including bases, for operations in the Indo-Pacific region. The agreement has infuriated the French government, which withdrew its ambassadors from the US and Australia, saying the deal was ‘unacceptable behaviour between allies and partners’. Not only has a contract for France to supply Australia with 12 diesel-powered submarines been torn up by Australia, losing France £48bn, but the allies negotiated the partnership clandestinely, without consulting France. The French government considers this to be a betrayal and is furious. French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said it was ‘a stab in the back’. Trevor Rayne reports.
The partnership agreement further calls into question the role of NATO and the European imperialists’ alliance with the US. It comes after the US unilaterally decided to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. A Franco-British defence ministers’ summit, including military chiefs from the two countries, scheduled for the week following the announcement of the partnership, was postponed. Following French pressure, a US-European Union (EU) technology council meeting was postponed. Germany’s ambassador to Britain said that the new partnership threatened the ‘coherence and unity of the West’. The British government boasts that the new deal demonstrates a post-Brexit Global Britain. To the French government and the EU, it demonstrates that Britain has chosen to be the ‘vassal of the US’; Britain can only project power in the Indo-Pacific as a junior partner of the US. Aukus will have major consequences for Britain’s relationship with both the EU and China. It also signifies growing inter-imperialist rivalry.
China responds
A Chinese government spokesperson described the partnership as playing ‘geopolitical games’, and expressive of an ‘outdated Cold War zero-sum mentality’. Significantly, addressing the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement (SCO) on 17 September, China’s President Xi Jinping said ‘We must never allow any external interference in the domestic affairs of countries in our region, under whatever pretext.’ The SCO was established in 2001; its members are China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan, consisting of nearly half of humanity and three-fifths of Eurasia. The organisation is a political, economic and security alliance. It intends to admit Iran as a member, and Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar as new dialogue partners. The US ruling class views China’s economic rise and growing political and diplomatic influence as a threat to its globally dominant position. President Xi Jinping said, ‘Whether China and the US can properly handle mutual relations is a question for the century that concerns the fate of the world, and both countries must answer it.’ The US answer is to wave its mailed fist at China.
Commenting on the partnership agreement, the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated, ‘If there were ever any question about what global Britain’s tilt towards the Indo-Pacific would mean… or what capabilities we might offer, this partnership with Australia and the US provides the answer. It amounts to a new pillar of our strategy, demonstrating Britain’s generational commitment to the security of the Indo-Pacific and showing exactly how we can help one of our oldest friends to preserve regional stability.’ It comes in the wake of the maiden voyage of the British aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, sailing through the South China Sea. The new British foreign secretary Liz Truss anticipated the profits to be made: ‘our new security pact will not just make us safer at home, it could also create hundreds of new and highly-skilled jobs, from the shipyards of Govan to the factories of Tyneside’. Rolls Royce, manufacturer of submarine reactors, and BAE Systems will be celebrating France’s loss. France has nearly two million citizens in the Indo-Pacific region and 7,000 troops. The submarine deal was integral to France’s regional strategy. The Australian government is delighted at being invited into the nuclear club.
Not to be outdone in this opportunity for flag waving and upholding the ‘special relationship’ with the US, Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer said, ‘New challenges can emerge and issues in faraway corners of the globe can quickly turn into threats at home, so Labour welcomes increased co-operation with our allies.’
‘For tasks such as intelligence collection and anti-submarine warfare, nuclear submarines offer a unique combination of endurance, speed and stealth’ (The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 20 September 2020). Their main advantages over diesel-electric submarines are endurance and range. This new partnership breaches the nuclear non-proliferation policy. Brazil and Iran have indicated they want to develop nuclear-powered submarines.
The threat of armed confrontation with China is real. On 9 September US President Biden and President Xi Jinping held a telephone conversation. A US spokesperson explained it was to ensure ‘we don’t have any situation in the future where we veer into unintended conflict’. A new book by the US journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa claims that the chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, twice called the head of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, General Li Zuocheng, on 30 October 2020 and then on 8 January 2021, to assure him that the US was not about to launch an attack on China. How the Chinese general responded we don’t know, but that the phone calls took place at all is indicative of an atmosphere of increasing menace.
It was in 2011 that the then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the US ‘pivot to Asia’. In 2017 the US National Security Strategy designated the Indo-Pacific region as the decisive arena of great power competition. There has followed a US barrage of anti-China propaganda concerning Hong Kong, Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Wuhan laboratories and Taiwan. 60% of the US fleet is now stationed in the Indo-Pacific region. The Biden administration has sought to build a united front against China. In July 2021, the US government accused China of teaming up with criminal gangs to launch cyberattacks, including on Microsoft, demanding payments, stealing intellectual property and spying. Britain, the EU, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and NATO echoed the accusations. The US and Britain’s treatment of France now threatens that alliance.
US hegemony
The US remains the world’s dominant power. Its economy amounts to about 24% of world GDP compared with China’s approximately 18% and the EU’s 16%. However, since 1979 China has doubled the size of its economy every eight years and at this rate will soon overtake the US. The US ruling class maintains dominance through the size of its military and the international role of the US dollar. US military spending in 2020 amounted to $778bn compared to China’s $252bn (SIPRI fact sheet). The US maintains some 750 overseas military bases, compared to a Chinese naval base in Djibouti. The US dollar is used in over 80% of international transactions. However, in May 2021, the billionaire fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller warned that the dollar could cease to be the predominant global reserve currency within 15 years. The International Monetary Fund reported in the fourth quarter of 2020 that US dollar reserves held by central banks fell to 59% of total reserves – the lowest in 25 years. This compares with 71% when the euro was launched in 1999. The euro currently makes up 20.57% of global reserves and could come to rival the US dollar. The pound sterling constitutes 4.7% of central bank reserves and the Chinese renminbi 2.45%. China has committed to increasing the role of its currency in international trade, as its Belt and Road Initiative now embraces 130 countries (Financial Times 26 May 2021).
The US dollar’s dominance is also threatened by US federal debt which stood at 32% of GDP in 1980, 55% in 2000 and has now ballooned to 130%, threatening inflation and the credibility of the dollar as a store of value. This combines with uncertainty about the US political system and the trajectory of the Republican party, culminating in the party’s rejection of the outcome of the November election and the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021. This volatile domestic scenario no doubt provoked US General Milley to seek to reassure his Chinese counterpart.
Imperialist propaganda claims that China has built the world’s largest fleet, but many of China’s ships are just small coastal boats. However, in response to the US pivot to Asia and the build-up of US bases around it, the Chinese state has built the world’s largest mine arsenal, the world’s first anti-ship ballistic missile and the world’s largest submarine fleet. These will have figured in US calculations when it negotiated the Aukus agreement.
Taiwan
The most likely source of conflict between the US and China is over Taiwan and the latter will test the EU’s response to the US-Britain-Australia military partnership. China considers Taiwan to be part of China and intends to reintegrate it, by force if necessary. Taiwan became a redoubt for the counter-revolutionary Kuomintang after the triumph of the revolution in 1949. When the US recognised the People’s Republic of China in 1979 it agreed not to recognise Taiwan as a separate nation. China is sensitive about any moves giving Taiwan diplomatic recognition. Currently, just 15 states recognise Taiwan as the Republic of China.
In October 2020, the Trump administration agreed to sell Taiwan $1.8bn worth of weapons. In August 2021, the Biden administration said it would supply an additional $750m of arms. The head of the US Indo-Pacific Command refuted assertions that the US was in decline: ‘I want to be very clear – we have the world’s greatest military… We are here to continue to operate to ensure peace and prosperity through the region, and we have to be in a position to ensure that the status quo remains as it applies to Taiwan’.
China recalled its ambassador to Lithuania in August 2021 after that country’s government said it planned to open a representative office in Taiwan. China explained that Lithuania was ‘severely undermining China’s sovereignty’. Lithuania was the first central and eastern European country to withdraw from China’s 17 plus 1 forum, which includes EU countries associated with the Belt and Road Initiative. Lithuania’s parliament accused China of ‘genocide’ against the Uyghurs, and, like Britain, banned Huawei from its 5G telecommunications network. A Taiwanese delegation of government officials and business leaders is now scheduled to visit Lithuania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic in October 2021. This visit is viewed as symbolically important. Two days after the Aukus pact was announced, the US and Australia pledged to ‘strengthen ties with Taiwan’.
China’s government will not bow down to imperialist threats nor allow its waters to be policed by the US and Britain. It is becoming more assertive. At a meeting in Alaska in March 2021 between US and Chinese government representatives, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the now customary string of accusations against China. The Chinese official, Yang Juechi, responded saying that China did not believe ‘in invading through the use of force or toppling other regimes through various means or massacring people’. On 1 September 2021, China’s foreign ministry called for an investigation of 20 years of massacres of civilians in Afghanistan by the US. The day after the Aukus partnership was announced, China’s official state news agency, Xinhua, carried an item ‘US, disruptor of global peace in every sense’ in which it observed, ‘As US historian Paul Atwood put it, “War is the American way of life.” Since its [declaration of] independence on 4 July 1776, in more than 240 years, the United States was not at war for merely 16 years. Its path towards global dominance was built on wars, slavery and slaughters.’ For most of the past 120 years Britain has been at its side, unleashing the savagery.
This latest venture is dangerous.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 284, October/November 2021
