By Athena Papakosta

The president of the United States, Joe Bidenthe Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak and the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese met at the naval base in San Diego, California to finalize the tripartite security partnership under the title AUKUS (from the initials of the three countries).

It was the first live meeting of the three powers since the fall of 2021 when this strategic alliance was announced.

The three leaders of these three English-speaking countries announced a big one first generation submarine building program which includes the sale to Australia of three US Virginia-class nuclear powered submarines over the next decade with the option of acquiring an additional two.

In any case, with AUKUS, Canberra was originally intended to acquire nuclear-powered submarines from the United States of America. The deal, in fact, had angered France from the start after it saw its own agreement with Australia in 2016 to build a dozen conventional submarines blown up and at least 35 billion euros thrown into the wastebasket.

The American president himself repeated several times that these nuclear-powered submarines do not constitute nuclear weapons. For his part, the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, emphasized that this agreement “represents the largest investment in the country’s defense capability that has ever been made”.

The new generation of submarines will be built in the UK and Australia based on British design, US technology and support. It is the first time in 65 years and only the second time in history that the United States has shared nuclear propulsion technology.

In their joint statement the three leaders emphasized that their countries have worked for decades to maintain peace, stability and prosperity in the entire world including the Indo-Pacific region. As they said, “the steps we are announcing will help us strengthen these mutually beneficial goals in the coming decades.”

But China has a different view. From the outset, Beijing has talked about circumventing nuclear disarmament agreements, with Chinese President Xi Jinping stressing that he will not tolerate preaching from other countries. While, just a week ago, the spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Mao Ning, reiterated China’s position that the creation of this pact undermines stability in the region, calling on all three countries to abandon the Cold War mentality.

The creation of AUKUS was widely interpreted as an attempt to stem China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific with Australia now clearly placed under American influence at this point on the map.

For his part, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, yesterday played down the … rivalry with China saying that “we do not see what we are doing as a challenge to anybody” avoiding adding fuel to the fire while adding that he expects to talk soon with his Chinese counterpart.