AUKUS: The stakes could not be higher for Scott Morrison
He gets political results yet his misjudgments, flawed diplomacy and aggression under pressure provoke backlash.
There has never been an overseas visit like this. Scott Morrison engaged in a nasty personal spat with Emmanuel Macron, was indirectly criticised by Joe Biden, sledged viciously by Malcolm Turnbull, and became a fresh target for Labor assailing him on truth and trust.
The Morrison paradox only deepens. He gets political results, witness the AUKUS nuclear submarine agreement and extracting net zero at 2050 from the Coalition – yet his misjudgments, flawed diplomacy and aggression under pressure provoke a backlash.
In this week’s furore, with Morrison at the epicentre, there were no heroes. France turned its justified grievance against Australia into a performance of narcissistic political hysteria; Morrison made everything worse by revealing his compulsion for punitive over-reaction; Biden looks alarmingly weak as the senior ally in which Australia has invested so much; Turnbull’s almost addictive campaign against his successor looms as a destabilising election threat; and Labor, smelling political blood, blundered by aligning too far with France against Australia.
The diplomatic landscape is looking grim. France’s assault on Australia, while different, echoes that of China with its insistence that Australia is at fault and must make amends. Australia misjudged President Macron, who sees himself as a world figure and heads a country whose substance is exceeded only by its pride.
Macron has played Biden beautifully. With protests and pressure, he has got truckloads of apologies from Biden. Macron knows it is only the US, not Australia, who can give France meaningful concessions for this grand insult while he shovels all his rage and blame onto Morrison. And what might Biden offer besides sweet words? Who knows?
For Morrison, AUKUS is what matters. It is non-negotiable, a deal to last “forever”. Australia expects Biden to hold firm, fully aware that Macron wants to either subtly undermine the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal or get inside it.
This week’s speech from French ambassador Jean-Pierre Thebault was an unprecedented assault by an ambassador on the host government and its prime minister (not mentioning him by name). He accused Morrison of deceit and lies, warned other countries could not trust him, claimed other leaders might find their personal messages “weaponised” against them, alleged Australia’s signature as a partner was unreliable, attacked Australia over climate change, and questioned whether AUKUS was viable or sustainable.
But it was Macron who took the conflict to a personal level with his taunt when asked by the Australian media whether he believed Morrison had lied to him over the submarine contract. His immortal words – “I don’t think, I know” – will stick in bilateral relations.
But there is a bigger point. Macron’s insult, delivered with a smirk, threw this dispute into domestic politics. Macron gifted Morrison’s opponents a golden sledge, fuel to Labor’s campaign that Morrison can’t be trusted and doesn’t tell the truth. Ambassador Thebault provided an 80-minute elaboration. “We won’t buy anymore on cheap words,” he said. “It is up to the Australian government to tell us today what they mean when they say they are sincere. Why did they lie one day and now what can they propose?”
This week’s embittered resentment from the French only confirms the judgment Morrison made – France would never have been a satisfactory nuclear-submarine partner for Australia.
Labor went for the political jugular. Uncritical of France, it aligned with the French against Morrison. Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong branded Morrison “dishonest” and “untrustworthy”, accused him of “vandalism” and of having “a wanton disregard” for Australia’s international reputation, claimed he was “prepared to damage, at any cost” our alliances, and likened him to Donald Trump.
Morrison made several mistakes in dealing with Macron.
First, he failed to convey genuine and immediate personal regret at having to mislead and humiliate Macron over the cancellation of the French contract when Australia, the UK and US agreed the French would not be told until Plan B – the AUKUS announcement – was about to be made.
Second, he misjudged the continual French rage. While Morrison wrote to Macron and they had a phone discussion on the eve of Morrison’s departure for Rome and Glasgow, the Australian view that “things were being worked through” was never the French view. The French version of this phone call was ominous – about broken trust and Australia needing to repair relations.
In Rome, Macron twisted the political knife. “You have to respect allies and partners,” he told journalists. “This was not OK.” He targeted Morrison, not Australia, but Morrison is Australia’s PM. Being called a liar, Morrison had to reply. Critics denying this are nuts. No Australian prime minister could ignore this insult. But Morrison got his response wrong. He should have kept it at the national level but Morrison was stung and went personal.
Third, he should never have leaked Macron’s text message to him on the eve of the AUKUS announcement. It achieved nothing. The message didn’t even prove Morrison’s case. It merely became another excuse for French rage and ALP political attack.
Morrison had tried to ring Macron to break the bad news two days before the scheduled three-way nuclear-powered submarine announcement on September 16 from Morrison, Biden and Boris Johnson. Macron wouldn’t take the call. Probably fearing the worse, he texted: “Should I expect good or bad news for our joint submarine ambitions?”
This merely proved that Macron didn’t know but had suspicions. He hadn’t been told the French contract was being terminated. He had been misled. He was never briefed during the long pathway to AUKUS, since secrecy was an agreed imperative between the three partners. Australia, the US and UK had agreed that the French would be told only when AUKUS was announced.
In his media conference in Glasgow, Morrison said he didn’t wish to “personalise” the issue, but that’s what he did. He rejected the questioning of Australia’s integrity and what he called “the slurs that have been placed on Australia”. Morrison said: “I’ve got broad shoulders. But those slurs, I’m not going to cop sledging at Australia. I’m not going to cop that on behalf of Australians.”
This won’t help relations with France. On display was Morrison’s character – when attacked or provoked, he pushes back hard. In his own mind Morrison fuses an attack on him as an attack on Australia. Macron took the issue down to domestic politics and that’s how Morrison responded. Critics who attack Morrison without referring to Macron’s extraordinary provocation shouldn’t be taken seriously.
The fact is, everybody played domestic politics, with Morrison’s most prominent domestic critic being Turnbull, also in Glasgow. Turnbull feels obliged to provide a running critique of Morrison. “He’s lied to me on many occasions,” Turnbull said of Morrison. “Scott has always had a reputation for telling lies.” In case you missed the point, Turnbull said: “This is all the product of Scott’s duplicity. He can twist and turn and leak a text message here and leak a document there … but ultimately the failure here was not being honest.”
Turnbull becomes a moral guardian for truth.
His intervention aims to maximise the political damage for Morrison. Whether the issue is climate change, honesty or submarines, Turnbull looms as Morrison’s most high-profile critic, unsurprisingly getting more media attention than Labor. Turnbull is proud of his friendship with Macron – which is genuine – and on this occasion Turnbull stood with the French leader against Morrison.
Turnbull’s attacks will hurt Morrison. There is no point Liberals pretending otherwise. Of course, they will also damage Turnbull and his legacy, though Turnbull seems either unaware of this or not to care. His quest, apparently, is to cut down his successor and the more he pursues this the more he will court hostility from the party he led as PM.
While Morrison has been damaged, the politics are more complex. Morrison was entirely justified in cancelling the French contract and securing the AUKUS agreement. In its formal response, Labor supported this. While the challenge ahead is immense, Morrison is likely to have secured one of the most far-reaching defence agreements for Australia since World War II, leading to a nuclear-powered submarine fleet.
“I have to put Australia’s interests before any interest that involves potentially offending others,” Morrison said in Glasgow. This is the core of the issue. The notion Morrison would have said “no” to the nuclear option with the US and UK – that he had worked so hard to secure – in order to preserve the French contract is absurd.
When Morrison says, in the teeth of French rage, that “Australia’s defence interests had to come first” and that hurting the French was the necessary price, he will win majority support from the Australian public. Any idea public opinion will back French claims that Morrison has made a terrible blunder is a delusion. Labor is walking a dangerously fine line – aligning with the French against Morrison but still saying, as a footnote, that it backs AUKUS.
Given Morrison’s natural aggression and that AUKUS is his personal triumph, you can expect him to retaliate and run on AUKUS as an election issue. And when Labor says it supports the agreement, Morrison can be expected to reply: “Don’t believe them, they stood with the French against us.” It sounds like a cut-through line.
What did Turnbull say? “I think Scott Morrison should apologise,” he told the media. Really? Morrison should apologise to Macron. This is hard to take seriously. Now, if Morrison was going to eat humble pie – and there was an argument for this – it had to come immediately after the September 16 announcement.
The notion that Morrison, having been branded a liar by Macron, would then apologise to France for his past offences, defies belief. How would that rate with public opinion?
In Glasgow, Morrison ran through the entire submarine narrative. He said Australia would have proceeded with the French contract for 12 conventionally-powered submarines if the AUKUS agreement had not materialised. There were problems but Morrison was “confident” they could have been resolved. He had publicly thanked Macron for all his efforts to make the contract work.
But Morrison’s big play was always hoping to deliver the nuclear submarine option with the UK and US. The point is, AUKUS was Morrison’s idea. “Australia initiated this,” he told the media. “The United States and the United Kingdom did not come to us and seek to undermine the contract.” Exactly – it was the other way round.
It was only at the Carbis Bay trilateral Morrison-Biden-Johnson meeting on June 12 that Morrison raised the proposal with Biden. The US system had been negotiating with Australia for months. Biden’s reaction was positive but the deal was far from finalised.
Four days later, Morrison dined with Macron in Paris. At this dinner Morrison raised his doubts whether conventional submarines would suit given the more serious change in strategic circumstances. But Morrison – as he confirms – did not tell Macron about the AUKUS negotiations, nor that Australia was planning to terminate the contract.
The final approval from the Biden administration for AUKUS came only days before the September announcement. “I was not going to leave Australia stranded between two projects,” Morrison said. The negotiations with the UK and US were held in deepest secrecy.
As the US said later, it regarded this decision as “unprecedented”. Morrison could not afford to take any risks or chances. There were different views within the administration. Briefing Macron beforehand would have been dangerous folly, as France’s subsequent behaviour proves. When the Americans gave the green light, Morrison moved. That meant a devastating blow for the French.
But Morrison misjudged Macron’s skill and resolution. Macron has plunged Biden and his administration into protracted diplomatic appeasement of France.
Biden has made concessions on European defence, told Macron he didn’t know France wasn’t informed about the cancellation, and agreed the whole thing was “clumsy”.
You get the message: America is sorry; Biden doesn’t read his briefs; and Morrison is the fall guy.
Biden has showered Macron with love. Since Australia was the AUKUS winner and France the loser, this can make sense. Winners can afford the loser being feted. Indeed, Morrison won’t mind being the fall guy as long as Biden is rock solid on AUKUS and things settle down.
Meanwhile, Australians who think we have a special sentimentality in our language with America should check out Biden’s tributes to Macron: “We have no older or no more loyal, no more decent ally than France. You’ve been with us from the beginning. You’re the reason, in part, why we became an independent country.”
When the diplomatic hysteria dies down, what really counts is Biden, not Macron. Australia has pulled off a nuclear deal with the US and UK that Morrison called a “forever partnership”.
Now, forever doesn’t exist in realpolitik – but it does in Morrison’s mind.
The stakes could not be higher. As a result, we need an America totally committed to the agreement, by letter, spirit and action. That needs to be affirmed in the clearest terms from Washington.
As for Australia, the nuclear-powered submarine deal is one of the biggest challenges in our history. The benchmarks we must meet with the US – technical, regulatory, diplomatic – are daunting and unprecedented.
We cannot allow domestic politics to talk ourselves out of this historic pact.
Morrison needs to make a ministerial statement better defining the agreement and killing some of the mad speculation.
And Labor needs to speak up to purge the growing impression Labor backed this deal out of electoral politics, not conviction.
Without demonstrated conviction, this deal will collapse and Labor needs to think about that.
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