AUKUS and other military alliances involving the United States are already having a deterrent effect on China, Kevin Rudd has told a conference in Washington, DC, Crikey reports.
The Australian ambassador to the US gave a speech on Tuesday to the Future Security Forum on the progress of the submarine pact and afterwards answered questions from audience members.
Responding to a question about whether AUKUS has already led to a change in Chinese tactics or thinking, Rudd said he’d like to respond as an “individual China analyst” rather than in his official capacity as ambassador.
“I think it is relatively clear that the combination of a series of changing regional geopolitical arrangements is having a galvanising effect within Beijing,” Rudd said in remarks that have not been previously reported in Australian media.
“Put all that together — if you’re sitting in Beijing, and if you are influenced by traditional Soviet means of calculating what is arrayed around you… then suddenly, the correlation of forces is looking more complex than it used to only five years ago, frankly, because all these things that I’ve just referred to have really come to fruition … within the last three years.”
Rudd said he couldn’t be sure about the effect because he “unfortunately” doesn’t “sit in the inner sanctums of the [Chinese] Central Military Commission”.
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