September’s announcement of a new trilateral security pact (Aukus) between the US, UK and Australia came as a surprise to most observers, and most of America’s allies. That the US strategic interest continues to shift to the Indo-Pacific is no surprise. But that the US should choose this particular approach, these particular allies, and would even risk the ire of other allies to forge this pact was a shock. It signals a shift in global positioning from the US. The question is: to what end? Since 1945, the widest pillar of America’s global security structure has been Nato. The relative importance of Nato in the global balance of power has waned in the wake of the collapse of the USSR and a new focus post 9/11. But the organisation has remained America’s foremost tool of international power projection. This announcement, more than anything that has happened in the past three decades, signals that the US is moving on from the North-Atlantic and from Europe. Europe will remain militarily dependent on the American security shield, at least for the time being, but America’s attention is now entirely focused on the rise of China as a challenge to its global hegemony.  With this in mind, a grouping  composed of the US, Japan, India and Australia makes immediate and obvious sense. This is what the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) is. These are all regional players in the Indo-Pacific, and all are bound by the same anxiety driven from Beijing’s increasing aggression in the region. What really needs an explanation is why the UK is deemed by Washington to be a key player in the Indo-Pacific, given that it is geographically located on the exact opposite end of the globe, and why the US would risk a deep rift with France, their key Nato ally in continental Europe, in order to secure its ties to Australia.  A new special relationship What’s likely is that the US-UK security relationship will serve as the template for the kind of relationship that the US wants to develop with Australia. No other countries in the world have the kind of integration that the UK and US enjoy: theirs spans the military, intelligence and technology. If the UK appears to slavishly follow American geopolitical initiatives (even in the face of domestic disgust), it is because the UK sticks to its post-war decision to trust in the US absolutely. That, the thinking went, would guarantee its security - true at the time as  during the Cold War the US crucially invested in London’s defence, while also making itself operationally essential to US global deployments.  This analysis is reinforced by Aukus’s areas of focus: artificial intelligence and cyber and quantum technologies, all three areas in which the UK and the US research ecosystems are inextricably intertwined (in both the public and private sectors).  US military doctrine has evolved in recent years to focus on these areas. Likewise the UK’s latest Integrated Review of defence capabilities identifies these areas as the focus of the UK’s future specialisation within the framework of the American security guarantee.  What’s the deal? The UK provides operational and intelligence support for American overseas deployments where the UK has developed particular expertise in special operations and other niche, highly specialised capabilities. It also offers financial support through a decades-long programme of purchasing American submarines as the sole tool to deploy London’s nominally “independent” nuclear deterrent. In exchange, the US pledges to defend the UK as it would its own heartland.  Submarine surveillance That is why it is particularly apposite that the most advertised part of the Aukus arrangement will be that Australia will be purchasing nuclear-fuelled submarines from the US just like the UK - although Australia’s submarine fleet will not be equipped with warheads and Australia will remain a non-nuclear state. Just like the UK’s deployment of US-made and US-serviced submarines, Australia’s fleet (also nominally under the independent command of Canberra) will serve as a US military tool, enhancing Washington’s surveillance capabilities in the Indo-Pacific, while also keeping costs low, at the price of guaranteeing Australia’s security: an undertaking that Washington would have been practically bound to anyway for a number of other good reasons.  Canberra isn’t nearly as much of an asset in the AI, cyber and quantum areas, but the US will nevertheless accrue hugely important traditional strategic benefits from this arrangement, such full operational access to the strategic geographical position that Australia occupies, the depth in defence that this geography offers, as well as the huge amounts of strategically important raw materials with which the Australian continent is richly endowed.  (Nearly) a sound strategy The main concerns about Aukus relate to its diplomatic fallout. It’s difficult to judge at this point how much Canberra and Washington anticipated the backlash that the ann...