AUKUS is a sheer manipulation of dictions
LAST week the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia decided to collaborate and cooperate on high-speed missiles for developing hypersonic weapons in the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war in which Russia used high-speed missiles against Ukraine.
This new agreement has already been endorsed by US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. This pact is an extension of the already signed AUKUS pact on 15 September 2021.
The alliance is called AUKUS (abbreviation of Australia (A), United Kingdom (UK) and United States (US).
AUKUS is much more lethal than Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) because it is not Dialogue but rather the transfer of sensitive war technologies from Europe and North America to Asia to encircle Chinese trade routes with nuclear submarines and supersonic missile systems.
I consider this development as the Cold Start Doctrine of the United States against China in which Chinese interests and lands would be just miles away from any preemptive strikes if the US would wish so.
Under this alliance, Australia will acquire new long-range strike capabilities for its air force, navy and army, and nuclear submarines and related nuclear fuel from the United States and the United Kingdom.
Technically, AUKUS is a multipurpose Alliance exploiting Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act with a serious risk of nuclear proliferation.
The US-UK and Australian coded “enduring ideal and shared commitment of attaining ultimate signal security into the Indo-Pacific waters” looks like a starting point of a new wave of strategic maneuvering against China accompanied by the havoc of Nuclear Proliferation.
Psychologically, AUKUS Alliance is primarily based on five ideas that include enduring ideal, shared commitment, rules-based order, deepen diplomacy and security/defense cooperation.
The semiotic probe finds contradictions between these mentioned ideas and actual manifestation of AUKUS.
The Frame of Reference contradicts the Frame of Work. Experts supplemented this hypothesis by explaining the AUKUS Frame of Work.
The Frame of Reference in terms of earlier mentioned five ideas are plausible because they deal in a frame of better society and safe and secure living.
Human mind understands ideas by framing them in context, each frame generates an automatic thought and automatic thoughts are based on beliefs, expectations, commitment and social contracts.
However, the second and third layers of meaning making deals with conscious thought processing.
All the manipulation and propagation are framed to deal with the automatic thought process.
The analysis of the same frame on the second and third more conscious level reveals intentions, propositions, validity and significance of the conversed and communicated frames.
The United States has a long history of coining attractive and positive terminologies for executing its designs.
A long list of such words can include “Embedded reporting”, “Operation Enduring Freedom”, “Operation Red Dawn”, “Operation Rolling Thunder”, “Operation Overload”, “Operation Urgent Fury”, “Operation Desert Storm”, “Operation Wrath of God”, “Operation Magic Carpet” etc.
The reality of all the above-mentioned dictions was altogether contrary to their automatic thoughts.
Experts of Communication Philosophy know that the dictions used by the United States have mostly nothing to do with the agendas or the objectives that are named beautifully, therefore, it is imperative for students and practitioners of Semiotic and Communication Philosophy to dissever and dissect any terminology used by the United States for any of its project to find out the factual underlying and underplaying realities.
For example, does using “Enduring Ideal” really mean that the US wishes to execute some ideas better for humanity? And what actually are enduring ideals for the US?
Similarly, Shared Commitment does not represent something that everyone in the relationship strives to honour.
It more seems like an imposition to become party to an agenda that only serves the purpose of the USA.
So the frame used here is not only deceiving but also misleading, as experts mentioned that the only shared commitment behind AUKAS is to block the Chinese trade routes.
Automatic Thought comes from such beautiful, crafted terminology is positive and pragmatic and one can think that an ideal must be achieved through endurance for the better cause and greater good.
US political frames play with cognitive faculties such as Beliefs, Expectations, Commitments, and Contracts.
Words like Shared Commitment, Rule-Based Order, Deepen Diplomacy, Security, and defense cooperation look positive and pragmatic when put into the frame of better society and humanity, however, the deepen analysis articulate otherwise, this is a usual mechanism to install US hegemony and Control in a certain region as it did in Afghanistan, Iraq Libya, etc.
Usage of calculated words/phrases by the US leadership and policymakers are mostly backed by the framing of what they wish to achieve while a simple reader and journalist take their phrases as political statements but they are more than mere political statements— having deepened meanings and crafted for future manipulation of words/phrase and events.
—The writer is Prague-based Foreign Affairs expert.
