ANALYSIS - AUKUS May Trigger Nuclear Arms Race In Indo-Pacific, France To Stay In NATO

(@FahadShabbir)

ANALYSIS - AUKUS May Trigger Nuclear Arms Race in Indo-Pacific, France to Stay in NATO

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st September, 2021) The new defense deal between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom (AUKUS) will have far-reaching consequences, as it threatens to trigger a nuclear arms race in the Indo-Pacific region � even though, as many agree, it is unlikely to cause a rift between France and NATO, experts told Sputnik.

Last week, Australia announced its decision to quit a $66 billion submarine contract with France unilaterally in favor of a more favorable deal for nuclear-powered submarines with the UK and the US, envisioned in the AUKUS deal. In response, Paris, which considers Australia's withdrawal a "stab in the back," recalled its ambassadors from Canberra and Washington, and demanded the EU stop negotiating a settled trade deal with Australia.

The handling of the deal, which largely happened behind France's back, remains "puzzling" and has negatively affected NATO, Nikolai Sokov, a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation, told Sputnik. Even though it is still highly unlikely that France will completely leave the bloc, there will be consequences: strains within NATO, as well as Paris becoming estranged from other NATO members and even EU members, "none of whom criticized the US and UK for their handling of the issue," he noted.

On the other hand, for the AUKUS countries the move can be considered a win, despite causing a significant rift between the US, Australia and their long-standing ally France � and even to some extent another regional partner, New Zealand, a member of the trilateral ANZUS, Sokov said.

"For US, the new arrangement, it seems, boils down to enhanced deterrence of China at lower cost: effectively, Australia will pay for submarines and weapons, which otherwise the US would have paid from its own budget, and probably would have been unaffordable anyway," he explained.

The UK in turn gains an opportunity to be more visible in the Pacific, which, according to the expert, it has been attempting to do for some time now. What often goes ignored, however, is that the project is not only about submarines, but also long-range conventional missiles, which can pose a risk to many critical targets in China, the expert stressed. It is the America's conventional capability that has been of the greatest concern to China, and this capability is set to increase "well beyond expectation", for now the US will share the financial and military burden, Sokov remarked.

AUKUS is controversial from several perspectives, and has elicited strong responses from Beijing and Paris, for obvious reasons. But there is another aspect that has alienated New Zealand, a staunch supporter of non-proliferation.

"The deal is very questionable from the nonproliferation point of view. Naval nuclear reactor technology has not been shared before - in fact, the US has been the strongest opponent - and now there is a risk this may begin to happen," Sokov warned.

Among possible candidates for receiving this technology, he named South Korea (from the US) and Brazil (from France).

"Moreover, we are talking highly enriched uranium. I find it almost impossible that the US or UK would develop from scratch low enriched uranium reactors. Plus, there will have to be new safeguards by the IAEA (nuclear watchdog), the entire infrastructure and so on," Sokov said.

The nuclear issue brought forward by AUKUS is "very disturbing at two levels," M. V. Ramana, the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the school of Public Policy and Global Affairs, and the director of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia, told Sputnik.

"First, the decision further escalates tensions with China, where officials have criticized this decision. It will further intensify the arms race that has been going on, and drawing in more countries into this race. Second, the decision to share sensitive military technology blows a hole in the nuclear non-proliferation regime," he said, noting that deploying subs out at sea to unidentified locations makes it impossible to track the enriched uranium or plutonium in their reactors.

Ramana further lamented the fact that such a decision by powerful global players created a "very regrettable" precedent for the future.

A similar sentiment has been echoed by Marc Finaud, the head of arms proliferation at the Geneva Center for Security Policy, who also drew attention to the unintended consequences of deploying nuclear-powered subs to send a message to China.

"Potential unintended consequences may include the creation of a precedent that will make it more difficult to prevent the proliferation of nuclear technology in Asia and in the world. Facilitating the spread of nuclear naval propulsion may encourage countries to exploit the loophole in the non-proliferation regime that exempts naval nuclear fuel from safeguards," Finaud clarified.

INDO-PACIFIC AS MAIN GEOPOLITICAL STAGE

The deal has cemented the fact that strategic rivalry has pivoted from the North Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific, Ramesh Thakur, director of the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament in the Crawford School at the Australian National University, and co-convenor of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, told Sputnik.

"First, it signifies the solidifying belief by the leading Anglosphere democracies that China as a formidable comprehensive national power has displaced a severely diminished Russia as the principal strategic competitor. Second, it acknowledges that strategic rivalry has pivoted from the North Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific. Third, nuclear propulsion for the navy will signify the greatest projection of Australian military power into the Indo-Pacific region," the expert stated.

He noted that the ramifications of these developments will "reverberate for decades," as the nuclearization of Australia's navy threatens to create "ripples of unease" in neighboring Southeast Asian countries, spark a regional race for nuclear naval propulsion, and encourage nuclear weapons proliferation.

Thakur noted that there is another aspect of the deal which may cause "awkwardness" in the region � namely, "the three Anglo-Saxon leaders telling Asians they intend to be in charge of Asia's destiny."

However, not everyone agrees with the bleak outlook regarding the consequences of the deal, inasmuch as the defense partnership simply "builds on already close defense cooperation between the three countries," John Carlson, a member of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, told Sputnik.

Moreover, Australia has one of the world's longest coastlines (26,000 km or 16,155 miles) and is an island continent, situated between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, so securing sea lanes is vital to it, Carlson pointed out.

"Nuclear-powered submarines are preferred because they are faster than conventional submarines and can stay on patrol much longer. Under the new partnership, greater defense cooperation activity is expected, particularly with US forces, but this is simply building on an existing alliance. I don't see any adverse consequences," he said.

Some regional countries may even feel reassured that the US will stay engaged in the region, Carlson added. As for triggering a nuclear arms race, there is no basis for that, as Australian submarines will not be armed with nuclear warheads, according to the expert.

Additionally, it is still too early to speak of the consequences of Australia getting nuclear-powered submarines, as it will happen in a distant future, Joshua Pollack, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, told Sputnik.