Submarine deal: the West stands in its own way

Now the cards are being reshuffled in the Asia-Pacific region.

The security pact that the United States made with Australia and the United Kingdom is of enormous strategic importance - and not just because it includes the transfer of nuclear technology to Australia, which will have nuclear-powered submarines in a few years' time.

The pact is the clearest security and military response to date to the rise and aggressive territorial expansionism of China, which countries in the region feel threatened by.

In contrast to Obama with his “turn to Asia” around ten years ago, his successor in the presidential office has raised the dispute with China to a new level politically and militarily the end. This is a strong signal, even if it cannot be ruled out that it has a voltage-amplifying effect.

The Tripartite Pact has many significant aspects.

One of them is the time of its announcement.

It has only been a month since the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, the Taliban returned to power and the chaos at Kabul airport made many join in the song of the failure of the West.

The question was raised everywhere whether partners and allies could still rely on America.

Even at the moment of the bitter Afghan final for the West, that was an exaggeration.

Biden's priorities

Because strategically Afghanistan was a sideline, very different from Asia-Pacific and Europe. Since taking office, President Biden has made it clear again and again that his priorities are the overhaul of his own country and competition with the autocracies, especially China. He wants to lead this competition with like-minded people, i.e. with alliances - and win. He has now concluded such an alliance, even if it is an "old" alliance. However, it has a price.

Another “old” ally, America's oldest, is outraged by the arms policy core of the agreement.

France had already signed a contract with Australia to build conventionally powered submarines;

this contract was quickly declared invalid because Australia is now to receive nuclear-powered American submarines and the country is closely linked to the United States in terms of security policy.

Melodramatic reactions from Paris

France, which has itself signed a security partnership with Australia, feels snubbed; it sees its interests disregarded and in Biden not the great alliance loyalist that he claims to be. It even called back its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra. This is unprecedented (and somewhat melodramatic) among “allies”. Yet it shows the level of annoyance. The agreement divides the West. So the broad front against China that Biden is striving for does not materialize. Was that factored in?

In Paris, and not only there, people remember how Biden gave up his resistance to Nord Stream 2, which Germany wanted to hold on to under all circumstances despite legitimate objections.

But it was “only” about Russia, now it is about

question of the first half of the 21st century.

But that doesn't change the fact that France feels like a second or third class ally.

In response, the French leadership is likely to push the “strategic autonomy of Europe” even more.

That puts Germany, where the desire for military autonomy is not nearly as pronounced, into a mess.

Will Berlin turn around?

But even so, Germany and the EU will have to make a decision at some point. It takes more than honest confessions of partnership with regional actors. Nor will it be enough to send a frigate on a reconnaissance voyage into the Indo-Pacific. The act has symbolic value, but it is limited: the leadership in Beijing is not really impressed by it, nor is the feeling of threat reduced in Australia, for example. Only America, a security reinsurer, can do that. He has drawn in military efforts for regional cooperation and the defense against China that have not existed before. It shouldn't have been the last.

So what will Germany, the Europeans and other Western countries do?

You see in China a competitor and also a rival who, that is the very least, is striving for global economic dominance and on whose economic dynamics they are increasingly dependent.

They do not seek confrontation, they do not want to form blocks.

But insisting (or hoping) that China will fit into a “rule-based order” will not be enough when “hard power” facts are created around regional security.

The future federal government should expect that Biden will contact her about China.