AUKUS Partnership

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context:

US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison launched the AUKUS security partnership in a joint virtual appearance. It will supplement Quad and ASEAN. 

• The strategic implications of AUKUS for the geopolitics of the extended Indo-Pacific region in general, and the maritime domain in particular, are significant and multi-layered.
• This major policy decision comes just ahead of the first in-person Quad summit to be held in Washington and the annual United Nations (UN) General Assembly deliberations.

What is AUKUS?

• AUKUS will strive over the next 18 months to equip Australia with nuclear propulsion technology.
• As part of this, Australia will acquire nuclear-powered submarines with help from the UK and the US.
• So far, the United States has shared only with the United Kingdom under a decades-old arrangement put together in the face of the threat from the then Soviet Union.
• Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines, when they deploy, will be armed with conventional weapons only and not nuclear weapons

Rationale: 

• The future of each involved nation and the world depends on a free and open Indo-Pacific.
• The strategic environment of the Indo-Pacific has been disturbed by China’s muscular assertiveness in the South China Sea in recent years. 
• Beijing blatantly rejects international law, the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), related to the maritime domain.
• The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy resorted to unilateral muscle-flexing to advance its own interpretation of historical territorial claims over disputed waters. 
• Smaller Association of SouthEast Asian Nations (Asean) neighbours were intimidated by China. 
• Also China has contested the “free and open Indo-Pacific” formulation of the global community.

Geopolitical significance of AUKUS

• • United States: In the Pacific, the U.S. and others have been concerned about China’s actions in the South China Sea and its antipathy toward Japan, Taiwan and Australia.
    • AUKUS is the first step that conveys the US resolve to punctuate the maritime domain in a manner that will not only protect Australia’s core security interests, but shape the regional strategic environment. 
  • Australia: Under the arrangement, Australia will build at least eight nuclear-powered submarines using U.S. expertise.
    • A nuclear submarine has reach and stealth that is of a much higher order than a conventional diesel boat, and will be able to ensure a very high degree of sea-denial to any potential adversary.
    • Barring the US, there is no other navy that has nuclear submarines in China’s proximity, and the inclusion of Australia into this category will inhibit the PLA Navy in a variety of ways.
    • In the context of the AUKUS agreement, nuclear-powered submarines will give the Royal Australian Navy the capability to go into the South China Sea, where China is increasingly getting aggressive.
  • Britain: The US said it was about ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term. 
    • Leaving the EU under Brexit has left Britain seeking to reassert its global position. Part of that has been an increased focus towards the Indo-Pacific.
  • France: Australia told France it would end its contract with state majority-owned DCNS to build 12 of the world’s largest conventional submarines. 
    • The contract was worth tens of billions of dollars. France is furious and demanding explanations from Australia.
    • A harsh legal battle over the contract appears inevitable.
  • New Zealand: Australia’s neighbour New Zealand has been left out of the new alliance. It has a long-standing nuclear-free policy that includes a ban on nuclear-powered ships entering its ports. 
    • AUKUS leaves New Zealand out of a deal to share a range of information, including artificial intelligence, cyber and underwater defence capabilities.
  • China: China has criticised the US for building “exclusionary blocs targeting and harming the interests of third parties”, and accused Washington of being in transgression of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). 
    • The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, otherwise commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, is an international treaty with an objective to limit the escalation of a nuclear arms race and the technology related to it.

• Impact on QUAD

• The new alliance does not and will not supersede or outrank existing arrangements in the Indo-Pacific region such as the Quad, which the US and Australia form with India and Japan, and Asean, and that it will complement these groups and others.
• Japan, India, Australia and the U.S. already have a strategic dialogue known as ‘the Quad’. 
• Quad nations have been consistent in upholding the principle of freedom of navigation, as contained in UNCLOS, at the political and diplomatic levels. 

Advantages of nuclear propelled submarines

• Conventional diesel-engine submarines have batteries that keep and propel the vessel underwater. The life of these batteries can vary from a few hours to a few days.
• The newer Air-Independent Propulsion (AIP) submarines have additional fuel cells that allow them to stay underwater for longer and move faster than the conventional vessels. 
• Both conventional and AIP subs need to come to the surface to recharge their batteries using the diesel engine. 
• Nuclear-powered propulsion gives the submarine a near infinite capacity to stay dived. Since it is propelled by a nuclear-powered engine rather than by batteries, it does not have to emerge on the surface at all, except to replenish supplies for the crew.
• They are also able to move faster underwater than conventional submarines. 

India’s nuclear-powered submarines

• India is among the six nations that have nuclear-powered submarines. The other five are the US, the UK, Russia, France and China.
• The first Indian nuclear submarine, the INS Arihant, was commissioned in 2016. 
  • The INS Arihant is now classified as a Strategic Strike Nuclear Submarine or SSBN, which means it is a nuclear-powered ballistic submarine.
  • INS Arihant is important because it completes India’s nuclear triad, which means that the country has the capacity to launch nuclear missiles from land, aircraft, and submarine.
• A second Arihant-class submarine, INS Arighat, was secretly launched in 2017, and is likely to be commissioned soon.

The Hindustan Times Link:

https://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/aukus-roils-the-indopacific-101631878164533.html