Prime Minister of Australia Anthony Albanese turns down invitation to attend NATO summit in Washington amid escalating regional tension
Straight from the article (written by James Curran, one of Australia's top analysts), AUKUS:
- "locked the country into American grand strategy and war fighting for Asia with slim opportunities to express misgivings or make an acceptable or dignified exit"
- committed Australia "to join the US in fighting an Asian war if that should eventuate between China and the US"
- Granted the US "a critical maritime base in Western Australia"
- Makes Australia face the "genuine risk that [it] could be left with no submarine capability at all by the end of the 2030s"
- Sends $5 billion to Britain to "help revive [their] ailing submarine industry" and $6.4 billion to the US to help them "speed up [their] production of US Virginia-class submarines"
So to sum up, with AUKUS Australia sends an enormous amount of money to the UK and the US, in exchange of which it loses sovereignty to the US over one of its critical maritime bases, locks itself into a potential war with China and gets no submarine...
As one expert comments in the article: "The whole thing is a cruel joke. All we will get are American Virginia and British Astutes [submarines] running through Western Australia... All the US and the UK want is a new submarine base in Western Australia. We'll be left with no sovereign submarine capability, and we'll have spent billions on their submarine industrial base."
