India and the Anglosphere (GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Context:
- AUKUS is in essence about transforming Australia’s strategic capabilities and making it a powerful factor in shaping the Indo-Pacific regional security environment.
- The road map to Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines, announced in San Diego by the leaders of Australia, the UK, and the US, is being both hailed and denounced at the same time.
Various aspects:
- For the three, the AUKUS is about promoting deterrence and stability in the Indo-Pacific.
- For China, AUKUS, along with the Quadrilateral forum or the Quad, is one of the dangerous “small cliques” that the US is building in Asia. China’s has warned that Australia is making an “expensive mistake” that will “plant a time bomb” in the region.
- Between those two contrasting positions, there is a range of opinion among Australia’s neighbours. Their individual reactions have been shaped by their respective appreciation of the shifting Asian security dynamic. Most analysts, however, agree that AUKUS could well be an inflexion point in the evolution of Asian geopolitics.
Policy constraints:
- To be sure, Australia, the UK, and the US will have to overcome several technical and policy issues in implementing the AUKUS road map. The current estimated cost of the project will be around $250 billion (to the Australian taxpayer). It will be nearly three decades before an Australian-built nuclear submarine will enter service.
- Projects of this scale will inevitably involve significant delays and cost escalation. It is easy to ask if the current political support in the three democracies for the AUKUS framework will endure in the years ahead.
- But the die has been cast and there appears to be strong bipartisan support in the three countries for a venture that will revitalise their alliance and make it consequential for the Indo-Pacific.
Implementation of AUKUS Project:
- At the heart of the AUKUS project is the plan by the US and UK to assist the Royal Australian Navy to develop, build and operate a “sovereign fleet” of conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs). This will unfold in several phases.
- The first step in the implementation of AUKUS, starting right away, will embed Australian personnel in the American and British nuclear submarine establishments. There will also be more port calls by US and British nuclear-powered submarines in Australia.
- In the second phase starting in 2027, the US and UK will forward deploy nuclear submarines in Australia “to accelerate the development of the Australian naval personnel, workforce, infrastructure and regulatory system necessary” to establish solid SSN capabilities in Australia.
- In the third phase, starting early next decade, the US will sell up to five nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. In the fourth phase, starting late 2030s, London will deliver the first British-built AUKUS submarine to Canberra. In the final phase beginning early 2040s, the nuclear submarines built in Australia will begin to roll out.
Strategic consequences for Asia, including India:
Australian capabilities:
- AUKUS is in essence about transforming Australia’s strategic capabilities and making it a powerful factor in shaping the Indo-Pacific regional security environment. Nuclear-powered submarines are only one part of this broader ambition.
- AUKUS will see a deeper partnership between the US, UK, and Australia in developing a range of underwater technologies to cope with the dramatic expansion of Chinese naval capabilities in the Indo-Pacific.
- The AUKUS also involves collaboration between the three countries in a range of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing that will shape regional security scenarios.
- India tends to underestimate the extraordinary scientific and technical skills in Australia. India will now see a dramatic upgradation of those Australian capabilities in the coming years. This should also open the door for greater S&T cooperation between India and Australia which should eventually expand to cover sensitive strategic areas.
UK Factor:
- The Indian foreign policy community tends to neglect the continuing global strategic salience of Britain. London, which impressed Central Europe with its activism in the Ukraine war, will now see its profile in Asia boosted by the AUKUS deal.
- The UK is the lynchpin in the AUKUS, with its critical role in designing and developing a new class of nuclear-powered submarines by marrying cutting-edge US technologies to Britain’s domestic nuclear capabilities and the Australian demand.
- After the UK abandoned its security responsibilities East of Suez in the late 1960s, Britain had become marginal to Asian security all these decades.
- AUKUS will begin to change that by reinforcing London’s renewed claim for a long-term role in Indo-Pacific security. AUKUS is a lot more ambitious than the surprising partnership that London announced last December with Tokyo and Rome for the development of a new generation fighter aircraft.
Anglosphere:
- AUKUS has reinvigorated the idea of an “Anglosphere” that speaks of the enduring geopolitical bonds between the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. India, which had difficult ties with the Anglosphere in the past, is now seeing a rapid expansion of its ties with the English-speaking world.
- The post-war intelligence sharing among the “Five Eyes” has remained an important feature of international relations.
- The triangular AUKUS arrangement is more narrowly focused on the Indo-Pacific and will look beyond information sharing to the integration of the technological and defence industrial bases of the three countries.
NPT:
- The three countries have taken pains to emphasise that AUKUS’s purview does not involve nuclear weapons. While the US and UK are nuclear weapon powers, Australia has renounced its nuclear weapon option by joining the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
- China has launched a campaign against the AUKUS, much in the manner that it opposed the India-US civil nuclear initiative during 2005-08, saying that it is against the non-proliferation norms. But the NPT does not prohibit AUKUS-like cooperation between nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states.
- Australia, the UK, and the US have repeatedly reaffirmed that they will negotiate strictest terms for the international monitoring of the transfer and use of nuclear material under the AUKUS arrangement.
US strategy for the Indo-Pacific:
- The US has made it clear that it does not plan to extend the AUKUS arrangement to other partners like Japan and India. In India, there is no expectation of such cooperation. Nor has India any reason to quarrel with the AUKUS plan to deter Chinese expansionism in the Indo-Pacific.
- What is of interest to India is something else; that AUKUS marks a significant change in US regional strategy for the Indo-Pacific.
- In the past, the US sought to promote regional security unilaterally through its own military capabilities.
- As it comes to terms with the enormous scale of the military challenges that China presents, US is now eager to boost the strategic capabilities of its allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific.
Way Forward:
- The US focus is different with different partners. But the objective is similar; to promote local balances of power. The US is now boosting the military capabilities of Japan and South Korea and seeking to build a deeper partnership with India on strategic technologies.
- India, then, has a rare opportunity to develop a unique set of arrangements of its own with US and its allies that will strengthen India’s comprehensive national power as well as enhance its contribution to regional peace and security.
