AUKUS Alliance: United States Strategic Interest in Indo-Pacific

This research talks about the United States’ interests in Indo-Pacific through an alliance called AUKUS, which consists of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The United States, as a great power, has its focus on maintaining and strengthening security and alliances in the world. As the conflict in the South China Sea arose, the United States focused its strategy on preventing the conflict in the region; hence, the United States allied with Australia and United Kingdom. The research examines the strategy and national interests of the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific region through AUKUS. This research uses a qualitative method, exploring national interests, the means and ways of foreign policy, and the decision-making process on the United States' interest through AUKUS in Indo-Pacific.

Indo-Pacific has become the subject of new policy within the Obama administration's "Asia Pivot," Some analysts praised strengthening its major alliances (The Policy Circle, 2021). While under Trump's leadership, the U.S. implemented a whole government strategy of values such as respect for sovereignty and independence; peaceful resolution of disputes; free, fair, and reciprocal trade; and adherence to international law (U.S. Department of State, 2019). Biden and his slogan for diplomacy, "America is back," and his first 100 days as president have seen a noticeable change regarding Indo-Pacific that Obama and Trump never quite managed to do so. With a renewed commitment and dedication to the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. aims to enhance cooperation with allies to respond to the developing demanding situations in the region.
The new Biden administration's primary national security priorities are safeguarding American hegemony, deterring and preventing direct threats to the United States or its allies, and preventing American domination in critical regions. To this end, with the new administration, the United States seeks to lead and maintain a stable and open international system based on strong democratic alliances, multilateral institutions, and rules (King, 2021). The Biden administration then emphasizes that the United States cannot achieve these goals alone and instead seeks to build a flexible and resilient security partner to address common challenges by sharing any information regarding any security problems and challenges, and build the capacity of security sector forces to respond to transnational crime, protect the maritime domain, address environmental challenges, and respond collectively to emerging threats. Over the decades, the Indo-Pacific has gone under a transformation where people rise out from poverty, making the region home to world-class businesses and undergoing a transformation that is a significant driver of global economic growth. This transformation was possible because of the stability of the free and open regional order and the fair competition for each country to grow and prosper as a sovereign independent state (U.S. Department of State, 2019). response to a more complex regional environment and a more robust rules-based order.
Australia is home to one of the region's most advanced Defense Research and Development (R&D) and innovation hubs, and the country also has pre-existing programs on emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. In particular, its alliance with the U.S. provides access to some of the niche capabilities that the Australian Defense Force requires, but local capabilities have not yet become selfsufficient to provide (Kuo, 2021 The research also concluded that it could be viewed as undermining national interests or as a strategic balance of Chinese power and an omission of the island nations of the Indian Ocean and Oceania in their decision-making processes and regional affiliations and identities.

AUKUS and 'Global Britain': Sub-standard Strategy? by Paul Cornish
Written by Paul Cornish, this literature points out the national strategy of Britain regarding its security. Although this literature focuses more on Britain's side as one side of AUKUS, it brings some light on the United Kingdom's national strategy that led to the direction of AUKUS. This research covers the AUKUS trilateral pact as Indo-Pacific tilt, covering matters in socio-economics. As the U.K. and the U.S. are nuclearweapon states (NWS), with both being the parties of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the U.K. declares that they are strongly committed to full implementation of the NPT in all aspects, including nuclear disarmament, nonproliferation, and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. In addition, this research also covers the main issue where the alliance affects China and France.

Research Methodology
The methodology used in this research is the qualitative method. The method is carried out with case studies using theories to analyze and answer the research problems. As Cresswell (1998) defines, the qualitative method is an inquiry process based on distinct methodological traditions of inquiry that explore a social or human Jurnal Diplomasi Pertahanan, Volume 8, Nomor 1, 2022 E-ISSN 2746-8496 problem. Using the qualitative method, the researcher conducts the study and builds an analysis as a detailed view of reports. This research explores a particular field about the national interests, the means and ways of foreign policy, and the decision-making process on the United States' interest through AUKUS in the Indo-Pacific.

ASK US: Australia, United Kingdom, United States Alliances
On September 15, 2021, U.S. President Biden, the U.K.'s Prime Minister Borris Johnson, and Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced their trilateral security cooperation called AUKUS with its major initiative to deliver a nuclearpowered submarine fleet for Australia. The quote Scott Morrison in his remarks from the AUKUS announcement. The new partnership will help "protect shared values and promote security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region." Though AUKUS aims to deepen diplomatic, security, and defense cooperation among the three states, AUKUS will also focus specifically on deepening integration in defense-related science, technology, industrial bases, and supply chains, with particular emphasis on cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and new undersea capabilities (White House, 2021). In general, the core directive of the AUKUS security partnership is to convey balance to the Indo-Pacific region.
This partnership will pave the way towards greater information intelligencesharing and interoperability between the three countries' armed forces. With the initiative to transport nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, the transfer of this technology represents an unprecedented move from nuclear-armed countries to a nonnuclear-armed countries, demonstrating the most important thing the U.S. has in its alliance (Samaan, 2021). It will also be the first time in 50 years that the U. massive and rapid global expansion. Moreover, through this alliance, Australia will play a more active role in maintaining the balance of power in the region.
Establishing a local industrial base for building and maintaining nuclear-powered submarines in Australia will allow the United States to support, maintain, and resupply its nuclear-powered submarine fleet more actively. This could help the U.S.
relieve pressure on its submarine maintenance and shipbuilding bases (Corben, Townshend, & Patton, 2021). Furthermore, the AUKUS partnership will lead to industrial cooperation in defense, specifically in the military field. In addition to official alliances, AUKUS members already work closely through several security and defense agreements, the most famous of which is the "Five Eyes" agreement, which includes Canada and New Zealand on cooperation in signals intelligence. the competition between the U.S. and China, Washington has described the Indo-Pacific command as "the single most consequential region for America's future." It enhances Beijing's influence in the region by increasing its military presence and strengthening its alliances. It also emphasized the need for containment (Zhu, 2021).

The AUKUS Trilateral
As China raises unique and growing political and strategic concerns with common sense, it redefines China as the number one concern for the U.S. foreign policy and makes Asia the top setting for the U.S. strategic goals (Miller, 2021). and will increase interoperability with a close partner. This is in line with the expressed interest in being more involved in the Indo-Pacific region and working more closely with the United States and its allies. For this transaction, the U.K. will play a vital role strategically, taking advantage of comparative advantage (Harding, 2021).
To those three countries, they have sincerely committed to keeping the Indo-Pacific "free and open" from the growing impact of China (Joshi, 2021). And In short,

Where the Decision Making Lays
A long-standing obsession with American exceptionalism, supremacy, and unilateralism at the heart of the U.S. elites means that the U.S. has avoided increasing friction with its great rivals such as China and Russia and its allies (Sheng, 2021). The people, experts who formulate and influence U.S. foreign policy-treaty allies are not necessarily significant factors. In fact, in some circumstances, U.S. foreign policymakers may consider treaty allies dispensable (Smeltz, Dina, et al., 2021).
Although the U.K. and Australia are U.S. allies, the U.S. had not considered another ally in the decision-making process of the whole AUKUS pact. "…have always believed in a world that favors freedom; that respects human dignity, the rule of law, the independence of sovereign states, and the peaceful fellowship of nations. Our world is becoming more complex, especially here in our region, the Indo-Pacific. This affects us all. [….] To meet the challenges, to help deliver the security and stability our region needs, we must now take our partnership to a new level -a partnership that seeks to engage, not to exclude; to contribute, to take; and to enable and empower, not to control or coerce." The executive branch develops U.S. foreign policy primarily, while the White Policy issues at the crossroads of international security and international economics are increasing concern to Australian and U.S. policymakers. Geopolitics governments use economic policy tools to achieve geopolitical, foreign, and security policy goals. The national technology of geo-economics is not new, but it is taking a new form in competition between the U.S. and China. Australia and the U.S. strengthen cooperation in several geo-economically relevant policy areas, especially in the defense industry, technology, and essential minerals. The newly strengthened trilateral security partnership between Australia, the U.K., and the U.S., demonstrates that the U.S. recognizes the importance of working with allies in these areas. Another critical process issue is to ensure that the agenda of outward geo-economic policy is not involved in domestic and political issues. Australia's defense industry policy has historically kept pace with domestic industry goals and employment policies, imposing resource costs that exceed defense budgets and undermine national security.
The policy-making process needs to be more resilient to domestic politics and political interference through robust project evaluation, transparency, and accountability mechanisms (Kirchner, 2021). To reassure the countries of the region, some Australian policymakers describe AUKUS as merely a long-standing technical cooperation between allies to develop new defense capabilities. These new capabilities, in turn, help Australia better work with regional partners and contribute to a rules-based order (Laksmana, 2021). Middle East and Europe, that was likely the previous scenario (Samaan, 2021).

The Outcome: Negative Reaction?
Through the AUKUS agreement, the author can conclude that having allies is essential. With those allies and relationships, a nation could achieve its national interest with its help. Some way, another ally of the said nation could be pushed aside  (Kolodziej, 2021). Significantly undermining confidence among allies, undermining France's ambition to play a more strategic role in the Indo-Pacific region, and complicating the process of security cooperation within Europe will result in a possibility of higher long-term costs. The U.S. may have gained a strategic advantage over China, but it still needs a strategic partner in the European Union.
In Southeast Asia, the agreement is seen dividedly. Some of the countries reside and agree with the AUKUS partnership as they see the alliance could bring some security in the region. But, some of the countries like Indonesia and Malaysia feared that the alliance could lead towards an armed race and destabilize and bring more conflict in Indo-Pacific.

Conclusion
Following from the research, it is concluded that the establishment could see the U.S.' interest in the Indo-Pacific region of AUKUS. Biden administration decidedly hands over more focus of security in the region by developing nuclear-powered submarines to Australia in handling the threat of China. The establishment of AUKUS, moreover, the foreign policy that Biden admitted, could actually be seen as a way to regain power over in Indo-Pacific to step over China's influence. By having the U.K.
and Australia as part of the trilateral partnership, the U.S. has more instruments for bringing their interest in Indo-Pacific. How the whole process of the U.S. decisionmaking of the foreign policy has come up, it could be seen from the U.S. as a great power wanting to have some influence in the region. Furthermore, how U.S. allies, U.K. and Australia, historically have good relations with the U.S. regarding its military power contribution and their interests, intentions, and values of security in the region has led to the making of AUKUS.

Thank You Note
I want to thank Prof. A. A. Banyu Perwita, Ph. D as the lecturer in Republic of Indonesia Defense University, for giving me this assignment and opportunity for me as a researcher to know more and analyze on the issue of the AUKUS alliance that takes part as the U.S.' strategy and interest. I also would like to give special thanks to the reference authors below for their knowledge.