To AUKUS, or not to AUKUS?

"Economists think that the more interconnected countries are by trade and investment, the less likely warfare will occur between them. [See for instance the NOT PC posts 'Free Trade Is the Path to Peace & Prosperity' and 'The Horsemen of non-apocalypse']
    "On many occasions countries have consciously intensified those interconnections as an alternative to war.
    "Examples include the federation of the American states into the USA following a confederation after customs conflict between Maryland and Virginia; the European Coal and Steel Community (which evolved into the EU) tying up the French and Germany industries after three painful wars; ASEAN which was started after the Indonesian confrontation of Malaya ended; recently India has improved its physical and trade links with its neighbouring China and Pakistan.
    "Alas, economic relations between China and the US have deteriorated. That this occurred under both President Trump and President Biden suggests a structural tension arising from jostling over their places in the world. ...
     "One can explain the First World War and the follow-up Second World War as a consequence of Germany catching up in economic size to Britain and trying to find a comparable place in the world. (Neither noticed that the US was already bigger.) We may be grateful that moving from one global hegemon, Britain, to a second, the US, did not involve conflict between the two (although the two world wars accelerated the transfer from a weakened Britain). 
    "It is unlikely that China is going to be the next global hegemon. Rather, we are moving to a multipolar world where there is none. There is a plausible economic model which predicts that world economic output, and hence power, is moving to where the populations are – the situation before British industrialisation. It occurs because of the ease with which technology and capital can transfer between countries.
    "That does not mean that Chinese productivity will catch up to the American level – not in this century anyway. Factors like the resource base and social organisation mute the economics. ...
    "So behind today’s incipient economic warfare and military machinations we face a multipolar world whose shape is uncertain. ... The challenge for the world, then, is how to get from the current world order, in which the US acts the hegemon, to a multipolar world in which the US is but one of four or so big economies. Full multipolarity may be less than a quarter of a century away.
    "The US does not seem to see the issue this way. It is largely preoccupied with the short-term task of trying to maintain its current hegemony in a world whose order it sees as not too different from the immediate post-war one. ....
    "New Zealand may have little influence over the evolving world order. In so far as we have, we should be putting our effort in assisting it to move towards the reality of multipolarity. Ultimately New Zealand is having to balance its short-term interests against its long-term ones. I am not sure our friends always understand this."

~ Brian Easton from hist post 'Trading Towards A Multipolar World'