On November 10, the Valdai Club hosted an expert discussion, titled “AUKUS: A New Cold War in the Indo-Pacific?”
In September 2021, the United States, Britain and Australia entered into a trilateral defence cooperation agreement – AUKUS. The main tasks for this cooperation were named: strengthening stability in the Indo-Pacific, developing Australia's military potential and jointly combating new challenges to regional security. However, there is a reason to believe that the new agreement could undermine rather than strengthen security in the Indo-Pacific. Although officially the new alliance does not have an anti-Chinese orientation, it is obvious that its creation will lead to an increase in the presence of the participating countries in a part of the world that has traditionally been the sphere of influence of Beijing, and will become an attempt to contain China, and possibly the beginning of a new Cold War with a large-scale arms race.