December 7, 2021 

Resistance is the antidote to injustice and tragedy. Today when an accident or miscalculation in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, the Black and Baltic Seas, or along the Ukrainian-Russian boarder could trigger great power and potentially nuclear war, the insanity of creating yet another nuclear alliance – AUKUS – must be opposed and overturned. 

At a time when the climate crisis and pandemic restrictions extinguish the hope and thus the lives of young people, it is past time to stop diverting limited national and international resources on military alliances and weapons systems that hasten the march world war, spur nuclear weapons proliferation, and undermine efforts to stanch the climate emergency and pandemics. 

Most immediately, the AUKUS alliance, in addition to QUAD, further undermines the possibility of U.S.-Chinese cooperation that is essential if urgent existential threats are to be stanched. The provision of nuclear powered submarines and their nuclear weapons-grade highly enriched uranium to Australia further undermines the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. And in frightening intimations of what may lie ahead, AUKUS is leading militarists in Japan and Australia to ask why they can’t have nuclear submarines, HUE, and related technologies. 

In the newly conceived Indo-Pacific region, the source of tensions is the inability of traditional powers and alliances to adapt to the rise of a regional economic, military, and technological Asian superpower – China. Beijing had little or no input in determining the so-called “rules-based order” and is now unsurprisingly disturbing the hegemonic disorder. Predictably, China is pressing to re-write some of those rules. 

Unlike the 19th century, China is not about to be bludgeoned into submission. AUKUS and related anti-China alliances are inherently counter-productive, spurring the new Cold War and increasing the dangers of disastrous war. 

Instead of deepening the Thucydides Trap and engaging in a new generation of futile, potentially omnicidal arms races and attempts to reinforce or gain regional hegemony, the U.S., Australia, Britain, Japan, and other nations can and should engage China in common security and human security diplomacy. 

Despite our differences, priority should be given to meeting China halfway. Among the life-affirming alternatives that can and should be pursued are: 

• Abandon the AUKUS alliance and submarine deal. The twenty year submarine production & deployment schedule is absurd and primarily a financial windfall for military-industrial complexes. With a twenty-year timeline, China will surely counter these deployments.
• Encourage negotiation of a South China/West Philippine and East Chia Sea codes of conduct with joint development of the sea’s resources. 

• Focus on collaborations to reverse the climate emergency and stanch the current and future pandemics. 
• Halt the undermining of the One China agreements and arms sales to Taiwan, while encouraging Taiwan’s government to reengage in negotiations with Beijing to end China’s civil war.
• Press the United States adopt a no first use doctrine and to halt its destabilizing deployments of standoff cruise missiles and first strike related “missile defenses.”
• Establish military-to military dialogs to encourage trust building and means for crisis management. 

Once again it is time to protest and survive!