Daily Times

The South China Sea has been an ongoing maritime dispute for over six decades. A ship here, a ship there, the remote warzone is always a ticking time bomb testing waters, literally.

Through the AUKUS agreement, the US, UK, and Australia have made clear their intentions to block China. For long, the UK and the US have seen a ‘hidden’ threat from China, but it is Australia, that has made an entrance into the group.. The country has for long balanced between Washington and Beijing, but it is the decisive moves that set forward its capitalist agenda.

Australian PM Scott Morrison has always kept his partnerships non-partisan, and more diplomatic, with the US. Not only did he keep a working relationship with President Trump, but he is also working to keep a functioning one with President Biden. Under the deal, the UK and US will help add nuclear ships to their fleet by 2040. Furthermore, soldiers would be deployed to keep a global territory marked by the warships. Their importance would be beneficial, to those, who are not in the Agreement, and not necessarily Australia.

Its navy is an important player in that. It has one of the most significant naval fleets in the world. The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) fleet is made up of 43 commissioned warships as of April 2021. It has 1,841 deployed troops and is currently spending 44.6 billion dollars for the 2021-2022 fiscal year. It is important to note that this spending is equivalent to the maintenance of a major 3rd world country war. Thereby, a difficult task to maintain and keep surveillance on, throughout the next 20 years or so.

The most memorable and headline-making stories in the past were the great amounts of defence equipment that Pakistan acquired from the United States.

Following the AUKUS agreement, many nations in the EU have seen their place in the alliance in question. The decades-old position as a wealthy opportunist in the alliance is quietly fading away, in the eyes of other world powers.

The member states are no doubt an essential being in our global community. The EU’s very advent is a symbol of hope and liberation while maintaining unity between 27+ cultures, languages, and traditions, that are so entwined within each other, that they can’t live without each other’s support. One nation is a roadblock. 27 nations are a testament. But as far as their influence is concerned, it is limited to aid, and not exactly, a major defender of the Pacific Islands. This all, not to be confused with its powerful diplomatic influence in the east, and steps it has taken such as sanctions on China and its entities.

This divorce from tradition is a sense of despair for the EU. But it’s worth noting that Australia’s involvement is no gift to the people either, as the Chair of the ANU’s security division puts it. Rory Medcalf says, ” Australia signaling that we don’t see a way back in the China relationship, that the best we can hope for is competitive coexistence”. In his piece, Senator Gareth Evans, notes, “Military capability is just one among many instruments of an effective security policy”. According to a guide by the Australian Government, ” Australia’s National Security Strategy encourages agencies to develop innovative and effective approaches to how they use information and engage with partners”. And while this may be permission to interact with other industries for security purposes, it focuses primarily on the effort to protect widespread interests.

Previously, Australia expanded its economy and traded goods worth more than $74 billion. Even Economists see this as an opportunity for Australia to seize its economy and focus on its welfare ideologies.

Since the ’60s, countries like Pakistan have also shown great interest in aspiring defence capabilities and has made role models, whether in or outside of the continent. Perhaps, the most memorable and headline-making stories in the past were the great amounts of defence equipment that Pakistan acquired from the United States.

Perhaps, Australia isn’t stuck in the present. It’s thriving in the future. Maybe its steps are not profitable or conservatively accepting. But it’s for the future of Australia, and a guarantee that our world will not go back to conquests, many of which took place centuries ago. After all, cavemen used to exist in the past. They do not exist now.

The writer is a freelance columnist.