“This is about investing in our greatest
source of strength, our alliances, and updating them to better meet the threats
of today and tomorrow. It’s about connecting America’s existing allies and
partners in new ways, and amplifying our ability to collaborate recognizing
there is no regional divide separating the interests of our Atlantic and
Pacific partners”.
President Joe Biden, September 15th,
2021
Future war and forever friends
September 20th, 2021. The
Australia, United Kingdom, United States trilateral security and defence pact
(AUKUS) is the future of a West that is increasingly about shared global values rather than any one place. Such
coalitions of real power will provide a form of deterrence and defence
insurance for smaller powers than more formal alliances of pretend power. Why AUKUS?
Why are the French so upset? What are the costs and benefits for the
countries involved? Could France have joined AUKUS? What are the geopolitics of
AUKUS? AUKUS was certainly a good news distraction from all the bad news over
Afghanistan. It allowed President Biden
to shift attention away from the disastrous end of one of America’s ‘forever
wars’ and focus attention instead on preventing future war with ‘forever
friends’. One other thing is clear: there
is so much more to this pact than is in the public
domain.
Why AUKUS? America and Britain will
provide Australia with eight nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSN) that will
replace the twelve Attack/Barracuda-class
advanced diesel-powered submarines being built under a contract with the French.
The cost to Canberra of breaking the 2016 contract with the French, which was worth
some 50 billion dollars Australian (circa €31bn), will be some 2 billion dollars Australian. In
fact, the programme was in already in deep trouble. As one unnamed French official told Le Figaro, “The Australian government
had lost confidence in the ability [of Naval Group] to deliver the submarines
on time. We haven’t done the job properly”.
Australian politics and its strategic requirement have also changed
markedly since 2016 when the contract was signed. In the face of China’s
growing submarine force Australia has been forced to overcome political concerns
about the use of nuclear-powered submarines. Canberra has also become increasingly
concerned that the French submarines would simply not be fit for Canberra’s
future strategic purpose. The sheer distances involved in operating in the
Indo-Pacific are enormous making endurance a vital requirement for the Royal
Australian Navy (RAN), which also recognises a growing need to conduct stealthy
surveillance operations close to Chinese ports.
Both of these factors alone make the Attacks/Barracudas obsolete even before the planned
delivery of the first submarine in 2030.
An AUKUS moment
Why are the French so upset? In
the wake of President Biden's announcement of AUKUS one could almost feel the waves
of Gallic indignation rippling out of Paris.
Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French Foreign Minister, sounding strangely like
German General Groener at the end of World War One, said, “It’s really a stab in the back. We had established a
relationship of trust with Australia, this trust has been betrayed.” Gerard Araud, the former French Ambassador to
the United States, tweeted, “The world is a jungle. France has just been
reminded [of] this bitter truth by the way the US and the UK have stabbed her
in the back in Australia. C’est la vie.”
The French certainly have legitimate
concerns about the technology they have already transferred to the Australians
under the contract, but it is the subterfuge used by three ostensibly close strategic
allies and partners which has so upset Paris. As late as August 30th at the
Inaugural France-Australia 2+2 Consultations, the two countries issued a statement
saying that “These first discussions in such a format reflect the very high
level of France and Australia’s strategic and operational cooperation. The
ministers discussed our joint strategic analysis of the Indo-Pacific
environment and signalled France’s wish to act jointly with Australia to
achieve an open Indo-Pacific area based on upholding national sovereignties and
international law, particularly the freedom of navigation….They agreed on the
next steps for strengthening our bilateral defence cooperation as well as our
industrial partnerships with the aim of maintaining this momentum and deepening
the enhanced strategic partnership that has united France and Australia since
2017".
The meeting also committed Australia
and France to strengthen industrial and capability-centred cooperation and re-stated
the importance of the future submarine programme. The two countries also
launched negotiations focused on strengthening and diversifying military
cooperation in support of the posture of French forces in the Indo-Pacific. As
the Australian ministers sat down at the table with their French counterparts
they would have known (unless they were not in what was a very tight loop) that
AUKUS had already been agreed in principle at the June meeting of the G7 in
Carbis Bay, Cornwall, and that discussions had been underway for some eighteen
months. Hardly cricket.
AUKUS and the Americans
For the Americans, AUKUS is the
beginning of a new chapter in its changing global strategic posture built on
the need to maintain both deterrent and defence strength-in-depth in multiple
parts of the world and across multiple domains.
In Europe, for all its travails, NATO remains the mist efficient mechanism for
organising Europeans into a form of defence that is both credible and can ease
US burdens. Burden-sharing will be one of the big issues in the forthcoming
NATO Strategic Concept. For most
Europeans, including the French, their respective national defences are
bolstered by the American presence thus reducing both the risk and cost of an
entirely European defence. NATO also reinforces the legitimacy of global
American defence leadership.
AUKUS will over time do the same,
albeit in a very much more informal ‘anglosaxons’
sort of way, much like the Five Eyes intelligence club. AUKUS and NATO are also vital if the US is to
ease the growing over-stretch to which its armed forces are increasingly
subject because of the rise of an aggressive, militaristic China, and its
‘mini-me’, Russia. AUKUS is thus a precedent and not just for Australia, the UK
and US. Over time, other democratic powers could join, such as Japan and South Korea, not
to mention Canada and New Zealand (if Jacinda Arden can ever be persuaded to
stop virtue-signalling from atop Mount Olympus), and possibly even India.
Australia is a
strategically-located, important ‘middle power’ with long and trusted links
with both the United States and Britain.
Given that every other facet of modern life is being globalised so is
security and defence and AUKUS is part of that process. However, unlike much of Europe, which uses
the European Union to protect itself against globalisation, the AUKUS powers
are in many respects far better placed to embrace it. In effect, Australia and Britain
will become (again) unsinkable bases for American power and the two organising
hubs for coalitions on America’s Atlantic and Pacific flanks. This will also help keep US national security
strategy credible in the eyes of adversaries.
AUKUS and the Australians
There is a rather funny but silly
film doing the rounds on the Internet in which senior Australian officers try
to explain to a minister why they need more money to defend against Australia's
biggest trading partner. Here’s why. Since
Australia questioned China’s explanation about the origins of COVID Beijing has
become increasingly aggressive towards Canberra by using trade sanctions to
damage the Australian economy, as well as engaging in extensive cyber-attacks
and espionage to coerce the Australians. China might be Australia’s biggest
trading partner, as it is for many countries, but it also led by a regime that
can turn very nasty, very quickly. AUKUS anchors Australia firmly into an
American-led global pact of defence democracies and reminds China that
Australia has powerful friends.
In short, AUKUS, of which the
subs are but a part, better protects Australia against Chinese threats than
France ever could or ever would.
And, for all the post-AUKUS bluster Beijing understands perfectly the meaning
of AUKUS precisely because China respects power. Beijing will be thinking hard
right now about how to respond.
AUKUS and the British
The British situation with the
French is the most complicated, not least because of the proximity of the two
old European powers and because of the already toxic political relationship
between London and Paris. There will certainly be a degree of schadenfreude in parts (not all) of London’s
body politic over AUKUS, in spite of Boris Johnson’s claim that the Franco-British
relationship is “rock solid”. As one
senior German colleague said to your correspondent there can be no question
some element of retaliation is involved on the British side for France’s
hard-line over Brexit. These kind of
periodical Franco-British bust-ups are hard-wired into an ancient relationship.
The strange thing is that Paris really does not believe (remarkably) it has
taken a hard-line over Brexit which reveals the level of political dissonance
that exists between London and Paris. Some
in Paris even suggest that Brexit is now merely a legal-technical matter to be
handled by the European Commission. That is pure Gallic nonsense because in Paris
everything is political, even if it pretends to be legal.
The French are also again being
rude about Britain. Ho hum. With the voice of de Gaulle echoing through
the Elysée Palace France
has again accused Britain of being a wholly-owned strategic subsidiary of the
Americans. This is not just the latest
proof of the contempt in which President Macron holds Britain, but also a mark
of French frustration with a country that France both needs and annoys
Paris in equal measure. France’s
clownish anti-British Europe Minister, Clement Beaune, went as far as to suggest
that AUKUS, “was a return into the American lap and a form of vassalisation”. Putting aside the reliance of the French
armed forces on American strategic enablers to undertake any military operation
of any scale, as well as the amount of advanced US technology in French
submarines, it is true the British have pretty much been a junior partner of
the Americans since at least 1956, probably 1942. What the French do not like to admit is that
they are too. Being a junior partner of
the US certainly does not stop the British saying what they need to behind
closed doors to the Americans and often very bluntly. And, as AUKUS attests,
the British still have more influence in Washington than the French. Far from
being strategically-isolated in the wake of Brexit Britain is finding its place
in a coalition that by any stretch of the imagination is an Anglosphere. In other words, Britain is doing what it has
always done, adapting. What the French and others fail to appreciate is that
AUKUS is not just built on enduring historical and cultural ties. During the
long campaign in Afghanistan it was only the British and Canadians (along with
the Australians) who were willing to operate permanently with the Americans in
the most dangerous parts of the country, Helmond and Kandahar, with all the
loss of life that entailed.
Much of the praise for AUKUS (and
he should be praised for it) must go to Prime Minister Boris Johnson who has
shown a steely determination to look after post-Brexit British interests just
as determinedly as President Macron looks after the French. As Johnson said, “We
will have a new opportunity to reinforce Britain’s place at the leading edge of
science and technology, strengthening our national expertise, and perhaps most
significant, the UK, Australia, and the US will be joined even more closely
together.” Not only has London
been able to keep a secret (for once) but Johnson has also shown that he is the
first ruthlessly strategic British prime minister since at least Tony Blair,
more likely Margaret Thatcher. As the
French are all too clumsily demonstrating he will need to be ruthless. Macron, like so many of the bien pensants in both London and Paris,
under-estimates Johnson the leader.
At the root of the tensions is
Brexit. The French continue to remind the British that Brexit means
Brexit. However, any powerful state
outside the EU is duty bound to craft its own foreign, security and defence
policy and the British are doing just that. Every time the French utter their Brexit is
Brexit mantra the British should remind the French that power is power. Johnson’s
strategic reasoning for backing AUKUS thus makes sense for the world’s fifth
largest economy and fifth biggest defence spender which invests almost a
quarter of Europe’s defence spend and which is Europe’s most capable
military power. Given that, AUKUS also puts the recent and ambitious Defence Command Paper and Integrated Review 2030 in their proper
strategic context. London must now follow through with its promise to increase
the British defence budget by 10% over the next four years and that will mean
surviving the forthcoming comprehensive spending review. The French know full well that defence power
buys influence and thus has a high value in this increasingly Machtpolitik world. The despatching of
the new Royal Navy Carrier Strike Group to the Indo-Pacific was clearly done
knowing AUKUS was in the pipeline and whilst it was undoubtedly showboating, it
was showboating for a reason.
For all the tensions between
London and Paris over the past few days it is also noticeable that apart from
cancelling a meeting between the French defence minister, Florence Parly. and
her British counterpart Ben Wallace, Paris has not withdrawn its ambassador to
the Court of St James. Naturally, Le
Drian justified the decision with a Pernod-sized dose of Macronian sarcasm by
saying that, “we are familiar with Britain’s permanent opportunism [patrician
heal thyself] and in this case they’re the spare wheel on the carriage”. The real reason for France treading a fine
line is that the military and defence-industrial relationship between Britain
and France remains vitally important to both countries and needs to be
preserved for the future (and not without irony secret co-operation over nuclear sustems). Britain and France also co-operate well on the UN
Security Council.
AUKUS and the French
Even if France has some grounds
for complaint the French are hopelessly over-playing their hand. To withdraw its
ambassadors from both Canberra and Washington, the first time since 1783 in the
case of the latter, and to cancel an event celebrating France’s alliance with
the US is just downright petulant (ironically to commemorate the French victory
over the Royal Navy at the Battle of the Capes in September 1781). The simple
fact is that Paris screwed up the submarine contract with the Australians and
enabled the Americans and British to out-manoeuvre France using the very kind
of statecraft in which Paris prides itself.
At the very least, France’s foreign intelligence service, DGSE, should
have picked up that something was developing between the three ‘anglosaxon’ powers, but they failed. Paris also had enough indicators that the
Australians were becoming increasingly concerned about the submarine
contract. As the Australian Prime
Minister Scott Morrison said, “I think they [the French] would have had every
reason to know that we had deep and grave concerns about the capability of the
Attack-class submarine was not going to meet our strategic interests and we
made it very clear that we would be making a decision based on our strategic
national interest”.
Where does France go next? With
the French presidency of the EU about to begin in January Paris will make much
of the need for European strategic autonomy in the wake of the Afghanistan
fiasco and now AUKUS. The irony is that France is right about the need for more
European strategic autonomy because a more capable Europe is vital for the
future of both Europe and NATO, but the paradox of such autonomy is that it
will only ever be realised outside the EU. Autonomy is a function of military power
not words. In the European context any
such vision will only ever be realised if Britain is party to it and yet France
has done all in its power to alienate Britain in recent years over Brexit. Whatever happens in the forthcoming German
federal elections there seems little chance that Berlin is going to become a
defence-strategic actor worthy of its economic power anytime soon, and no other
European state has any particular desire to support French ambitions. If France
wants access to Britain’s strengthening armed forces and intelligence services
Paris will need to negotiate and compromise over Brexit.
Much now will depend on how
France chooses to respond in the mid-term.
If, after a period of reflection, France adapts to AUKUS and rebuilds
its defence relationships with Australia, Britain and, above all, with the
Americans, then the damage can be repaired. If, on the other hand, France
fulfils its threat to end military and even trade co-operation with Australia,
and/or seeks to further damage Britain by deliberately exacerbating the
cross-Channel migrant crisis or even, heaven forbid, by discreetly supporting
Scottish independence, then AUKUS could mark the beginning of a very serious
rupture indeed.
AUKUS and China
Of course, all the above is a
strategic sideshow to the main event of AUKUS – China. The single most important change factor is
China’s growing maritime military power projection capability which is shifting
not just global geopolitics, but the very shape and structure of Western
alliances, coalitions and regimes. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) now
has more ships than the United States Navy (USN) and, critically, unlike the
Americans the overwhelming bulk of the Chinese force is concentrated in the
eastern Indo-Pacific.
Power is like a light to
moths. Whether they want to or not moths
are irresistibly drawn to it and in the Indo-Pacific there are two lights that
shine bright – America and China.
US-China strategic power competition in the Indo-Pacific will be the
defining geopolitical contest of the twenty-first century and AUKUS is the
first real step in realigning American-led Western strategy with power and
threat. As long as China remains
belligerent and bullying others will doubtless want to join it. AUKUS is thus the
product of a complex strategic shift in which changing strategy, threat,
requirement and method is interacting with geopolitics, history, even
culture.
France thus has a choice to make
about whether it wants to be part of this US global strategy, or stand apart
from it. Indeed, far from post-Brexit Britain
being strategically isolated, as some have suggested, it is far more likely
that France is in danger of becoming strategically-isolated from where the
West’s real defence power lies.
The future of AUKUS
Could France have been part of
AUKUS? For all the current tensions AUKUS must be seen in the context of a
massively bigger strategic power picture. Not only is AUKUS in many
respects the future of Western-led geopolitical networks, but the Americans and
the British also need the French because real power still resides with powerful states. Proof?
Interestingly (or perhaps not), just as Canberra, London and Washington
were announcing AUKUS, Brussels was launching the EU Indo-Pacific Strategy. No-one noticed because to paraphrase Hobbes
covenants without the sword are but words and of little use to any European. Equally, at
some future point it would be in London’and Washington's interest to find ways to associate
Paris with AUKUS, possibly as a party to the technological developments, but
then it takes two to tango, possibly four. The research and development of
military applications of artificial intelligence, cyber technologies, quantum
computing and new unmanned underwater systems at the heart of AUKUS will be
vital to the future military capabilities of all Western Allies (see my new
book “Future War and the Defence of
Europe” (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2021).
Equally, France needs to learn
some lessons from these past few days because there are at least three good
reasons why France was not invited to join AUKUS. First, whilst Paris is quite willing to play
power politics when it suits the French tend towards a much more formalistic, legalistic
approach that is in stark contrast to AUKUS.
Second, the Biden administration has been disappointed by French
attempts to water down NATO’s position on China. The language of the June 2021
Brussels NATO Summit Communique was clear: “China’s growing influence in
international policies can present challenges that we need to address together
as an Alliance. We will engage China with a view to defending the security
interests of the Alliance. We are increasingly confronted by cyber, hybrid, and
other asymmetric threats, including disinformation campaigns, and by the
malicious use of ever-more sophisticated emerging and disruptive technologies”. Immediately after the Summit President Macron
sought to water down the language and thus the importance of China to NATO. Third, France would probably never have
agreed to the transfer of nuclear propulsion technology to the Australians and
any attempts to involve Paris in the early stages of AUKUS would have almost
certainly seen France do all in its power to destroy it.
Is AUKUS the first real evidence
of a profound split in the West between an Anglosphere and a Eurosphere? It is highly unlikely. Few other Europeans
have come to France’s defence over AUKUS and so many other Europeans are
determined to prevent just such a split from happening to keep the Americans
and British engaged in continental defence.
AUKUS and Submarines
AUKUS is nominally about the
relative capabilities of submarines, so what of it? The new Chinese Type 095 nuclear attack submarine will
be the stealthiest and most capable such boat the PLAN have ever deployed. Australia needs a counter-submarine
capability that can match it. The merest
glance at the relative capabilities of the Attack/Barracuda
class and the Type 095 demonstrate
what a good waste of money it has been for the Australians to cancel the French contract.
The alternative? AUKUS offers the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) a
leap in technology and capability that would otherwise not have been possible
or affordable. Although reports suggest
the eight new nuclear hunter-killer submarines will be built with US technology
they are more likely to be based on the British Astute-class than the US Virginia-class
(in a recent US study the Astutes
were deemed marginally superior to the Virginias). The Astutes
have a smaller weapons payload than the Virginias, but the crew per boat is a
quarter less (98 versus 135) which matters and they also have unlimited range and
endurance (like the Virginias). The electronic countermeasures are also
extremely capable, and the Astutes
are faster underwater (30 knots versus 25 knots). They are also specifically designed for
surveillance operations as opposed to purely counterforce operations, which is
high on the Australian wish-list. They will also give Australia access to
advanced (and upgradable) American and British weapons systems. If the Australians do decide in 2023 they
want an upgraded Astute then BAE
Systems Maritime and Rolls Royce will need to deliver because it is unlikely
the Americans will give even the Australians or British access to the planned
SSN (X) they are working on and the black box technology therein.
The AUKUS squad
AUKUS is a new strategic pod of
hunter-killer powers who have decided to swim together in the same troubled
Pacific waters. As one senior US official put it
AUKUS is “a fundamental decision that binds decisively Australia to the United
States and Great Britain for generations”. Remember, not only do AUKUS
hunt in pacts, blood is thicker than Bordeaux!
Julian Lindley-French
