Fiasco AUKUS

 'All great powers behave like gangsters.

And all small nations behave like prostitutes.'

[Emery Reves, 1946, The Anatomy of Peace, London, quoted in 

Keith Lowe, 2017, The Fear and The Freedom, New York, p 192]

1. Behaving like a prostitute:

   

 (Jamal Barnes & Samuel Makinda, 2022, 'Testing the limits of international society? Trust, AUKUS and Indo-Pacific security', International Affairs, 98.4, 1307-1325).

"... US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a new trilateral military partnership called AUKUS on 15 September 2021, [claiming] their main goal was to protect a rules-based international order and 'preserve security and stability in the Indo-Pacific'; [sharing] military capabilities and critical technologies, such as cyber, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and undersea domains'.

"... France ... has been the first casualty of the new partnership ...

"... in the process of creating AUKUS, Australia reneged on a A$90 billion contact it had signed with France in 2016 to acquire twelve diesel-propelled submarines. Instead, under the AUKUS agreement, Australia is to receive nuclear-powered submarines from the United States or United Kingdom, with [some of the later] manufacturing to be done in Australia.

"Australia's violation of the norm of pacta sunt servanda (agreements must be kept) undermined ... the 'presumption of trust' within international society ... Australia's willingness to break its promises to France ... undermined the rules-based international order that AUKUS members proclaimed to be defending. [Apparently without noticing the irony, Prime Minister Morrison's announcement of AUKUS included the words, "Today we join our nations in a next-generation partnership built on a strong foundation of proven trust."]

"Negotiated between 2014 and 2016, the French submarine deal was more than just a [business] deal. It was part of an arrangement expected to sustain a 50-year strategic partnership between Australia and France. Following [French President] Macron visit to Australia ['where, at Garden Island naval base he declared that France was an "Indo-Pacific power".'], the submarine project became an integral element of a trilateral arrangement between Australia, France and India to help maintain what they saw as regional order in the Indo-Pacific.

"During an official visit to France in June 2021, Morrison assured Macron that all arrangements concerning the purchase of the French-made submarines remained intact. Moreover, two weeks before the revelation of AUKUS [early September 2021] Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Defence Minister Peter Dutton had been to Paris to meet their French counterparts, respectively Jean-Yves Le Drian and Florence Parly, after which they confirmed that the submarine deal was on track. ['Morrison, Payne and Dutton were members of the cabinet security committee that approved the French bid ahead of two competitors from Japan and Germany in 2016'.] ... However, [on 15 September] 2021, Australia scrapped its submarine contract with France and opted for nuclear-fuelled submarines to be supplied by either the United States or the United Kingdom.

"The French government recalled its ambassadors to the US and Australia for consultations on 17 September 2021 ... France trusted Australia to treat it with respect and transparency ... Instead, according to ['the French Ambassador to Australia, Jean-Pierre Thebault'] ... 'We were deliberately kept in the black' and 'we were deliberately ignored' ... 

"At the G20 conference in Rome in November 2021, Macron also publicly criticized Australia's conduct, stating: 'I do respect sovereign choices, but you have to respect allies and partners and it was not the case with this deal' ... Macron told Australian reporters: 'I think this is detrimental to the reputation of your country and your Prime Minister'; and when asked whether he thought that Morrison had lied to him, Macron replied: 'I don't think, I know'."

 

2.  Behaving like a gangster:

(Jonathon Caverley, 2023, 'AUKUS: When naval procurement sets grand strategy', International Journal, 1-8 [United States Naval War College, Newport RI]).

"To date, the most important aspect of AUKUS is its very costly, and thus credible, signal of Australia's theory of security, its grand strategy ... the ultimate cost of this signal for client states (and make no mistake that Australia is a client) will come, not in dollars, but in sovereignty.

"... ['the process of building a navy is slow, overdetermined, and hard to change relative to almost any other defence project'] ... These costs have escalated rapidly over time, to the point that most middle powers have few ships available to them ... Canada, for example, has thirteen frigates and four submarines ... Australia possesses fourteen 'blue-water' combat vessels and six submarines ... and, thus, every hull counts.

"The initial shipment of Virginia-class and the following 'SSN AUKUS', if they are produced, will not arrive for many years, and the Royal Australian Navy will have no choice but to operate them for a generation ... Whatever is actually produced by the AUKUS deal, the only concrete outcome to date has been Australia spending over half a billion US dollars ― the epitome of setting money on fire ― to signal its total reliance on the US for security and a belief that long-term power projection in the form of nuclear submarines will be Australia's principal means of defence ... Australia has sacrificed both treasure and mid-term capability for stronger ties to the US now and potentially a more capable power projection in the uncertain long term.

"On both the political and economic levels, the US needs neither Australian money, nor its technology, nor production jobs ... Having eight Australian nuclear-powered submarines might shift the military balance in the Pacific somewhat in the US's favor, but only if it does not require the US to forgo submarines for its own fleet ... It is therefore significant and not surprising that the next steps that Australia will take ― forward-basing US submarines ... in Western Australia and subsidizing submarine ship-building infrastructure in the US ― amount to Australia paying to enhance the US's submarine presence in the region ... Australia will ... be ... locked into the distinctive American approach to the Indo-Pacific region and the Sino-American competition."

3.  WTF! ― Client status: 'Locked in'

(Hugh White, 2023, 'AUKUS and the Search for Australia's Next Submarine', Australian Studies Conference Yokohama June 2023 [Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU Canberra]).

"The Australian government has claimed that the primary reason to abandon the French-designed submarines in favour of nuclear propulsion  ['...in March or April 2021 approaches were made, first to Britain and then to America, about the possibility of acquiring nuclear powered submarines and, following discussions between the three heads of government in the margins of the G7 meeting in Cornwall in June, the AUKUS arrangement was announced in September 2021']  was a new assessment that conventionally-powered submarines would not be stealthy enough to operate effectively in future decades ... This explanation of the decision seems improbable. No evidence has been offered to explain this sudden change of assessment of the vulnerability of conventionally-powered submarines ...

"It is much more likely that the decision was driven by ...

      One ... the Australian Government's growing anxiety the French project was heading into deep problems which could be very embarrassing ['... in 2016 the contest was won by the French NAVAL group with a proposal for a conventionally-powered version of their nuclear-powered Suffren-class. This project was troubled from the start. The estimated price of $A90 billion for 12 boats was high by international standards ... key aspects of the design were very conservative ... Other designed features ... seemed inappropriate ... Early design work proceeded slowly, raising concerns of long delays to an already slow delivery schedule, and key agreements with the French proved hard to finalize ...'] The AUKUS initiative offered a way to dump the French project without acknowledging these problems.

      The other, far the more important, reason was the desire to deepen and strengthen even further Australia's alliances with America ... Australian leaders have instinctively looked to America for protection from China's growing power and ambition, and have become more committed than ever to supporting America to resist China's challenge and perpetuate the US strategic primacy in East Asia and the West Pacific on which Australia has long seen as the bedrock of its security ... this was the primary Australian motive for AUKUS.

"Nuclear powered submarines have some important operational advantages over conventionally-powered submarines, but they are much more expensive to build and operate, much more complex to maintain, and take much longer to bring into service, especially for a country like Australia with very little nuclear engineering expertise to build on.

"Nuclear propulsion might make sense if the primary task of Australia's submarines is to join US nuclear-powered submarines in hunting Chinese submarines close to their home bases in the South and East China Seas [italics, emphasis added]. But if their primary role is to defend Australia by preventing the projection of hostile maritime forces towards its shores ... then conventionally-powered submarines are almost certainly more cost-effective ... Australia could build and operate between 30 and 40 large, highly capable conventional submarines for the currently estimate cost of eight nuclear-powered submarines under AUKUS ...

"When we add to that questions of nuclear proliferation, nuclear safety, the delays involved in taking the nuclear path, and the risks entailed in depending on other countries for the day to day operations, then the arguments in favour of conventionally-powered submarines become overwhelming.

"Fundamentally AUKUS is all about aligning Australia even more completely with American policy in responding to China's challenge to the US-led order in Asia ... The clear presumption in Washington is that the only acceptable outcome for America is the preservation of US primacy ... Washington is evidently willing to fight such a war [if] necessary to defeat China's challenge and preserve the US-led order in East Asia. America's commitment to AUKUS is undoubtedly based on a firm expectation that Australia will unstintingly commit its military, including its submarines, to join US forces in any war with China ... No one in Washington would be willing to see super-sensitive US technology ― let alone US Virginia class submarines ― passed to Australia without that commitment. Through AUKUS Australia has locked itself into support for US policy towards China, no matter where that leads ..."