Boris Johnson proposes France join Australia, UK and US in AUKUS

The former UK prime minister recalls the creation of AUKUS and says France should join the nuclear submarine pact.

Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson. Picture: AFP

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Boris Johnson believes France could and should one day join the AUKUS nuclear submarine pact between Australia, the UK and US because it is a Pacific power and part of “the great Western alliance” structure, and already collaborates with the UK on nuclear technology.

“AUKUS is an amazing thing because it shows the political, strategic, emotional closeness of Australia, the UK and the US, and their willingness to share the most secret details of nuclear technology,” the former UK prime minister told The Australian in an exclusive interview.

“France has always been outside that with the force de frappe (nuclear deterrence force) and so on. They’ve always had a different approach. But there are things that we do together with the French on nuclear technology … that we share with France.

“Maybe one day France could be involved. France is a Pacific power, has been for a long time, and there’s no reason in principle (why not). But at the moment it is, no question, it is an Anglosphere product. That’s what it’s there to do. But it’s not meant to be exclusive or discriminatory or indeed hostile to anybody.”

In his memoir, Unleashed (HarperCollins), provided to The Australian ahead of its local publication on October 30, the former prime minister (2019-22) describes himself as a principal architect of AUKUS and “matchmaker” between Australia and the US at the G7 summit in June 2021.

“It is about much more than building new submarines together,” he writes. “It is about collaboration in hypersonics, AI, quantum – and, frankly, it is the sort of project the French should be involved in. Maybe, one day, they will join.”

Mr Johnson reveals the Morrison government initially proposed an Australia-UK-built submarine using Rolls-Royce nuclear propulsion without any US involvement, and did not seek US collaboration.

He writes that Australian Navy chiefs were “in a state of some anxiety” over the contract with France to supply diesel-electric-powered submarines, given production delays and concerns over being detected, and asked if the two countries could build “the next generation of submarine” together. But sharing nuclear secrets required US approval, so a trilateral pact was proposed.

“I needed at Carbis Bay to persuade (Joe Biden) to agree, in secret, to a brilliant and ambitious geostrategic proposal, whose only downside – sad but unavoidable – was that it was going to put French noses badly out of joint,” Mr Johnson writes. “When Australian PM Scott Morrison arrived at Carbis Bay he was in a quandary, and he needed UK help.”

In the interview with The Australian, Mr Johnson described the need to “conceal what was going on” from French President Emmanuel Macron, and “there was a lot of skulduggery” behind the scenes at the G7 summit. “We had to pretend to Macron that nothing was going on and the French were all very suspicious,” he said.

Mr Johnson organised a “discreet three-way meeting” with the US President, the Australian prime minister and himself that gave birth to AUKUS. “I acted as a kind of matchmaker,” he writes.

The result was that Mr Morrison reneged on the $90bn deal with France to provide Australia with diesel-electric-powered submarines and the $368bn AUKUS pact was negotiated. Mr Macron subsequently accused Mr Morrison of lying to him about the cancelled contract at the G20 summit in Rome that year.

“If Macron had got wind of AUKUS at Carbis Bay he would have freaked out badly, and used all the leverage he had – in Washington and Canberra and London – to scupper the plan,” Mr Johnson writes.

Read Troy Bramston’s full interview with Boris Johnson in The Weekend Australian on Saturday