Washington/London – The United States, United Kingdom and Australia will announce a partnership to build nuclear submarines on Monday. This incident is grabbing attention in the background of China’s ongoing expansionist activities in the Pacific region. A Japanese daily has published a report in this regard and claimed that the heads of state of the three countries would be present for Monday’s event. The United Kingdom has confirmed this and informed that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has left to visit the US.
In 2021, US President Joe Biden announced AUKUS. President Biden had said that the United States, United Kingdom and Australia were coming together, claiming that China was a threat to the security of the Indo-Pacific region. It was announced during the setting up of the AUKUS that the three countries would enhance their partnership in the fields of nuclear submarines, missiles and cyber security. In the first meeting, it was said that priority would be given to arming Australia with nuclear submarines. It was also agreed to provide eight nuclear submarines to the Australian Navy.
As nuclear submarines are time-consuming and expensive to build, there were also claims that the UK or the US would lease their nuclear submarines to Australia. However, there were strong reactions from France, Japan and China on the formation of AUKUS and the announcements made in this regard. Before the AUKUS announcement, discussions were underway between France and Australia regarding nuclear submarines. However, France said that Australia had betrayed them by participating in the AUKUS without giving them an idea of talks with the United States and the United Kingdom. The issue also led to tensions in relations between France and the United States.
Moreover, China had accused the AUKUS of symbolising the Cold War-era mentality, alleging that nuclear submarines in the Pacific region would provoke a new arms race. However, despite all these criticisms, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia decided to continue to cooperate on the issue of nuclear submarines. There were indications that the issue had taken a back seat in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict that began last year. But the US has taken the lead on the issue and assured that the nuclear submarine would be delivered to Australia within the scheduled time.
‘The US is firm on its decision to equip Australia with nuclear submarines to strengthen the military alliance of the AUKUS countries. Australia will get a fleet of nuclear submarines on schedule as per the agreement reached last year,’ US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced at a meeting in December. Defense Secretary Austin also urged Japan to join the military bloc.
There has been a reaction from China in the background of the meeting on Monday. ‘The US, UK and Australia should abandon their Cold War mentality and focus on cooperation for regional peace and stability,’ urged Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning.
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