 There is a new alliance in town. The Australia-UK-US alliance, which was announced a few days ago, has led to a lot of discussions. France is really pissed because of commercial reasons. China has said that it marks a return to the Cold War mentality. And what about India? What about the European Union? A lot of questions ahead. In this episode of Mapping Fault Lines, we'll be discussing all of that. We are joined by Prabir Prakash. Prabir, thank you so much for joining us. So, like I said, a lot of questions being raised around this new alliance. It comes just a few days before the Quad Summit, the physical meeting of the Quad leaders, is set to take place. I think one of the most important questions that people have right now is, why is this agreement being done right now specifically focusing in this region? There's Australia, the Indo-Pacific, the South China Sea. We've talked about all these regions in the past. So, what is the strategic imperative, especially of the US and the UK, in forging this alliance? Well, you know, it is also what has been called as a segue from NATO into the much more closer alliance of the Five Eyes, in which essentially it's UK, US, and Australia, Canada. New Zealand is not willing to participate as of now in any of this. So, if we look at this, this seems to be coming together of essentially Anglo-US access and trying to make this as the core of what would be the future of US politics globally. In that sense, they are also discounting their relationship with France and European Union. And it seems to be that if they go, what would be called, you know, switch to Asia as their new area of contention with China, of course, being the key opponent, then it seems that they think Australia is more important because they don't seem to have anybody else except Japan in this part of the world. Now, will Japan be willing to enter into a militaristic competition with China? A very open question because it's very, very strong anti-nuclear, anti-war lobby in Japan still. They haven't forgotten the atomic bombs dropped on Japan itself. So, given that this seems to be an attempt to enter Southeast Asia with the help of India on one hand and of course, Australia on the other, this seems to be more that attempt. And of course, UK being willing to play its fast imperial role, though nobody's asking them exactly what we saw in Afghanistan, for instance, when the United States decided to quit. They didn't really concern to UK. But UK being out of the European Union at the moment, I think is wanting in some sense to regain its salient globally. And therefore, US is its partnership with US seems to be what it is looking for. For Australia, I find it very difficult to understand why nuclear submarines are something they are so interested in because it is not a defensive force. It is really an attack force because it can stay submerged, go large distances and attack from different parts of the sea, of the oceans. And therefore, in terms of defensive warfare, its value is limited. And Australia, if it wants to play an imperial role, it is really going to be very difficult. It's a small country, not such a big economy is all of that. So, this is something which I'm not able to understand at the moment. What is Australia stake? It's becoming a very junior partner, which essentially of a US enterprise to contain China and looking at Southeast Asia, it's not a history that Australia can be very proud of. So, there is that tension with Southeast Asia itself. They look upon Australia as a new colonial power in cahoots with other colonial powers or ex-colonial powers. And I don't think that relationship thinking that a kind of white imperial colonial axis, which is UK, US and Australia is going to play well in Asia. Absolutely Prabir. Of course, like we said, most analysts, most people for that matter, including that the real target here is definitely China. So, the key question here is that how is this alliance sort of expected to work with, say, the Quad in trying to corner China because we have seen freedom of navigation operations, what they call phonops in the South China Sea. We have seen naval exercises between some of these countries and this general alliance that is being built. So, is the aim to sort of in some way encircle China with the coalition of the willing, so to speak? You know, how do you encircle Eurasia from the oceans has always been a question that we have asked that if you look at the global economy, which is in the long term the driver of geo-strategies. In that case, the Eurasian land mass is integrating economically, not South Asia because of course we have the mountain chain. So, we stand a little isolated from the larger Eurasian land mass. And we have of course Pakistan and Afghanistan on the northern borders, which doesn't make it very easy for us to integrate. And the eastern part of it is also not very easy for us. But leaving out South Asia, the rest of the Eurasian land mass seems to be economically coming together. Of course, the Belt Road Initiative is a part of that. But this is a long term historical axis which existed. It's not something which is recent. And if you look at the trade relationship that China has, for example, with most of this country, you will see their major trading partner is increasingly becoming China and not US, which it is what it was about 50 years back. So, given that, how do military contain China and think that it will convert itself into a geo-strategic advantage when the economy itself is not on your side? So, if you look at Southeast Asia, which seems to be the one mainly in play, because East Asia has South Korea, United States, military distilled controls. You have Japan, where again, the preeminent military power is really the United States. And of course, you have Taiwan on which it still, even the United States, recognizes the one China policy that China has. US recognizes that officially, but at the same time, it plays football militarily with Taiwan. We know that. Given all of this, Southeast Asia with the help of Australia and UK. UK is really a distant power. How do they think they can really get their foot in over there? Their thinking seems to be that the total states who have dispute over South China Sea, they will side with Australia and United States against China when their economic interests lie elsewhere. And that economic interest is already visible. Even Australia's largest trading partner is China. So, how do we explain this thinking that militarily they will be able to reverse what seems to be greater economic integration of the Eurasian economies, particularly Southeast Asia, China and even Australia itself? So, I think that is the big question. And can India falling on a failing economic military power like United Kingdom and of course the United States, which is no longer a manufacturing power except for arms and baby aircraft where also they have run into problems. Can that be a counterbalance because of its advance in intellectual property? It's advance in software and other soft knowledge-based subjects where they still have an economic advantage. Can that offset the physical goods production where China is by far the largest producer? And India is no longer even being able to compete on a lot of these issues, particularly when it comes to for instance semiconductor equipment where China is becoming once again one of the foremost leaders, not in chips, not in software, but certainly in essentially equipment, electronic equipment. So, I think given all of this, I'm actually a little lost to understand what Australia's take in this encirclement of China as you said, which seems to be the major thrust and how do they think it will play for themselves in Southeast Asia? So Prabir, finally a quick question about Europe also. We know that France very angry as withdrawn its envoys from the United States and Australia, interesting since France is considered to be the oldest ally of the US. But this also marks a clear exclusion of not only France but also the European powers from this kind of an alliance. So how do we see this in the context of there also being discussions about how China and Russia for instance are approaching Europe? You know, if we look at the NATO itself, there has been a question mark because the NATO leadership is very clearly pro-US and very strongly anti-China and anti-Russia. There is a play with NATO and European Union on Ukraine, the Baltic states on the borders of Russia, which targets Russia and containment of Russia. Now this has been what the European Union and the NATO has been playing from the beginning. It's not a China-centered issue as much as a Russia-centered issue. Now if they segue to China as the main enemy, what happens on the Russian front? We don't know what their plans are. But obviously the European Union state and the European Union countries like Germany, France, their state in NATO will reduce if Russia is the main enemy for them. This is what they have been pushing the European countries to. I mean the United States has been pushing the European countries to while they themselves look upon the main state being China and therefore in the Pacific as they call it. Now in this particular case of course is a huge economic issue that they are going to cancel a French order on submarines, the nuclear submarines are not what they had ordered, Australia had ordered diesel-based submarines and that meant changing the submarines that French were offering them because French used this submarines as nuclear submarines and that is what was also taking the time. And here is the issue therefore for France, the huge economic loss and they don't seem to have been informed. So there is a claim that they were informed little while before this agreement was signed. So here they were selling 12 submarines to Australia. Suddenly they find that they have been thrown out quite brusquely without any information by another ally who has stepped into it and actually Australia is going to pay much more. Now the other part of it which already has been planned is if France was selling the submarines and Australia said we want nuclear submarines not busy set submarines, actually it would be easier for France to do but also they use low enriched uranium which doesn't come under the kind of strict controls that the American submarines will because they use high enriched uranium which is almost bomb level, a 60% enrichment which means it has to go to 90% enrichment in order to make it into bomb and these are far more stringent in terms of the regulations requirements that are there. US is willing to relax all of that but they are IEA guidelines on this and they do fall found of a lot of the non-proliferation issues. So apart from the French being completely blindsided by this agreement and what it means for the European Union and NATO and also the fact that European Union countries are beginning to realize that as a part of this competition between China, Russia and the United States, their economic interests do not lie with either US or UK which now is willing to enter the fray or Australia which is a bit player in all of this and their much larger economic interests lies really with the duration land mass as we have been discussing. So what do they do? Their defence terms they are tied up completely in the United States, their militaries are tied up with the United States, what do they do? I think this is the big existential question for all the European countries particularly for the big ones like France and Germany. Thank you so much Prabir for talking to us. That's all we have time for today, we will be following these issues in the coming weeks as well. Until then keep watching NewsClick.