AUKUS pact is a win-win situation for India, say experts

Australia has emerged as the real challenger to the Chinese aggression in the region, now backed by a ‘Quad alliance’ and the ‘AUKUS’ defence pact. China has already sent warning signals accusing the West of a cold war mentality and ideological prejudices. Under these circumstances, experts feel that AUKUS is a win-win situation for India, writes ETV Bharat's Senior Correspondent Chandrakala Choudhury.

New Delhi: The real strategic game is being played to contain China with the ‘Quad’ security alliance or for that matter the new defence pact among the U.S, Australia and U.K, which will enable Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines for the first time using technology provided by the United States. Australia has emerged as the real challenger to the Chinese aggression in the region, now backed by a ‘Quad alliance’ and the ‘AUKUS’ defence pact. China has already sent warning signals accusing the West of a cold war mentality and ideological prejudices.

India has so far, kept silent on the new strategic alliance. Now the question is what the new AUKUS alliance means for India and what implication it would have for the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific region. An expert says that it is a win-win situation for India because since India is not near the South China Sea, it could not directly intervene. But Australia, U.S and the U.K having a strategic interest can actively try to control the Chinese hegemonic power in the region.

India’s Former ambassador Jitendra Tripathi said that what India could not do directly is being done by the UK, US and Australia. Tripathi claims that the AUKUS pact has sort of reduced the importance of ‘Quad’. He pointed out that two of the four members of the Quad are members of AUKUS. Now the problem is that what Japan also could not do effectively, is being done by the new strategic alliance-AUKUS, he said.

“Now it seems that America’s total focus is on the South China Sea as the U.S has stated earlier that one of the reasons of their exit from Afghanistan is to increase focus on the South China Sea or Indo-Pacific. That means America’s focus on Afghanistan has reduced, which again is a growing concern for India”, Tripathi underlined.

The AUKUS pact will also cover Artificial intelligence, cyber and quantum technologies- the biggest defence partnership among the countries in decades. The expert says that though India is not a member of AUKUS, containment of China is done by the members of AUKUS, which is to the benefit of India.

Notably, India faces an unresolved border issue with China and the 18-month long military standoff between the two sides in eastern Ladakh is yet to be resolved.

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Ambassador Tripathi believes that in the upcoming Quad summit to be held in Washington D.C on September 24, it is expected that US President Biden and the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison will apprise the other two members of Quad on the importance of AUKUS. He pointed out that globally, there will be major repercussions in Europe. France has already recalled the envoys from the US and Australia. Australia, on the other hand, has revealed that it has informed India of its pulling out from the French contract for the supply of submarines.

France is currently opposing U.S and Australia and it has been almost isolated in Europe because Germany, has not even uttered a single word except that they are ‘watching' the situation. Germany is not reacting because it will shortly go into elections. Other stakeholders are not that big to matter. Therefore, France was stabbed in the back and is appearing isolated and alone on the world stage, he stated.

Speaking to ETV Bharat, Harsh V Pant, a Professor of International Relations with King's India Institute and also the Head of the Strategic Studies Programme at New Delhi based Observer Research Foundation said, “The AUKUS pact in some ways compliments the efforts of the ‘Quad’ member states in forging new security architecture in the Indo-Pacific".

"Indo-Pacific is a region where there is a great degree of strategic instability and there are no institutional frameworks to manage the instability. So the countries are finding new innovative ways of managing the transition and the AUKUS- the trilateral between the US, UK and Australia is one the ways as is the ‘Quadrilateral’. It shows that America is willing to empower its regional allies and partners by giving them sensitive critical technologies”, said the expert.

“Any technology that helps in generating greater strategic stability is good for India and there is nothing inherently problematic in the AUKUS pact for India”, he added.

He says that the U.S is willing to engage with regional powers like Australia, U.K is looking at Indo-Pacific as its most important theatre of operation and Australia is looking at a very distinct relationship with China today. “For the three countries, it makes sense to cooperate on critical technologies but beyond that, it sends out a message to China that countries in the region are now willing to take the initiative in shaping the regional security architecture”, he explained.

What is AUKUS?
It is the biggest security arrangement between the US, UK and Australia since World War II. The pact will focus on military capability and a separate intelligence-sharing alliance that includes New Zealand and Canada. Australian submarines project involves sharing of cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum and other sea technologies.

The announcement was made days ahead of the Quad in-person summit to be held in Washington DC on September 24 to be attended by the quad leaders of India, Australia, Japan and the U.S.

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