The foreign minister was trying to make the case for the UK’s growing activism in our region - but she ran the risk of almost doing the opposite.
at the start of her visit, she opened a Pandora’s box, and the media would not let her shut it again.was about how Britain and Australia can work together in the Indo-Pacific, and why Britain has a role to play on the far side of the world.
And she was seeking to challenge the ploy that China likes to use against Britain, and by extension AUKUS, which is to remind its neighbours of the UK’s overbearing, colonial past, and suggest that London’s latest forays are the same old antics in new clothing. Sharing a stage with Wong after her speech, junior UK Foreign Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan betrayed an inkling of this.She said the nuclear submarines that Canberra would get under the AUKUS deal would let Australia “manage” the Indo-Pacific. She likened the subs’ mission to England’s 16th-century navy, harrying pirates and keeping trade routes open., said the Asia-Pacific should not be used as a “chessboard for geopolitical contests”.
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