This is perhaps the most important and powerful case against AUKUS that I've heard, especially because it comes from one of Australia's preeminent strategic thinkers: Hugh White, inaugural Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and former Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence in the Australian Department of Defence. Here's what he says: - White argues that the era of Anglo-Saxon (British and American) dominance in the Western Pacific is ending. He states: "We are facing one of the, perhaps the biggest transformation in our shared international setting since European settlement." This transformation is driven by China's rise as an economic and military power comparable to the United States. - As a result he argues that there's no alternative to treating China as an equal partner: "Nobody really knows what America's aim in Asia is. But one thing's for sure, nobody in Washington thinks they should treat China as an equal partner. And my basic argument to my many friends in Washington is that if they don't treat China as an equal partner, then they're going to be taking on a rivalry with China that I don't think they can win." - He emphasizes this point repeatedly, arguing that given China's economic and military power, especially in the Western Pacific, the U.S. cannot maintain its previous position of uncontested primacy: "I don't see how, in an era where China's economy is as big as America's, in an era where its military power in the West Pacific is really quite comparable to America's, in an era where China is increasingly potent as a nuclear armed power, the US and China can find a way to get on in which the United States doesn't, at the very least, treat China as an equal partner." - White sees AUKUS as problematic because it aligns Australia (and potentially New Zealand) with a U.S. strategy that refuses to acknowledge this new reality. He argues that by supporting AUKUS, these countries are effectively endorsing a primacy approach that is "not a smart way to go" and risks destroying both their prosperity and their security, because they'll "only be prosperous and secure if the United States and China can find a way to get on." - On the economic benefits arguably brought by AUKUS: "The idea that you buy those economic benefits at the price of committing yourself to support an approach to this really fundamental question about the shape of our future order in Asia, which I don't think is going to work, that would be a very high price to pay for a very doubtful benefit."

I always find it fascinating to read texts from the very first Jesuit missionaries who went to China during the 16th century. I found a few in this book 👇 I was reading last night. First of all, this is from Saint Francis Xavier - who co-founded the Jesuit Order - in a 1552 letter he sent Saint Ignatius of Loyola (another founder of the Jesuits) from Shangchuan Island in contemporary Guangdong province: "China is an immensely large country, populated by very intelligent people and numerous scholars... They are so devoted to knowledge that the most learned is the most noble." At the time China was probably the only country in the world with a meritocracy in place, where officials were selected based on their results to the imperial exams. This is a feature of China that comes back all the time in Jesuit writings and immensely impressed them. And this is from a 1582 letter written by Matteo Ricci who ended up living 30 years in China and became the first man to translate the Chinese classics into Latin. He describes China as "the most important and richest thing in all the Orient, surpassing all other kingdoms. In certain aspects, it greatly resembles the wealth and perfection of our Europe, and in many ways, it surpasses it." Ricci lists 7 "points of excellence" of China: 1) "Among the discovered countries, it is the most peaceful and best governed" 2) "It is the largest state subject to a single king" 3) "It is the most populous nation [...] with more than 60 million inhabitants paying taxes" 4) "There is no kingdom more fertile and better supplied. Although the Chinese are bigger eaters than Europeans, there is enough to satisfy them all at a very low cost" 5) "The public wealth is unmatched by any other kingdom: silver and gold mines are in abundance [..] the emperor's revenues are greater for him alone than for all the kings and lords of Europe, and perhaps Africa combined" 6) "No region seems to equal it for freshness and peace, to such an extent that one might say it is a painted thing rather than a product of nature" 7) "The inhabitants are the most industrious in the world, even the blind and the lame earn their living, so one sees very few beggars" Again quite a few striking similarities with the China of today: still the most populous nation (on par with India), still extremely peaceful (China hasn't fired a single bullet abroad in 45 years), still has the world's most industrious inhabitants with very few beggars, still a big emphasis on what Ricci calls "freshness and peace" by which he undoubtedly means what the Chinese refer to as "harmony", etc. The reason why those old writings are so fascinating is because you can really see the continuity and permanence of Chinese culture and governance style. And by contrast you can see how we ourselves change: the same features we used to be immensely impressed by 4-5 centuries ago, and which in many ways inspired us (for instance our own meritocracy is directly inspired from China's), we today denigrate and bash endlessly. For instance what Ricci calls "freshness and peace" - essentially "harmony" as an overarching value - we today call "violation of individual freedom" because by definition sometimes social harmony impedes on individual freedom. Or, even more striking, China's meritocratic governance system which today shares many of the same features as back then: officials in China are still selected based on exams and on officials' performance in the job. Ricci and Saint Francis Xavier back then called it "the best governed country in the world", impressed that "the most learned [were] the most noble", but today the West calls it an "authoritarian dictatorship"... This raises interesting questions, mainly on what changed so much in our value-system that we virulently denigrate today something that we used to be in awe of yesterday? And when you think about it a bit I'm personally convinced that deep down we can still see value in "the most learned [being] the most noble", and in a society optimizing for harmony instead of freedom (if not for us but at least as something we can respect for others). So I think fundamentally what's changed is our capacity for cultural empathy and our willingness to appreciate governance models different from our own, rather than our opinion on the intrinsic qualities of the models themselves. In short, we've become arrogant and intolerant, probably due to 2-3 centuries of our domination of the planet which transformed us into peoples completely deaf to the virtues of any other culture or model than our own. Which is also thankfully the very reason why we can be hopeful about the future: as we get humbled with the rise of China and others, we'll have no alternative than to relearn how to understand and appreciate true diversity (and not the very artificial ersatz of "diversity" that liberalism is trying to shove down our throats nowadays).