Boris Johnson’s military alliance in the Pacific
is reckless post-imperial nostalgia
Simon
Jenkins
The Aukus deal has enraged China and humiliated
France, when British diplomacy should be concentrated on Europe
Mon 20 Sep
2021 16.00 BST
The Aukus
defence deal between Britain, the US and Australia grows murkier by the day.
Essentially it is the outcome of an industrial dispute over who will build
eight submarines for the Australian military. Australia ordered £48bn-worth of
diesel-powered ones from France and then changed its mind, reneging on the
deal. It now wants nuclear-powered ones from the US and Britain.
Crewed
submarines are approaching obsolescence, near useless in an age of
“transparent” oceans and underwater drones. Like tanks, they drip with cost,
inefficiency and a craving to fight outdated wars. But defence contracts have a
corporate and political existence that transcends utility. If Australia
seriously thinks China is a threat, it might as well have some new gold-plated
weapons ready.
However,
this particular equipment contract appears to have morphed into a new military
alliance in the Asia-Pacific region. Johnson’s defence adviser, Stephen
Lovegrove, declares it to be “a profound strategic shift”. Unless Downing
Street is clueless, it was clearly intended to enrage China, which it duly has,
as well as humiliate France, which it also has.
Boris
Johnson protested that it was “not adversarial” toward China, but, when Theresa
May asked if he seriously envisaged war over Taiwan, he refused to say no. “The
United Kingdom remains determined to defend international law and that is … the
strong advice we would give to the government in Beijing.” Is he just playing
with words? In July he sent an aircraft carrier near a disputed region in the
South China Sea, prompting warnings from Beijing. This would be merely a mouse
trying to roar, were vast sums of public money not involved in sustaining
Johnson’s vanity.
Pompous
remarks made for political effect, like sudden alliances and needless snubs,
have consequences. Western defence interests born of the cold war refused to
let Nato redefine its purpose in the 1990s, with the demise of the Soviet
Union. Which is how Britain got sucked into Afghanistan and Iraq, ostensibly to
protect the US from the new threat of terrorism. High rhetoric and military
chest-beating likewise fuelled the preliminaries to the first world war.
Britain has
no conceivable reason for adopting an aggressive position in the Pacific. It is
all arcane post-imperial nostalgia. If the US is mad enough to return to war in
south-east Asia over Taiwan, it is nothing to do with Britain, any more than
Vietnam was. France, too, claims concern for its “citizens” in the Pacific.
Europe’s second-rank states seem unable ever to let go of their empires.
China’s emergence
as a world economic power in the past quarter-century has been a
politico-economic miracle. It was achieved by marrying the disciplines of
capitalism to those of dictatorship. The west may not like some of its
manifestations and is free to say so. They are not the west’s business. China
does not fall under the west’s sovereignty.
With its
newly powerful status, China has embraced military aggrandisement, sensitivity
to criticism and a regional sphere of influence, all syndromes that should be
familiar to the US. Time alone will tell where this leads. But for the west now
to open a cold war with China must be beyond stupid, and for Britain especially
fatuous.
So-called
western diplomacy is currently a disaster area. It has failed to adjust to
post-communist Russia, and its handling of the Muslim world has been ham-fisted
and tragic. In Afghanistan the most expensive armies in the world have been
sent packing by a fistful of AK-47s.
It is half
a century since Harold Wilson formally withdrew Britain from “east of Suez”.
Johnson clearly aches to return, to prove that he can somehow punch above his
weight and put Britain back on the world stage after Brexit. Foreign policy so
vacuously formulated is reckless. British diplomacy should now be concentrated
on Europe, overwhelmingly so. One thing Brexit did not alter was geography.
Simon
Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
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