AUKUS alliance: Morrison has seated Australia at top table of diplomacy

Australia is now at the centre of the West’s response to China’s challenge.

Scott Morrison and Joe Biden in the US this week. Picture: AFP

The story this week was not France but China. While the media cycle was dominated by French fury, history was being made in Washington with the emergence of two strategic entities that will shape the Indo-­Pacific – their purpose being to constrain Beijing’s power, assertion and ambition.

Australia is now at the centre of these geostrategic shifts. While the media story was about Australia’s diplomatic debacle with French President Emmanuel Macron, the legacy of Scott Morrison’s US visit will be strategic initiatives that shape Australian foreign and defence policy for decades under Liberal and Labor governments.

Contrary to the media reports, Australia’s influence in the Indo-Pacific is growing, not receding. Morrison is persona non grata in Paris but feted in Washington. It would be nice to dream he could be feted in both capitals but that was never possible.

The international reaction to AUKUS is more positive than negative, a reality obscured by the French trauma.

The US decision, along with the UK, to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarine technology –along with a range of capabilities concerning cyber, AI, quantum and hi-tech offensive warfare – is an event of global and regional significance.

On display has been the power of America’s alliance patronage for those granted it, witness Morrison, and those briefly jilted, ­witness Macron.

The big picture take-out from this week – looking beyond the confusing cross currents of anger and co-operation – is President Joe Biden’s determination to contest the China challenge with new diplomatic and strategic commitments. Biden is sending a global message post-Afghanistan.

These US commitments were on display first with Morrison winning support from the American political system for the new three-way AUKUS defence technology partnership and, second, in the inaugural person-to-person leadership level meeting in Washington of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue involving the US, Japan, Australia and India.

“Today, Australia received overwhelming support for our AUKUS partnership,” Morrison said on Wednesday after meetings with Biden, US officials and congressional leaders. “President Biden gets it, the congress gets it, the Senate gets it. And that is a great encouragement to Australia. They understand the challenges we’ve been facing.”

He said there was “overwhelming support” for Australia “to establish a new submarine fleet” with bipartisan backing on Capitol Hill. He called the political grouping of the Quad and the defence partnership of AUKUS as “completely complementary”. He said this was view of India’s Narendra Modi and Japan’s Yoshihide Suga. In short, the two entities reinforce each other, one political, one strategic. Morrison runs an “everybody gains” message, while China escalates its threatening rhetoric.

Macron’s anger is spread wide – towards Australia and the US. He is rightly angry with Australia for breaking a contract. But he is angry with Biden for another ­reason – for not appreciating France’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific given its troops, territories and money in the region. Macron was insulted not just because he wasn’t told, but because France’s Indo-Pacific strategy wasn’t recognised, in some form or another, in Biden’s agreement on AUKUS.

Macron wants to be part of the action. He will forgive Biden long before he forgives Morrison.

The Biden-Macron midweek reconciliation phone call agreed the AUKUS decision would have benefited from “open consultation among allies”, and France is now returning its ambassador to Washington. But there is no Macon-Morrison call. The Australia-France freeze may last a long time. That is a significant negative. But claims Morrison should have briefed the French before AUKUS was finalised and announced are nonsense – Macron’s subsequent reaction proves that, if notified, he would have acted in protest or to thwart, hence the imperative for secrecy.

As for Morrison, there are two false views of his policy: that it constitutes an unprecedented breach of sovereignty; and that it involves a turning away from Asian engagement. The multi-level structure being set up through AUKUS and the Quad is not about mutual exclusivity – it both deepens Australia’s alliance with the US and it deepens networks of co-operation within the Indo-Pacific.

Morrison’s central objective throughout has been to secure a fully engaged Biden administration working in collaboration with the region to balance the assertive tactics of Beijing and, in the long run, to ensure the region does not succumb to Chinese primacy based on its authoritarian model.

The AUKUS agreement is a transformative departure in US thinking – offering nuclear submarine technology to another nation, in this case Australia. At home it is a near revolutionary event for the centre-left of politics with the ALP leadership, shadow cabinet and caucus endorsing in principle nuclear-powered submarines for Australia.

Kevin Rudd and Paul Keating are sirens of outrage. But have no doubt, Labor is locked in. The decision is taken. If Anthony Albanese wins the election, a new Labor government will preside over a transformed world – a program for nuclear-powered subs and a deeper integration with US war-fighting technology, with the Greens in perpetual anger and a fracture with much of the Labor rank and file.

The four senior ALP figures who were briefed a fortnight ago – Albanese, Richard Marles, Penny Wong and Brendan O’Connor – are all committed. They are explicit: they accept the capability argument for nuclear subs. That Albanese and Wong are lions of the left helps. There were no dissident voices in the shadow cabinet.

In the interim, Labor is desperate to build product discrimination from Morrison. In political terms Labor, cannot leave the impression it is rolling over before Morrison while, in fact, it is accepting his agreement. That means attacking his diplomacy, the breach with the French and raising the multitude of unanswered questions since this is only an in-principle agreement with no decision yet on the actual boat.

This quest for separation was on display in Wong’s Thursday speech to the US Studies Centre. Wong said “we accept the advice provided” on the case for nuclear submarines. But she then asked whether Australia would control the technology, and capability and even asked whether with the nuclear submarines “we can act alone when needs be” – the Keating point.

This is a valid question about autonomy but gives Morrison scope for political retaliation. His lines were potentially deadly. Morrison said there was “bipartisan support” for AUKUS in America yet within days the Labor Party “seems to be having an each-way bet”. Ramming home the proposition, he added: “I don’t have each-way bets on national security.”

Labor walks a fine line. It cannot criticise so much it gifts Morrison with a credible argument that Labor doesn’t believe in the deal. A national security divide over AUKUS would be Morrison’s election dream. Labor, ­presumably, will ensure that it doesn’t happen.

Bipartisanship is an essential condition for this epic Australian project. It demands a national effort on a scale we have not seen before. Former secretary of defence Dennis Richardson, who presided over Defence’s recommendations for the French sub in 2016 and who supports the new deal, told Inquirer: “This will be the most difficult and complex defence program that this country has ever undertaken by a ­factor of 10.”

Whoever wins the next election – Morrison or Albanese – will face an unprecedented test of our governance, industry, organisational and defence force ability. Existing norms, structures and thinking won’t suffice.

There are two certainties. First, defence spending must rise relentlessly over the next 20 years far above 2 per cent of GDP.

Morrison has made this clear. Asked by Inquirer, Wong said the need for increases in the defence budget had “bipartisan support”. Nuclear submarines will place a greater burden on the budget than conventional submarines. The Australian public will be supportive until it realises the price to pay – at which point the costs will face resistance from a public opposing any reduction in its ­social benefits.

Second, the 18-month review set up by Morrison must tackle the formidable problem of the submarine capability gap out to 2040 – when the nuclear submarines begin to enter the water. It appears the AUKUS agreement doesn’t directly address the gap. Defence Minister Peter Dutton told Sky News that Australia could look at leasing or cutting a deal for US nuclear subs in the ­interim. But that’s an extremely hard task. Another option is for the UK to station some nuclear submarines in Australia, an option that Morrison kept open when asked.

Frankly, this “gap” seems wide open. The Collins-class submarines will be revamped. But the government, now the AUKUS agreement is done, will face immense pressure to secure some nuclear presence in the “gap” ­period. How hard is this in technical and management terms? Richardson highlighted the problems: “The first challenge is the absence of trained and skilled personnel in the nuclear submarine area. We have virtually no such high-end skills in Australia.

“We will need those skills and experience in the actual program to get the damn thing built. We will need to get a lot of that expertise from the US and UK but even in those countries those skills are in relatively short supply. We will then need a trained crew.

“Most of the captains of the US nuclear-powered submarines have PhDs or qualifications in the nuclear area. A US Virginia-class submarine, for instance, has 10 or so such people and we have virtually none in the entire Australian navy so we’ll be starting out from scratch. All that can be delivered but it will take time. It cannot be done quickly.

“The facilities to build the ­nuclear-powered submarines will probably need to be redone. It’s doubtful the shipbuilding facilities for the French conventional submarine will be suitable for the nuclear-powered submarines in terms of dimensions, strength and safety.”

Leaving management of this project to the Defence Department would surely be high risk. New structures and new leaders are going to be required. It must become a whole-of-government prime ministerial priority.

Morrison’s visit to the US caps an extraordinary two-year Australian diplomatic saga with China. Have no doubt, both AUKUS and the Quad are China’s work. This is surely one of the most inept chapters of ­strategic diplomacy in decades. Beijing’s tactics have not just alienated the US, India and Japan but have driven them into countervailing measures.

As for Australia, Beijing’s economic coercion led directly to Morrison’s investigation of the nuclear-powered submarine option and his approach to the UK and US. As Morrison said, he moved because “strategic circumstances” had changed – code for China. He felt conventional submarines would not do the job. Finally, it was China that was the decisive factor in Biden’s decision to share nuclear technology with Australia, the first such action since the US extended this technology to Britain in 1958.

Japan supports the AUKUS agreement. India’s Narendra Modi has been supportive. The Philippines is keen. The debate in Canada is over why it wasn’t ­included. Singapore has been briefed and seems satisfied. Britain, one of the principals, now looks to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Malaysia has raised concerns. Indonesia, while initially tentative, is unlikely to ­oppose the partnership.

Many Asian countries will say nothing but welcome AUKUS. Rudd accused Morrison of dividing the Quad and polarising opinion in Southeast Asia – let’s see what happens but it is doubtful whether this critique will stand the test of time.

The three conditions Labor has imposed for its support will help clarify the situation in the region. Labor supports the agreement on the basis there is no civil nuclear industry established, that there are no nuclear weapons, and there is no infringement of Australia’s obligations under the non-proliferation treaty. Morrison has met all three conditions.

The other remarkable feature of the week was China’s notification that it wants to join the 11-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade deal, an organisation conspicuous for the absence of the US due to Donald Trump’s counter-productive trade protectionism. China’s move is clever – it wants to outflank both the US.

This gives Australia diplomatic leverage over Beijing, since all TPP members need to agree on new entrants. If Beijing is serious it will need to further reform its economy to meet the TPP rules and, obviously, abandon its trade coercion against Australia while entering into ministerial and official communications.

This will test the diplomacy of the Morrison government – it needs to keep the door open to Beijing to maximise Australian leverage.