Since September 15, 2021 the global security agenda has been occupied with a security pact designed to pave the way for a technology transfer by the U.S. to Australia, replacing France as a supplier of nuclear-powered submarines. The argument goes that this strategic initiative is only the beginning of a much larger cooperation plan regarding the future of the Indo-Pacific security complex.

Global security analysts and scholars directly focused their attention on the Indo-Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea looking into possible implications. The pivotal argument is that world security is going to shift towards the East, and the U.S.-China competition will broaden itself into another dimension with this strategic step.

This claim holds certain validity as the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan and Syria should lead to the accumulation of a certain amount of tangible sources that will need another direction to flow into.

Thus, several scholars have been supporting the literature that hypothesizes a global U.S. channeling into the Indo-Pacific security complex. An alternative approach advocates that the U.S. is not entirely eager to interfere with China due to the potential implications of such a move, yet its partners are forcing a U.S. presence in the region.

This approach is an alternative that derives its legitimacy from the middle and great powers that cooperate with the U.S. – the superpower. This argument also has its merits as international relations are not solely the enforcement of the interests of a superpower but an interaction between the latter and its partnering countries.

The global understanding of such events represented in pacts such as the AUKUS Pact is vital. However, a regionalist approach is required to better present the impact on the regional and state-level dimensions. The French involvement in the pact is the part of AUKUS that is going to cause major implications for the MENA region.

Partnerships like AUKUS that will direct interstate partnerships and even enforce them to align. Recent military procurement deals such as the Turkish S-400 acquisition, the Pakistani JF-17 fighter aircraft production contract with China, Saudi-UAE procurements of F-35 aircraft, and THAAD air defense systems from the U.S. are recent comparable cases.

These procurements created different levels of leverage and tensions for the buyer countries as they were forced to choose a side. Despite the balancing literature and the conceptual history of the practice, it becomes more apparent that a bipolar system is very antagonistic in its buildup process.

Partnerships like AUKUS that will direct interstate partnerships and even enforce them to align.

Remembering the two world wars that created the Cold War structure, it is plausible that the “playmaker” states force certain great and middle powers with strategic geopolitical significance to align with them. In this sense, AUKUS might have created a rift between the U.S. and France (and the EU in a larger context, considering the UK also left the organization) that will have certain implications for the MENA region.

For the last 30 years, the U.S. was able to embark on its Middle Eastern policy vis-à-vis its European partners, but strategic gains that directly hinder EU profitability will cause certain fractions in this practice.

The most significant impact of AUKUS on the MENA security complex is expected to be observed in the Eastern Mediterranean. Since the EU has practically perceived the Turkish pivot for energy resources towards this area and North African interests in this area as threats, the U.S. has supported European interests in securing the energy routes and protecting the integrity of South European shores. However, a political dissemination process that was potentially started with AUKUS might divide this unification in foreign policy.

The Eastern Mediterranean is a quagmire of competing interests, and a transatlantic fracture will only escalate the situation.

The Eastern Mediterranean is a quagmire of competing interests, and a transatlantic fracture will only escalate the situation. This escalation might give middle powers like Turkey broader room for maneuver. If the U.S. stops supporting these interests in the region, the EU backlash and the hawkish French position will lose a certain share of their influence and capacity. A significant shift towards the Indo-Pacific Ocean might reduce the pressure on great and middle powers competing for interests.

An alternative power-centered approach might suggest that the void left by a U.S. strategic shift towards the East would trigger a great power to take responsibility and fill the vacuum. The current power balance propounds a Russian pivot towards the Eastern Mediterranean; however, Russia’s aircraft carriers are quite worn, and its only ship, Admiral Kuznetsov, is on the maintenance deck.

This does not mean Russia cannot control this area – it holds a submarine force of 58 known units which can only be challenged by the U.S. and maybe China in the next decade. Both scenarios imply that Turkey might have more room for maneuver with less focus and escalation from rival powers.

Meanwhile the possibility that France might become even more hawkish and hyper-emphasize its interests in the Eastern Mediterranean must not be excluded. Yet, this is less likely since if France and Germany plan to keep the union together, they have to align in foreign policy following Brexit. When push comes to shove, Germany will most likely balance the French hawkish reactionary stance towards these events and prioritize economic growth in the next decade.

An uprising towards racial equality or a dissension into mob-rule? Both descriptions have been used to cover the recent Black Lives Matter protests in American cities and parts of the UK and Europe. The current climate has resulted in a profound but largely cosmetic shift- corporate, celebrity and even political parties (such as Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats) have made it clear that they are on the side of the anti-racism movement by donating money, verbally supporting and putting a knee down in solidarity with African-Americans (and the double-sided symbolism of a flag of freedom/oppression).

Prominent sports personalities (such as NFL players) who previously shied away from anything remotely controversial have found themselves apologizing for past silence and vowing to do more (after the black-listing of fellow quarterback Colin Kaepernick for his distinctive protest against American police brutality by kneeling through the national anthem during the entire 2016 season).

Now everyone has a racist anecdote to tell from school, the workplace or beyond – whether it’s the white person saying they should have done something more or the black person recounting an otherwise forgotten incident. However, much deeper issues remain; the historical placement of statues that symbolize oppression, the intertwined history of colonialism and the slave trade and its virtual absence in school curriculums, as well as ongoing African-American racial inequality and the dissension into a polarized world-view that is solely about race.

The Killing of George Floyd

The trigger for this profound and seemingly instantaneous plea for forgiveness from the entire African American community was the torturous killing of George Floyd on May 25 (through an eight-minute knee-hold) by a white police officer in Minneapolis after he was called to deal with a suspected counterfeit $20 bill. This became the latest provocation of police brutality against African American males and has become a symbol of the countless (unrecorded) deaths against black people that occur regularly in American cities.

Floyd’s imperfect character has only deepened his “martyrdom”; a father of 5, arrested eight times between 1997 and 2005 for drug possession, theft and trespass (spending several months in jail) and who in 2009 was sentenced to 5 years in prison for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. As a symbol of the Black Lives Matter movement, Floyd’s seemingly tragic life story points less to flawed personal decisions and more to the institutionalized racism that is codified into administrative, educational and economic life for African Americans and culminates in either white police brutality against the community and/or time in prison. His face has become the face of the movement with images, murals, and iconography spreading throughout the world. A statue may be next.

Statueclasm

The toppling of statues that represent slavery advocates (such as the recent dramatic falling of Edward Colston in Bristol, UK) or those associated with General(s) or soldiers of the Confederate State in the American Civil War (mostly in the Southern USA) has become another manifestation of public anger and the disconnect between the icons of a place, the complex history and the sentiment of significant portions of the populace.

In fact, the American experience is often used to shoulder and deflect some of the ingrained attitudes to race and ethnicity that are deeply rooted in Europe and other nations. Canada, for instance, has perfected the approach of moral high-ground (it is constantly contrasting itself with its southern neighbor both on the political level and in the popular consciousness) while simultaneously repressing its Colonial roots of active participation in both slavery and genocidal policies to indigenous peoples. This contrasts with the American student’s introduction (although this can vary by state) to these topics, which start with a recognition of internal inherent unholy behavior at the primary school level.

Not Everything is Black and White

BLM stands for Black Lives Matter; in the U.S. people are for the most part either ‘White’ or ‘Black’ – this partially comes out of the segregationist history of the country as well as efforts to highlight massive disparities (such as the civil rights movement of the 1960s). It also raises other less discussed questions – people from the Middle-East, Turkey, and Latin America are usually categorized as ‘people of color’ even if ethno-genetically they may be part of Caucasian groupings (which is also fluid and less defined than is often presented). In the U.S., ‘Asian’ in conversation and on official forms refers to people of Far-East Asian descent (China, Japan, Korea) and is often used by people from those groups as a self-identifier (such as on TV, comedy and radio programs) even though Asia is a massive continent that includes 4.5 billion people and a plethora of ethnicities.