The strategic risks unleashed by the Sept. 15 announcement of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States agreement, known as AUKUS, will continue to play out for some time. The one—and only—purpose of the AUKUS agreement, to include the submarine deal, is to surround China militarily as part of a containment strategy, which brings with it the risk of nuclear war.
BBC reported comments from an unidentified North Korean Foreign Ministry official who said that “These are extremely undesirable and dangerous acts which will upset the strategic balance in the Asia-Pacific region and trigger off a chain of nuclear arms race.” The official further stated that the North was closely examining the deal and would proceed accordingly if it has “even a little adverse impact on the security of our country.”
Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, in a Sept. 18 op-ed column posted in RT, called the submarine deal that is part of AUKUS “a story of geopolitically-driven military procurement gone mad.” Ritter attributed Australia’s pursuit to “domestic politics projected onto a theoretical geopolitical map of the U.S.’ making.”
