As China threat rises, can Aukus alliance recover from rancorous birth?

Questions mount about pact's ultimate purpose and implications for other Asean countries

It was initially seen as an audacious enlistment by Joe Biden of Australia into the 21st-century struggle against China, elevating the country in the process to a significant regional military power and finally giving substance to Global Britain and its tilt to the Indo-Pacific.

But since then the ruckus" about Aukus, as Boris Johnson described it, has not stopped. If this was the start of a new anti-hegemonic coalition" to balance China's rise, it has not quite blown up on the launchpad, but nor has it taken off as smoothly as intended.