AUKUS: the betrayal of France will come back to bite

Deceit and deception have always been part and parcel of international relations. There was never a time when a tribe, or nation, could entirely trust the word of those on the other side of a negotiation, no matter how seemingly watertight the resulting agreement. 

Thus, when the Australian defence minister Greg Moriarty told a Senate hearing in Canberra on June 2 that, in spite of ongoing concerns over the logistics of the deal, “the government is absolutely committed to trying to work through with [France’s] Naval Group and build a regionally superior submarine in Adelaide,” what he meant was that he and his prime minister, Scott Morrison, were about to scrap the deal and sign a new defence and security pact with the US and Britain. 

The following week, Morrison – who had been specially invited to the G7 summit in Cornwall by his British opposite number Boris Johnson – engaged in secret talks with US President Joe Biden that turned on Australia reneging on its contract with Naval Group to purchase 12 French-designed diesel-electric submarines in favour of a deal to buy nuclear submarine technology from America and the UK. 

We know what happened next. The French foreign minister, Yves le Drian, accused Australia of stabbing France in the back. On instruction from his boss, President Emmanuel Macron, Le Drian ordered his ambassadors to Canberra and Washington to return to Paris for “consultations”. A gala due to be held in Chesapeake Bay to celebrate an alliance between the French and American navies dating back 240 years was cancelled, as was a planned meeting between the top brass from Britain and France intended to advance cooperation between the military of the two nations. 

Instead of a $50 billion contract and an implicit understanding that France and Australia were henceforth to be close allies in the South Pacific, Canberra decided to join a three-way regional defence pact, to be known as AUKUS, from which France, 1.6 million of whose citizens live in its Pacific territories, is somewhat pointedly to be excluded. 

A strong case can be made to justify Australia’s change of mind. In 2018, when it signed the deal with France, Canberra felt that conventionally-powered submarines were what it needed. It was only subsequently, as the threat posed by China increased, that it came to the conclusion that it had to up its game. But in that case, why did it not ask Naval Group to install atomic reactors, which it was perfectly capable of doing and which it had in fact suggested at the time, only to be told that Australia was not ready to go nuclear? Why did it turn abruptly, and without consultation, to America and the UK? And why did it decide to keep France in the dark right up until the moment the announcement of the new deal was made? 

The answer is obvious. Biden, with the connivance of Johnson, had put pressure on Morrison to ditch the French in favour of an English-speaking alliance against China. The American President sealed the deal on the fringe of the G7, giving nothing away to Macron in spite of the fact that the two were several times photographed together, smiling and nodding, as if they were the best of friends. Did he care about the humiliation of the French leader that was bound to result when the truth came out? Apparently not. And nor did the Australians or the British. 

I am in no position to judge whether or not Australia made the right decision in relation to its defence requirements. What I can say is that its prime minister and other political leaders behaved disgracefully towards the French. They could have given Macron some warning of what they were contemplating. They could even have offered France – an established nuclear power – a slice of the action. But they chose not to. 

Scott Morrison has rejected Macron’s claim that he lied. So has Moriarty. Both point to the inevitable disputes – amounting, they say, to the writing on the wall – that arose between the signing of the original deal and the start of construction, not due until 2023. But even if Naval Group had reason to believe the deal was doomed, there can be no doubt that Australia, together with the US and Britain, deliberately blindsided the French. Moriarty made no mention of his alternative Plan B during discussions this summer with his French counterpart, Florence Parly. Nor did Morrison raise the possibility of cancelling the Naval Group contract during a meeting with Macron in Paris following the G7 summit. The French were treated as if they were irrelevant.

If what happened had taken place the other way round and Britain, at the behest of Washington, had lost out to France on a prestige-defence contract, no one can doubt the scale of the impact on UK sentiment. The papers would have been full of accusations of betrayal and of the end of the Special Relationship. France would have been excoriated. As it is, Britain’s right-wing media are delighted. They love the idea that Macron has been humiliated. They positively relish the image of Global Britain jostling the French out of its way as it builds its much-vaunted Anglosphere 10,000 miles from home. 

But what goes around comes around. Do not be surprised if the UK has cause to regret its deception in the years to come. And do not be shocked if Europe, and much of the rest of the world, shakes its head as, post-Brexit, it witnesses the latest evidence of Perfidious Albion. Finally, do not be taken aback when it turns out that 90 per cent of the work tied up in the new arrangement with Australia is awarded to US, not British, contractors.