AUKUS – A new war pact between imperial powerhouses of Capital

At the inauguration of the new American president, the Democrat Joe Biden, we wrote in our press that very little would change in foreign policy compared to the Republican Trump and his motto “America First”. Well, in recent days we have had a new blatant confirmation of this.

Biden announced a new strategic, military and security alliance with the United Kingdom and Australia in the Indo-Pacific area. The new pact, called Aukus, aims at a greater exchange and integration of defense capabilities and information and to provide Australia with a substantial fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, openly in anti-Chinese function.

Until now, the technology necessary for the construction of nuclear submarines was shared only between USA and UK and this gives the measure of the seriousness and strategic importance of the agreement.

China responded immediately denouncing the agreement as “extremely irresponsible”: “Cooperation between the United States, Britain and Australia on nuclear submarines seriously affects regional peace and stability, intensifies the arms race and undermines international efforts for nuclear non-proliferation”. Clear words that show once again that Beijing is not willing to give up its ambitions in the Pacific and that Washington and its allies are willing to do anything to counter them.

But the agreement also has heavy repercussions on Europe, and France in particular. Australia in fact in 2016 had signed the “contract of the century” with Naval Group, a French industrial group 62% owned by the State and 35% by Thalès, for the supply of 12 diesel-electric propulsion submarines for an amount of 32 billion euros, later revalued to as much as 56. The submarines would be built by 1,800 workers in shipyards in Australia.

The Aukus pact implied the immediate Australian cancellation of the contract with France. Obviously Paris took it badly: not only was its diplomacy not invited or consulted for the agreement but it suffered a very serious damage to its military industry. The Minister of Foreign Affairs spoke of a “stab in the back” while the Minister of Defense said: “in geopolitics and defense policy this decision is serious and clearly shows how the United States treats its allies”.

But the entire European Union has felt “betrayed”, kept in the dark just as it was about to present its own plan of intervention in the Pacific area: US diplomacy has elaborated the new pact without mentioning it to the representatives of European capitalists, not caring about their clamors. It’s the second time in a few weeks, after the way of the hasty flight from Afghanistan, that Washington shows it doesn’t take into account the interests of the European bourgeoisie when it comes to defend its own. This is how it goes in relations between thieves.

The French rooster, pricked by the right-wingers, has recalled the ambassadors from Washington and Canberra “for consultation”, but, strangely enough, not from London. Paris thus seems to want to shift the major responsibility to Australia.

European governments sympathize with Paris, recall the billions they pay to NATO and complain about US “selfishness”. Aware that they cannot expect Washington to defend the interests of their capitalists, they withdraw the question of common European defense from the drawer. A pious illusion! A European army presupposes a political unity that bourgeois Europe will never achieve. In Europe, each State goes its own way and when the time comes for general war, it will have to side with one or the other of the two great imperialisms, trying to sell the blood of its proletarians in arms to the highest bidder.

The proletariat will have only one way to save itself from a new useless slaughter on the lands and on the seas, to turn the guns against its own brigand bourgeoisie, to oppose the war between States to the war between classes!