THE Association for Community and Dialogue (Acid) condemns the US, UK and Australia for setting up a trilateral security partnership aimed at confronting China, which will include helping Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines.
Acid is of the view that this hegemonic strategy would place the South China Sea and Indo-Pacific region into a cold war territory recipe for nuclear arms race, geopolitical proxy wars and a possible all-out war between China and the United States in the future.
The initiative, called Aukus, was announced jointly by US president Joe Biden and Prime ministers Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison. They presented it as the next critical step in an old alliance. This alliance is unjust because it is based on exclusive grouping that tends to dictate policies in the Indo-Pacific region.
It is disappointing that such alliance to counter and compete with China does not take into consideration the lessons learnt from the Covid-19 pandemic that requires more collaboration among nations to resolve structural inequality and injustice in the global system.
There has been a failure to prioritise common human needs related to healthcare, social economic justice and the preservation of the environment. The millions of deaths due to Covid-19 is a testimony to global failures to protect humanity.
It is time the Malaysian ruling coalition and Pakatan Harapan take a joint stand against this unjust alliance.
Ronald Benjamin
Secretary
Association for Community and Dialogue
