Nuclear submarines for Australia are an extraordinarily expensive means of further subordinating the nation to foreign powers.
It is unfortunate that Australia is so determined to make itself an adversary of Beijing, but if we are to be adversaries, one expects that Beijing is grateful that our defence acquisition apparatus is so incompetent, able to dispose of vast sums of money while acquiring very little in the way of relevant warfighting capabilities.
That has become Washington's default strategy to acquire "allies," that is, instigate troubles around the targeted client state, create security dependency with sales of armament and security alliance. This kind of security embrace inevitably triggers backlash from the presumed adversary, and the cycle repeats. It's proven to be extremely difficult to get out of the embrace.
Of course, it's not all Washington's fault, the client state usually has its own faults and weakness.
India has been staying neural and non-aligned for decades, but has now gradually embedded into QUAD and Washington's security trap. It actually hasn't benefited much from this tilt so far and I doubted it'll improve its strategic plight in its neighborhood. If anything, it's getting worse. It could have stayed neural and leveraged that position to reap benefits. In contrast, Vietnam has done a marvelous job to keep equidistance between the US and China. The results have shown.
Two rather peculiar examples are Australia and Lithuania.
Lithuania is a tiny country with less than 3 million population, tens of thousands of miles away from China, and doesn't even have much trade with China. Yet it is challenging China on her most sensitive issue and core interest: Taiwan. And its foreign minister is visiting Washington now to "build an alliance against China."
What Lithuania has done is laughable, but it at least has some logic behind it. Maybe using China as a strawman enemy to curry favor with Washington. Since it is so far from China and doesn't have much connections with China. It figures that it wouldn't get hurt or lose much.
Australia, on the other hand, has become a benchmark of stupidity within some circle. It's benefited so enormously from China's growth and trade. It hasn't had experienced a recession over a quarter century largely because of China before the pandemic. All it does is to sell mostly dirt, that is, it doesn't even have to worry about selling or transferring technologies to the Chinese, unlike, say, the US or Germany. Not that Australia has much technology to sell to begin with. Besides, Australia is so far from China, there is no territorial disputes, no security threat, no historical animosity. In short, it's hard to think of another country that has benefited so much, so one-sided, so cleanly from the rise of China.
Yet Australia has successfully turned China into its public enemy #1. In return, Australia has probably gained the status of China's enemy in the long haul and there will probably be blowbacks in the years ahead. And now, Australia has started to feel some real security threat, such that it is on track to spend heavily on expensive imported toys and throw itself ever more tightly into Washington's security embrace.
It doesn't have to be that way, but it's getting harder to get out of that trap with every step it's taken.
