In a joint statement on 15 September 2021, three high-profile political leaders of the Anglophone world-President Joe Biden and Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison-announced a new ‘defence partnership’, henceforth to be referred to by the acronym AUKUS (Australia, UK, US). This ‘Forever Partnership’ of like-minded leaders of democracies appears to have arisen out of their shared commitment to enhance regional “peace and security”, albeit only by boosting Australia’s military firepower in the first instance. The overriding driver for this new collaboration may be a desire to contain China’s growing geopolitical ambitions in the Indo-Pacific region, although the leaders stopped short of mentioning China by name. The other two members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, Canada and New Zealand, were conspicuous by their absence.
This latest announcement was guaranteed to damage relations with France, the leading nation of the Francophone world, and was also predictably condemned by China’s leadership, being likened to the revival of a “Cold War mentality”. The news was greeted in some Asian countries unsympathetic to Chinese aspirations, such as India and Singapore, but invited a more cautious and measured response from other Southeast Asian nations, such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.
Australia initially struck a A$50 billion deal in December 2016, for the construction of twelve Attack-class diesel-electric submarines. France won a 15-month bidding process for the contract, defeating bids from Germany and Japan. The primary aim was to replace the Royal Australian Navy’s ageing fleet of eight Collins-class conventional submarines. The Paris-based Naval Group, a naval international defence contractor, was to work with the Osborne Naval Shipyard, in Adelaide’s north-western suburbs, to deliver these new submarines. Rising costs, delays in delivery of platforms, and disputes with local industry providers reportedly led the cost of the deal to balloon to A$90 billion by the time of its cancellation.
The decision to unilaterally abandon the contract and to opt instead for nuclear-powered submarines has been declared to be the result of a “change of need”, caused by changes in the Indo-Pacific security environment, rather than an actual “change of mind”. Under the new partnership, the US and UK will share their technological secrets with Australia to elp construct eight nuclear-powered submarines, propelled by enriched uranium-235 reactors. Australia, a signatory to the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, is not a nuclear power itself, and the submarines are not intended to carry nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, this deal will make Australia the seventh nation in the world to have nuclear submarines, following in the footsteps of the US, Russia, China, the UK, France, and India.
Nuclear-propelled submarines are faster, can stay underwater indefinitely (an unlimited power supply means frequent refuelling is not required), do not need to surface periodically to replenish oxygen and dispose of waste gases, can more easily evade surveillance, and can also carry a larger number of missiles with longer range capabilities. The partnership will simultaneously enable the sharing of cyberwarfare capabilities, defence-related artificial intelligence and quantum computing, as well as other technologies applicable to undersea naval warfare.
France was only apparently informed about the trilateral security pact just a few hours before the announcement. Foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who also happens to be a former defence minister, called the decision a “stab in the back” during an interview with France Info radio on 16 September. The following day, in an unprecedented move, France recalled its ambassadors in Canberra and Washington DC to Paris for consultations.
Just as Australia sets out to antagonise France, relations between Australia and China, Australia’s biggest two-way trading partner, have already reached an all-time low. Australian condemnation of human rights abuses in China and a call by Scott Morrison for an independent investigation into the Chinese origins of Covid-19 have accompanied a damaging trade war, in the course of which China has imposed heavy tariffs on Australian exports (barley, beef, wine) and also stopped imports of Australian coal.
Within the Indo-Pacific region, China is engaged in a steady process of expanding its land and maritime territories, leading to territorial disputes with countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam. Its claim to the South China Islands is supposedly based on the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and on its own “nine-dash” demarcation line. Then there are the continued threats to the ambivalent status of Taiwan, a side-lined and isolated nation that only has official diplomatic relations with fourteen low-level UN member states and the Vatican, and continues to be seen as a threat to the “One-China” policy.
There is a long way to go yet, and it is also not known whether France will choose to sue for breach of contract. The submarines will take several years to construct, and the current crop of leaders will most likely not be around when they are finally delivered, ready for deployment. It is only to hoped that their successors will put these new vessels to sensible use, without triggering armed conflict in the Indo-Pacific region.
Ashis Banerjee