AUKUS fallout misses the silent spearhead lurking beneath

Beijing will move quickly to exploit fissures in the U.S. alliance network

Alexander Neill

September 17, 2021 05:00 JST

Scott Morrison, center, appears on stage with video links to Boris Johnson, left, and Joe Biden at Parliament House in Canberra on Sept. 16: AUKUS is intended to be a counterweight to China's burgeoning military expansion. © AAP Image/AP

Alexander Neill runs a strategic advisory consultancy in Singapore, with 20 years of experience focusing on Indo-Pacific security and geopolitics.

Yet another acronym surfaced in the alphabet soup bowl of defense alignments in the Indo-Pacific yesterday with the joint creation of an enhanced trilateral security partnership called AUKUS.