By establishing the AUKUS alliance, America swindled France out of $66 billion

The heads of the United States, Britain and Australia issued a joint statement on the creation of a new military alliance. It is called AUKUS in accordance with the first letters of the countries included in it. In fact, we are talking about the formation of something similar to NATO, only in the Pacific region. Thereby clearly confirming the validity of the assumptions (June 2020 and June 2021) made by the experts of the RUSSTRAT Institute about the upcoming direct war between the United States and China.

While Washington regarded the USSR/Russia as the main geopolitical adversary and Europe as the upcoming theatre of operations, the United States strengthened the North Atlantic military alliance. Not particularly paying attention to the lack of similar structures in the Pacific Ocean. Now the concept has changed, which required dropping such a weight on their feet as Afghanistan, instructing the Germans (but not the British) to keep an eye on the European Union, and themselves - to start forming an analogue of NATO in the Asia-Pacific region.

The increase in the limitation of American resources was also well confirmed.

When America established NATO, the European countries that joined the Alliance (Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Turkey, etc.) significantly strengthened it on their own. In a hypothetical big war with the USSR within the framework of NATO, the United States fielded 1.2 million "bayonets", and the European allies in the Bloc provided 1.4-1.6 million.

Now there is no one in the Pacific Ocean at all capable of strengthening the American army in the Alliance in any way. All the armed forces of Australia number 57,000 people, from which 29,000 are "in the infantry". Canberra is able to provide a maximum of 5,000 of them to help America.

And according to American estimates, in order to count on victory in the war against China "for Taiwan", the Pentagon needs no less than 180,000-200,000 soldiers and officers. The United States is capable of putting up so much only with the maximum exertion of forces. Against this background, 5,000 Australians will not make a difference in any way.

The question arises - then why did Washington need that AUKUS in general? The answer is simple - America urgently needs a new rear-based area. The existing one, represented by South Korea, Japan and the Philippines, in the event of a direct American armed clash with China, finds itself within the range of operational and tactical missiles and PLA strike aircraft.

Therefore, if Washington decides to take such a step, all of them will almost with absolute guarantee immediately prohibit America from using their territories and the American military facilities stationed on them. So the White House takes care of the formation of the rear area of the future theatre of operations in advance.

But it does it, as always, extremely clumsily, not caring much about the consequences. In the process of persuading Australia to join AUKUS, the Pentagon made an extremely attractive offer.

The US NAVY will provide the Australian Navy with a long-term lease of 8 nuclear attack submarines for 18 months. Their exact type is not specified, but it seems doubtful that the United States would transfer to an ally its newest Virginia-type submarines - there are only 12 in the American fleet, and 6 more are in different stages of construction. Most likely, the Australians were promised boats of the previous generation of the "Los Angeles" type.

Canberra found the offer tempting. Nuclear submarines, and in addition for free! More precisely, the United States will transfer several pennants to Australia for a long-term lease and provide the ally with construction technologies that allow building such submarines independently.

This is much more better than the option of 12 Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A non-nuclear submarines, ordered from the French consortium DCNS (now Naval Group) and Thales.

As a result, the Americans swindled their NATO ally France twice. First, immediately after joining AUKUS, Australia terminated the $66 billion deal. Second, the Shortfin Barracuda is an originally normal newest French Barracuda-class attack submarine, specially redesigned for a non-nuclear engine unit. Paris did this in order to comply, among other things, with American (and in general international, i.e. UN) norms on the non-proliferation of nuclear technologies. Now it turned out that "like that it was also possible". Just not for everyone.

How this will affect the tightness of the internal cohesion of the European NATO allies in their desire to continue supporting American policy, especially - to fight a full-scale war for American interests - becomes a particularly interesting question.

However, many things indicate the opposite. The United States decided to form a Pacific alternative to NATO precisely out of the awareness of the complete degradation of the North Atlantic Alliance as a military ally in the event of a war with China. And once the partner has lost their usefulness, it becomes possible to swindle them.

By the way, another important point also catches the eye. The US-Australian deal within the framework of AUKUS directly violates the position of the United Nations in the field of non-proliferation of nuclear military technologies. But somehow even the slightest indignation of the "international community" on this occasion has not yet been heard. Where is the UN looking, and is it looking in general?