Image credit: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Indra Beaufort
September 22, 2021
The Biden administration just stalled China’s advance in the Indo-Pacific
Culture and tradition matter. The Anglosphere is a real grouping that comprises elements of trust going back decades and centuries. The agreement between the United States, Britain and Australia to build the latter nation eight nuclear-powered submarines effectively erects a core Anglo-Saxon military alliance fitted to a multicultural and globalized world. This is nothing less than the Atlantic Charter finally extended to the Pacific, eight decades later. Just as Britain has served since before World War II as a geopolitical platform for the United States close to mainland Europe, Australia, situated at the confluence of the Pacific and Indian oceans, will now do the same for the Indo-Pacific region close to mainland China.
Australia, by intensifying the military competition with China, could tee up a chain of as yet unforeseen events.
There are few things more hidden and precious in the U.S. defense arsenal than the production process for nuclear submarines. The United States shared those secrets only once before, with Britain in 1958, and is doing it again, for the second time, with Australia. This builds on the long-standing Five Eyes intelligence-sharing agreement among the three countries that also extends to the other two Anglo-Saxon nations, Canada and New Zealand, whose geographies and small populations make them geopolitically less relevant.
This new and de facto Anglo-Saxon alliance effectively joins NATO to the Indo-Pacific through Britain. In doing so, it alerts our other Pacific allies, notably Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and Singapore, that the United States is more capable than they previously assumed at keeping them from being “Finlandized” by China. This will further incentivize them to stand up to Beijing. The same goes for India, which suffered a geopolitical setback with the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. In one bold move, the Biden administration has stalled, perhaps even reversed, the seemingly inevitable and creeping geopolitical advance of China over the Indo-Pacific.
Read the full article and more from The Washington Post.
More from CNAS
-
Opportunities and Challenges for Trade Policy in the Digital Economy
Congressional Testimony
This hearing addresses digital trade, and I will focus my testimony on the national-security problems in this area posed by China – specifically, concerns about China’s open a...
By David Feith
-
Taking on China and Russia
Commentary
Today Washington has chosen, perhaps by default, to compete with—and if necessary, confront—both Russia and China simultaneously and indefinitely....
By Richard Fontaine
-
Crafting Transatlantic Responses to BRI, with Lisa Curtis, Jacob Stokes, Josh Fitt, Carisa Nietsche, and Nicholas Lokker
Podcast
Nine years after the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s flagship global infrastructure investment program is at a critical juncture. While many countries were ini...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Jim Townsend, Lisa Curtis, Carisa Nietsche, Joshua Fitt & Nicholas Lokker
-
To defeat autocracy, weaponize transparency
Democracies have a significant advantage in weaponizing transparency at scale to highlight autocratic activities that break international norms or inflict damage on local econ...
By Ryan Fedasiuk & Garrett Berntsen
