Asn earlier version of this article appeared in The Diplomat.
The diplomatic and media spat has only now begun to die down since the
announcement on Sept. 15 of the AUKUS security partnership between
Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. While the
agreement has been presented as allowing Australia access to sensitive
US technology to acquire eight nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarines,
the agreement also involves cooperation in other sensitive areas. AUKUS meant the concomitant cancellation of Australia’s contract with the French Naval Group to build 12 conventionally-powered submarines.
For the United States, the strategic benefits of AUKUS are symbolically important, but otherwise modest. Upon celebrating the 70th anniversary
of the ANZUS alliance with Australia and New Zealand, the United States
extolled Australia as its historic partner, the only country that has
been involved in every war—from the justified to the ill-considered—that
Washington has fought since 1917.
Today, Australia is completely on the US side in
its rivalry with China. Having a fellow member of the Five Eyes
intelligence-sharing arrangement (dating from World War II) and, more
recently, a member of the Quad as an even closer ally in the
Indo-Pacific is a plus for Washington. More concretely, having an
Australian submarine force of some eight vessels as an auxiliary fleet
to the US Navy in the South China Sea makes good, if marginal, strategic
sense for the Pentagon.
However, whether the perceived loss of autonomy and sovereignty is in
Australia’s own interest is a cause of some debate Down Under. While
supporting, in principle, the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines
under AUKUS, the opposition Labor Party has criticized the government
for the 10-year gap in submarine capacity that will result from waiting
till 2040 for the first of the yet-to-be-designed vessels to arrive.
It is also unlikely that the submarines will be built in the United
States for two reasons. On the one hand, as things stand today, the
specialized US shipyards already have their order books full over the
next decades producing vessels in much larger numbers—and in absolute
priority—for the US Navy. On the other, Australian requirements would
seem to be for a smaller hunter-killer submarine than those produced for
the US Navy, and rather for something akin to the Royal Navy’s existing
Astute-class submarine.
US manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin were already set to provide the
weapons systems for the 12 Australian submarines commissioned under the
aborted project with the French; they will now do so for the eight
vessels planned under AUKUS. US companies will, however, more fully
benefit from other aspects of AUKUS with the development and manufacture
of high-technology weaponry. Still, these cooperative arrangements were
already underway prior AUKUS. For example, the emblematically named
Loyal Wingman unmanned aerial vehicle developed by a subsidiary of
Boeing in Australia had its first flight in February of this year.
So, if in economic terms the United States is not the major beneficiary
of AUKUS, this leaves the United Kingdom. Somewhat surprisingly the role
and, above all, the economic interests of the United Kingdom in the
pact have been left unexamined. Britain has not suffered from any of the
diplomatic blowback that has occurred since Sept. 15. For example,
while Paris recalled its ambassadors from Canberra and Washington, its
ambassador in London remained in place. At the time this was interpreted
as a subtle way of pooh-poohing the importance of the United Kingdom.
Perhaps, also, given the parlous state of relations across the Channel
as the unfortunate but predictable consequences of Brexit are worked
through, it may have seemed unhelpful to add another area of contention.
Most commentators have essentially highlighted the symbolic value of
AUKUS for London. At worst, this means reviving a kind of Anglosphere
with echoes of Churchill and Roosevelt or even shades of a return of the
British Empire in the Indo-Pacific. At best, it involves giving some
substance to the post-Brexit trope of a Global Britain, returning as a
major security actor in the region almost 60 years after the withdrawal
from “east of Suez.” From this perspective, the timing is not
inconsequential. The AUKUS announcement was made the
day before the presentation by the president of the European
Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, to the European Parliament of a
Franco-German-inspired major policy paper on the EU Strategy for the
Indo-Pacific.
The timing of the announcement may have been prompted by London to
eclipse any European foreign policy grandstanding. If so, it was quite
effective: the EU Strategy went largely unreported. However, for
Canberra it seems not to have been clever to offend a key European
country while in negotiations for an EU-Australia free trade agreement.
Beyond the symbolism, and the post-Brexit one-upmanship, the importance
of AUKUS for Britain lies elsewhere. A recent post from International
Institute for Strategic Studies in London traces the genesis of AUKUS to
a request made by the chief of the Royal Australian Navy to his British
counterpart. This request is understandable: Historically the
Australian submarine fleet has been dependent on expertise from the
Royal Navy and several senior officers are from Britain. But other than
questions of comradeship, for very rational reasons, the British seemed
to have jumped on this opportunity. At a practical strategic level,
AUKUS will enable Britain to have more permanent basing rights for its
own nuclear-powered submarines in Australia. This would enable a more
sustained naval presence in the Indo-Pacific rather than the fleeting
deployment, as at the moment, of a naval group around the Royal Navy’s
flagship, HMS Queen Elizabeth.
Nevertheless, the most important benefit of AUKUS for Britain is for
what former US President Dwight Eisenhower famously described as the
military-industrial complex. A mere two days after AUKUS was announced,
the British government awarded two contracts to BAE Systems and
Rolls-Royce for initial design work on a new generation of
nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarines for the Royal Navy. It makes a
great deal of industrial sense to share design costs with a reliable
partner-client, i.e., Australia, especially as BAE Systems already has a
significant presence there.
Given the issues of technical specifications and industrial capacity
mentioned above it would appear that, by default at least, most of the
production will occur in the United Kingdom. This would involve a lower
level of local production in Adelaide compared to that under the
contract with the French. Moreover, the yet-to-be designed class of
submarines for Australia would enter service in the 2040s, the same
timeframe as that mooted for the British subs. This is a decade after
both the next generation of US nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarines,
as well as the initially planned entry into service of the
conventionally powered submarines envisaged in Australia’s contract with
the French. Thus, a major motivation for Britain is in the industrial
logic of economies of scale. Such economies would benefit most of all
the United Kingdom.
Beyond this understandable industrial logic, there are also electoral
concerns that underpin the AUKUS announcement. In his short declaration
on Sept. 15 with the US president and his Australian counterpart,
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted on the jobs that would be
created in his country. He somewhat heavy-handedly insisted these
industrial jobs would be created in those poorer, pro-Brexit
constituencies in northern England that swung to the conservatives in
the 2019 elections, but which cannot be considered as permanent Tory
territory.
As European middle powers and important arms manufacturers, France and
Britain share a similar approach. While appealing to historic ties, such
sales of weaponry are designed to tie the buyer into a degree of
international partnership. The difference, however, is that France,
unlike Britain, is a resident middle-power in the Indo-Pacific. The
French territory of New Caledonia is Australia’s closest eastern
neighbor, so in that sense France’s now much-damaged partnership with
Australia also has a domestic dimension.
It is therefore not surprising that the loss of the submarine contract
has engendered not merely recriminations, but a concerted reevaluation
in the last two months of French—and even European—strategy in the
Indo-Pacific, and the place of Australia within that framework. It
remains to be seen whether Canberra’s decision to throw in its lot with
the United States, to the detriment of damaging relations with other
partners, is in the county’s national interest.
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