The United Kingdom, as the holder of the G7 presidency, is inviting Asean to its meeting in Liverpool next month, ostensibly to discuss "global issues, including economic resilience post-Covid, global health and human rights".
The UK is being naughty here. Buried somewhere inside the legalistic "including" of the press statement issued in London yesterday is AUKUS — the security alliance between the United States, the UK and Australia.
It is a divisive issue, not only for Asean, but also for Europe. Is the UK being too clever for its own good? We will know next month.
Start with Asean. Of the 10 members, Malaysia and Indonesia are strongly opposed to AUKUS.
First, Malaysia. Putrajaya is rightly worried about AUKUS making the South China Sea a flashpoint. After all, it is a child of US-China rivalry. Judging by the rhetoric of the two rivals, war by accident isn't a wild possibility.
It is almost a certainty in the troubled waters of the South China Sea. With nuclear submarines thrown into the equation, an "accidental war" will be even more devastating.
This is precisely the concern of Indonesia. Speaking over the weekend to The Guardian, Indonesian Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto said of AUKUS: "Our position is that of course Southeast Asia should remain nuclear-free, and the fear is that this will spark an arms race, this will spark more countries seeking nuclear submarines, and we know now that the technology is there." Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines, however, appear to support the AUKUS security alliance.
The remaining five members of the regional bloc are neither here nor there. The UK is hoping to influence the seven members of Asean to join Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines to say aye. But Liverpool will be disappointed.
Europe, too, isn't pleased with AUKUS. Here the narrative gets complicated. One is a French reason and the other an European one. Begin with the French reason.
To Paris, where economics and politics often get mixed, AUKUS meant the tearing up of Australia's submarine contract worth US$90 billion with France. "We felt fooled", the French government screamed as it withdrew its ambassador from Australia.
If public statements by the French government during the crisis were anything to go by, Paris would have been happy if the submarines were French and if France was roped into the AUKUS security alliance. As for Europe, AUKUS is more of a US response to its rivalry with China.
The UK and Australia are mere appendages. True, Europe shares America's view that China is increasingly becoming ambitious and authoritarian. But it appears to prefer a less combative approach. Be that as it may, whether it is the US or Europe, the rhetoric is the same. Both want to promote Western values and interests. According to UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, one of the stated aims of the Liverpool G7 meeting is to build a network of liberty that advances freedom and democracy. Translation, a network to build Western values and interests. Just last week, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel smuggled a clause into the nationality and borders bill (in the language of The Guardian) that enables the government to strip people of their citizenship without the need for notifying them. How is this democratic? Like charity, democracy must begin at home.