Australia joins US arms race with China

San Diego: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Australia AUKUS Agreement Announced Tuesday With US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

But like it or not, Australia has entered a new Cold War arms race with the West and China.

US officials readily acknowledge that tensions with Beijing are higher than in years, and recent events. chinese spy balloon President Xi Jinping’s own army “The Great Wall of Steel” – It has only heightened concern about the looming threat posed by this country.

Democrats and Republicans rarely agree in a deeply divided Congress, but both sides of politics have consistently taken tougher stances when it comes to countering China’s rise. There’s even a joke on Capitol Hill that if you want , you’re likely crossing the line by trying to figure out how to tie it to China’s economic and military might.

Indeed, as the increasingly hawkish Biden proclaimed in his statement, State of the Union address “Let’s be clear, winning the race with China should bring us all together,” he said last month.

In that context, AUKUS may represent “the single greatest leap” in Australia’s defense capabilities, but in the President’s words, “a It is also an inflection point in history where efforts affect the country’s prospects for peace in the decades to come”.

Loading

For Australia, the hard work begins now. On the positive side, within the next decade she will have three Virginia-class nuclear submarines followed by eight newly developed her AUKUS submarines, effectively making her the most powerful navy in the world. will have one of her.

But being a bigger player on the world stage is also a sight to behold Costs up to $368 billion By 2055, much of it will be used to scale up the U.S. industrial shipbuilding base, enabling the construction of more Virginia-class submarines to supplement the submarines sold to Australia. of course, US Congress approved.

China, on the other hand, was angry with AUKUS, accusing the countries concerned of “going a wrong and dangerous path for their own geopolitical self-interest.”