Submarine crisis: the Aukus pact makes you uncomfortable the partners of the United States in Asia

To analyse.New step for Washington in its open confrontation strategy with China, the Trilateral Pact Aukus-Australia, United Kingdom, United States-, accompanied by the purchase by Canberra of US nuclear propulsion submarines,'comfortable its allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific Region.For this pact to be, as Washington wishes, the initiation of a strategic realignment in its favor in a part of the world where its world leadership is played out, the objectives must be shared.However, they are only up to a certain point.

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In Asia-Pacific, the aggressive expansionism of China certainly arouses unifying concern.And any confirmation of American engagement in the region is welcome.Appeal to rallying, the Aukus pact is also an indication that the United States expects its allies or partners whether they are more active to counter Chinese hegemonic ambitions.In addition to the acceleration of the arms race that it entails is added an even more worrying risk for the countries of the region: having to depart from "neutrality", displayed or halftone, which they adopted inChina rivalry - United States.Praised in Manila, Taipei and Tokyo, Aukus arouses apprehensions elsewhere.

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Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, visiting Washington as part of the first face-to-face meeting of quad (quadrilateral security dialogue, which brings together Australia, the United States, India and Japan), welcomed the "significant advance for the stability of the Indo-Pacific Region" that Akus would represent.The "Chinese threat", real or not, but felt as such in Japan, is, for the liberal democratic party in power, an argument legitimizing its ambition to revise the pacifist constitution in order to allow the archipelago to participate in actionsof collective defense, or even to carry out preventive strikes.

Equidistant

In a stable environment, it would be difficult for the conservative camp to go against the pacifist doctrine, to which the majority of Japanese is favorable.The repeated incursions of the Chinese Navy in Japanese territorial waters and legal battles on the sovereignty of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea serve it by nourishing this feeling of threat."Any arrangement that stems the aggressive behavior of China is welcome in Japan," said Masayuki Tadokoro, political scientist at Keio University in Tokyo.

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