This is a poor take by Paul Begly.
He neglects to consider that the world is uneven. Some countries have been in this new pardigm of great power/neo-monarch rivalry for a long time. I think a few African and Asian countries would be knowingly chuckling at the ‘western’ worlds late coming to this party.
Australia and the UK haven’t been attacked or lashed out at yet. This is important. That means we are still in the old paradigm, we cannot follow Carney in the way that makes natural sense, because if we do, we piss off our erstwhile great power ally. I use great power here instead neo-monarchy for a reason.
To broadly explain the difference. If Trump stays, or has an annointed transfer of power, US is more like a neo-monarchy state. If the loosely-democratic power structures of the US state as we have until recently recognised them reassert themselves and transfer of power is to a non-trump-alligned President, then the US is still a great power.
So applying a little game theory, heres the rub for the UK and Australia.
If we walk away from the US, on the basis of following along with Canada and European states, we also betray the alliance first in the eyes of those in the US who also aren’t alligned with Trump. We will kill the alliance, not the Republican Party, that makes it really difficult to ease into a more comfortable partnership later. It lends the question in the US, if Australia was willing to walk away over threats to Greenland (for example), then was that alliance ever really very strong?
So if we move away from the alliance, it has to be because we’ve been pushed in a meaningful way. A threat against Greenland is probably not a good enough reason for us to pull back in the eyes of the broader US governing and defence class.
The most we can do is subtly set ourselves up to part ways at a later date, (if that moment ever comes), which the AUKUS pact already has a pathway for with the UK submarine program.
Maybe if the Virginias deliveries end up getting cancelled we’ll have saved some money to put into the actual submarine program with the UK. Heres hoping Eldridge Colby does just that sooner rather than later :p ^he won’t, nobody in the US says no to free money^
I’m also not sure tying the grand strategy of geopolitics with welfare benefits really worked in this article. It felt a bit apples and oranges. I think its just not a good enough link was drawn in the text maybe.
One more thing, hooli dooli, Canada is estimated to have a 41 million population?? They really are adding millions of people very quickly! I don’t know much about Canada and why this is. Be interested in why the absolute tear in population growth these last few years, ~2-3% each year.
prex@aussie.zone 1 week ago
TBF it was Morrison who came up with AUKUS