Thread by @balajis

Odd aspects of the new AUKUS submarine deal

- India and Japan from the Quad excluded
- Canada and New Zealand from Five Eyes not included
- France snubbed by Australia
- NATO not in the picture
- UK not what it once was in Asia
- Yet joint address by US, UK, AU heads of state?

https://twitter.com/sunandavashisht/status/1438553626197307397

The US is in several different alliances now (AUKUS, Quad, Five Eyes, NATO) with overlapping members.

Even though NATO is the "North Atlantic Treaty Organization" it put troops into Afghanistan and has a position on China. iiss.org/blogs/analysis…

Point: you'd expect an anti-China alliance announced with big fanfare to rope in as many Asian countries as possible.

At a minimum, extending the Quad to South Korea and the Philippines (both of which are arguably US- aligned) into a NATO Asia, or something like that.

Timing & tone suggest that this was set up to be an optical thing to counter the recent Afghanistan withdrawal, but they couldn't get many countries on stage, so they gave tech to Australia and marketed it as a big deal, even if this pissed off France.

Reminds me of the "Coalition of the Willing". en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition…

The fact that this was a big public address announced with fanfare means that they wanted to impress the public.

Makes sense. Everything at the federal level in the US is spectacle now, or bombs, or both. newstatesman.com/uncategorized/…