Antinuclear

Nuked – The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty

The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty

The United States sank the French submarines deal and formed the AUKUS military pact, to smash a new Indo-Pacific strategic alliance of France, Australia and India that wanted friendship with China.

FRIENDS OR ALLIES DeClassified, by Andrew Fowler | 12 Aug, 2024

The United States’ push to cement itself as the dominant military power in the Indo-Pacific region, and the globe, saw it sabotage the French submarines deal with Australia, and establish the AUKUS military pact. It also sank the prospects for a Paris–Canberra–Delhi alliance that wanted a new Indo-Pacific geostrategic order developing harmonious relations with China.
These machinations are explained in this edited extract below from the new book, ‘Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty’, by Andrew Fowler, published in July by Melbourne University Press.

As Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull and the new French president Emmanuel Macron discussed world affairs under the ornate chandeliers of the Élysée Palace in July 2017, they both understood the political and strategic significance of the submarine deal. 

It just might shift the view of the other countries of the 27-member European Union that Australia would always have a closer relationship, both commercially and politically, with the United States than with Europe. Turnbull understood how important it was to prove to the French that they could have a strong ally in the South Pacific.

The following day, he headed off to Cherbourg to put the public seal on a project that had done so much to invigorate the relationship between the two countries. Cherbourg is home to Naval Group, one of the most successful submarine manufacturers in the world, with an order book bulging to €15 billion in 2019.

The Australian contract was just the latest in a series of wins for the company, but at the same time it produced a novel challenge for Naval Group. The French were going to take their Barracuda-class nuclear-powered submarine, remove the reactor that powered it, and insert a diesel-electric engine. ……………………

Thirteen days earlier Tony Abbott had been on Sydney radio station 2GB casting doubt on the entire project. He said that given the submarine acquisition process was long and involved, it was important that Australia had a ‘Plan B’. There was worse to come. The following day Abbott called for Australia to change course and consider buying submarines powered by nuclear reactors.

Prime Minister Turnbull had deliberately written into the French contract that Australia could switch back to nuclear submarines after two, three or four non-nuclear subs, without a penalty.

If Abbott’s comments had rankled Turnbull, this apparently didn’t show. Turnbull knew the non-nuclear subs could always be reverted to nuclear submarines if necessary. He’d deliberately written into the contract that Australia could switch after two, three or four non-nuclear subs, without a penalty. With a 500-strong highly educated and flexible workforce, the changes would not be that hard to achieve. There was another advantage: France was the only country in the world that made both nuclear and non-nuclear submarines………………………………………

The submarine deal was at the core of a new strategic partnership between Australia and France and, according to one French diplomat, ‘changed the view we had in France of Australia’. It shifted from that of a country not necessarily considered as a ‘priority connecting with us’, to a really essential partner. It was, he said, ‘a sea change’.

President Macron was persuaded that it was in the best interests of France for him to travel to Australia, not just because France had signed on to the biggest single defence project in its history, but because the Indo-Pacific was developing into a hugely important economic powerhouse and a potential flashpoint in the great rivalry between the United States and China. France had a large territorial stake in the region, and the more friends it had there, the better.

President Macron talked of the Indo-Pacific axis as a geostrategic new order — ‘the Paris–Canberra–Delhi axis’ — signalling a more independent group in the Indo-Pacific.………………………………………………………..

The emergence of this more independent thinking involving Australia, which until then had been a large purchaser of US military hardware, caused consternation in Washington, where then-president Donald Trump was busy launching a trade war against Beijing, accusing it of stealing American jobs.

Macron’s vision was a direct affront to American power in the Indo-Pacific. He told the politicians and military leadership who had gathered to hear him speak that France shared the strategic view of the Turnbull government about how to cope with the expanded power of China in the region. 

……………………… multilateralism—not control dictated by any one nation—was a precondition of Chinese development in the region. China was fully aware of the difference between supremacy, stability and hegemony, he said.

Macron also confronted the China ‘hawks’ who oppose Beijing’s famed Belt and Road Initiative, a new ‘Silk Road’, building industrial and commercial links between Beijing, Europe, Africa and Asia. He gave veiled encouragement to Australia to be brave in the face of opposition from the United States. 

For Macron, the question was not ‘to oppose this initiative, but, much more significatively, to build a dialogue with our allies’. In other words, France was not going to slavishly follow the United States in suppressing the rise of China as an economic power. This was not the kind of view that went down well in Washington, where China was to be not only contained but prevented from becoming a global power.

……………………………………………………………………….. Australia now had a significant counterweight to the United States in its foreign relations and defence strategy. Though France and the United States are members of the Group of Seven industrialised nations (G7) and permanent members of the UN Security Council, they do not always vote the same way on major issues of global importance. Australia would now be less beholden to the United States. The French connection would provide Canberra with a greater degree of sovereign choice in both defence and foreign policy.

he right of the Liberal Party reacted furiously. Under attack, Malcolm Turnbull appointed right-winger Peter Dutton to head up a new Home Affairs Department—a super-ministry controlling immigration, border protection and domestic security agencies, including the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Federal Police. But giving the right more power only emboldened them—and their supporters. 

Amid a number of leaks from the security services, the media reported in feverish detail that China was spying on Australian industries and targeting politicians. 

The Trump administration was also whipping up a frenzy against China.

Andrew Shearer, a vehemently pro-American China hawk and former national security adviser to Howard and Abbott, had moved out when Abbott lost the prime minister job. He was now back with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a highly partisan right-wing think tank in Washington fixated on confronting China and warning a war was inevitable. 

Shearer co-authored an article that mirrored the Americans’ anxieties and called for a ‘rotational presence’ of US warships at the HMAS Stirling naval base in Western Australia, and the possibility of ‘investing in the nuclear support infrastructure necessary for basing of attack submarines’.

It was the first sign of what was to come………………………………………………………………………

………….In August 2018, when Dutton unsuccessfully challenged Turnbull for the leadership, he opened the door for the ‘compromise candidate’, Scott Morrison, to be elected Liberal Party leader and then to become Australia’s thirtieth prime minister. 

Within weeks Morrison moved Shearer from deputy head of the Office of National Intelligence (ONI) to an even more powerful position: Cabinet secretary. 

…………..From the moment Shearer re-entered government, the tempo of the argument about which submarine to buy shifted from the best for defending Australia to the best for attacking China. In December 2018, the Morrison government announced that the first new submarine would be named HMAS Attack.

……………………………………….The Liberal–National coalition government could see no difference between what was best for Australia’s security, and what was best for the United States.

…………………..By March 2020, Morrison had appointed Peter Dutton, a blunt enforcer, as his defence minister—but Dutton’s job was to attack, not defend. Morrison had outsourced to a political headkicker the job of creating a Chinese ‘Red Scare’ and terrifying the population. He would need a compliant media to manufacture the level of consent that was required to carry out his grand plans, and all the help he could get from the right-wing think tanks now scattered across the nation.

In May 2020, Morrison had ordered a feasibility study to examine how Australia could acquire nuclear submarines without having an Australian nuclear industry to support them.

Morrison was secretly laying the groundwork for what the right wing in the Liberal Party had long wanted: the introduction of nuclear power into Australia and a closer relationship with the United States. The question of Australian sovereignty seemed to be of little or no account. 

So the huge shift in Australia’s foreign policy alignment was hatched by a Christian fundamentalist former tourism marketing manager with no training in strategic or foreign affairs, but a great gift for secrecy and deception.

What came next:

What followed was months of media manipulation, political manouverings, and secret dealings to plot the dumping of Australia’s French submarine deal, for US-UK nuclear submarines. Along with these nuclear submarines, a broader AUKUS military pact to acquire hi-tech offensive weaponry, and to expand the US bases and military presence in Australia, was announced in October 2021. 

All the details of these events, and more, are recorded in Andrew Fowler’s new book ‘Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty‘ published in July by Melbourne University Press. https://declassifiedaus.org/2024/08/12/friends-or-allies

August 12, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized