Battlefield just changed: Australia allows British submarines to park at Australian Base, Trouble for China
_Vinayak Barot
New Delhi: The government of Australia fuelled the problems of the Beijing government as it allowed the British submarines to park at Australian Naval bases.
Deployment of the British Nuclear Submarines at Australian bases sends out a loud and clear message to Beijing. The next time China try to bully smaller countries like Vietnam or the Philippines in the South China Sea or run bombers past the Taiwan Straits, China better think twice because the battlefield is just changed and someone just brought a machine gun to a pistol fight.
AUKUS is a trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, announced on 15 September 2021.
China’s relations with the UK and Australia have been disturbed in the last few months as China denied cooperating with these countries on certain subjects including detecting the origin of Coronavirus.
Apart from AUKUS – India, Japan, Australia, and the US are come together to counter the unpredicted activities of China in any region in the world including the South China Sea. The grouping of four democracies – India, Australia, the US, and Japan– is known as the quadrilateral security dialogue or QUAD which is specially designed and to tackle the challenges created by enemy nations.
Of the four Quad countries, The US and Australia are already military allies. Japan and the US are treaty allies wherein if Japan is attacked by China, then the US is treaty-bound to defend it.
There is still the issue of Japan’s pacifist constitution which will still hold back the full extent of military cooperation with the US and other strategic partners. But the only country which will be tooth and nail as opposed to any kind of military alliance with the US or any other member of the Quad will be India.
In the 25th edition of Exercise Malabar, which began in 1992 as a bilateral exercise, featuring the maritime forces of the US and India. In 2015, the entry of the Japanese navy made it a trilateral exercise. Last year, Australia also joined Malabar, making it a quadrilateral exercise.
The Malabar exercises now include both Australia and Japan, in the real world, it doesn’t translate into a brotherly code of defending each other when the enemy attacks.
If we just assume then, If China were to attack a Sri Lankan vessel or a Maldivian boat and if these countries turn towards big brother India, what would we do then? Are we better off standing up to the dragon alone? Wouldn’t India be better off if it were to have the backing of three other big military powers? If the Quad needs to live up to what it was founded for, then all four countries, and India in particular, needs to shed its reticence to deeper military cooperation.
