TThe Aukus Defense Agreement between Britain, the United States and Australia is becoming more and more murky day by day. This is essentially the result of a labor dispute over who will build eight submarines for the Australian military. Australia ordered £ 48 billion worth of diesel engines from France, then changed its mind, dropping the deal. Now he wants nuclear power plants from the United States and Britain.

Crewed submarines are approaching obsolescence, almost useless in the age of “transparent” oceans and underwater drones. Like tanks, they are dripping with cost, inefficiency, and a thirst for fighting outdated wars. But defense contracts have a corporate and political existence that transcends utility. If Australia seriously thinks China is a threat, it might as well have new gold-plated weapons ready.

However, this particular equipment contract appears to have turned into a new military alliance in the Asia-Pacific region. Johnson’s defense adviser Stephen Lovegrove says it is “a profound strategic change”. Unless Downing Street has any idea, he was clearly meant to enrage China, which he duly did, as well as humiliate France, which he also has.

Boris Johnson protested that it was “not contradictoryTowards China, but when asked by Theresa May if he was seriously considering war on Taiwan, he refused to say no. “The UK remains committed to upholding international law and this is… strong advice we would give to the Beijing government.” Is he just playing with words? In July, it sent an aircraft carrier near a disputed region in the South China Sea, prompting warnings from Beijing. It would only be a mouse trying to roar, if vast sums of public money weren’t involved in maintaining Johnson’s vanity.

Pompous remarks made for political ends, such as sudden alliances and pointless rebuffs, have consequences. Western defense interests born out of the Cold War refused to allow NATO to redefine its objective in the 1990s, with the demise of the Soviet Union. This is how Britain was sucked into Afghanistan and Iraq, allegedly to protect the United States from the new terrorist threat. Lofty rhetoric and military breast-beating also fueled the preliminaries of World War I.

Britain has no conceivable reason to take an aggressive stance in the Pacific. It is all obscure post-imperial nostalgia. If the United States is crazy enough to resume war in Southeast Asia over Taiwan, it has nothing to do with Britain any more than Vietnam was. France, too, claims concern for its citizens in the Pacific. Second-tier European states seem unable to ever let go of their empires.

China’s emergence as a global economic power over the past quarter century has been a political and economic miracle. It was achieved by marrying the disciplines of capitalism with those of dictatorship. The West may not like some of its manifestations and is free to say so. It is not the business of the West. China is not under Western sovereignty.

With his new Powerful status, China has embraced military expansion, sensitivity to criticism, and a regional sphere of influence, all syndromes that should be familiar to the United States. Time alone will tell where this leads. But for the West to start a cold war with China now must be more than stupid, and for Britain especially stupid.

So-called Western diplomacy is currently a disaster area. He failed to adapt to post-Communist Russia, and his handling of the Muslim world has been tragic and brutal. In Afghanistan, the world’s most expensive armies were sent by a handful of AK-47s.

It has been half a century since Harold Wilson officially pulled Britain out of “East Suez”. Johnson clearly wants to come back, to prove that he can somehow get past his weight and put Britain back on the world stage after Brexit. Foreign policy so vacantly formulated is reckless. British diplomacy should now focus on Europe, overwhelmingly. One thing Brexit hasn’t changed is geography.