How Joe Biden threw Scott Morrison under the bus
A confidential 15-page document sheds light on who’s telling the truth in the war of words between Biden, Macron and Morrison on submarines.
In the palatial Eisenhower building, a few steps from Joe Biden’s Oval Office in Washington, there is a confidential 15-page document that raises serious doubts about the President’s claim he believed France knew ahead of time that its $90bn contract with Australia would be terminated.
The document shows Joe Biden’s advisers in the White House National Security Council were fully aware France had not been told ahead of the announcement of the new Australia-US-UK AUKUS pact in September that its contract to build French Attack-class submarines was doomed.
Mr Biden told French president Emmanuel Macron at the G20 leader’s meeting in Rome: “I was under the impression that France had been informed long before that the (French) deal would not come through. I honest to God did not know you had not.”
The document, negotiated in secret between Biden’s National Security Council and Australian and British officials, describes, to the hour, how the world would be told of the new Australia-US-UK AUKUS pact.
It sheds important light on who is telling the truth in the current war of words between Mr Biden, Mr Macron and Scott Morrison over submarines.
The document is, in effect, a 15-page timeline, describing the precise sequence of events which would take place announcing that Australia would be seeking US or British nuclear-powered submarines rather than French-made conventional subs.
The document, which Mr Biden’s closest advisers signed off on, made it clear Australia would tell France on that day, September 16, that its $90bn submarine contract was being scrapped.
The American NSC officials knew that France would be taken by surprise and that it would be angry, although they underestimated the strength of that anger.
In the Eisenhower Executive Office building – ironically built in 1871 in French Second Empire style as a homage to France – US officials spent hours strategising with Canberra about how best to placate Paris once AUKUS was announced.
The fact Mr Biden’s NSC officials knew this timeline on how the French would be told – and even helped to negotiate it – raises serious questions about Mr Biden’s claim that he believed France “had been informed” that its submarine contract was doomed.
In his meeting with Mr Macron, on the first day of the Group of 20 world leaders summit in Rome, Mr Biden also claimed the handling of the sub deal was “clumsy”.
“It was not done with a lot of grace,” he said. “I was under the impression that certain things happened that didn’t. But I want to make it clear that France is an extremely, extremely valued partner. Extremely.”
The President’s words are a slap at Australia, but how should they be interpreted?
The revelation of the existence of the 15-page AUKUS timeline offers clear evidence Mr Biden’s advisers knew that the French would be surprised and upset.
“Everything was timed and understood completely,” one source in Canberra said. “We had a decision timeline that everyone had to hit on different marks. The announcement was made within the same news cycle because you can’t cancel the biggest procurement in our history and not have an answer to the question of what next? The sequencing was understood by everybody that that was the only way we could do it.”
So did Mr Biden’s NSC advisers fail to properly brief the President of the status of the French contract? Did the ageing President simply misunderstand the situation? Or is Mr Biden playing politics by throwing Australia under the bus in a measured way, to help repair America’s relationship with France.
Each option is considered possible, but the betting in Canberra is Mr Biden is playing politics. The President is giving Canberra a gentle but calculated whack in the knowledge that it won’t hurt relations with Australia but will do much to help repair his relationship with Mr Macron.
What is now clear is that the White House NSC officials who worked on AUKUS badly underestimated how angry the French would be.
France was so outraged at the US involvement in providing Australia an alternative to the French submarine contract that it briefly recalled its ambassador from Washington.
The diplomatic rift was front page news across the US and was an unanticipated embarrassment for the White House. During the super-secret negotiations over AUKUS, US negotiators discussed the expected French fallout with Australia and Britain but did not spend as long on this issue as they did on other questions.
The Americans considered the French reaction to be a problem for Australia rather than the US. The White House did not expect French fury to be directed at Washington as well as Canberra.
During the confidential discussions with Australia, NSC officials in Washington were more concerned about other issues. How would China respond? How would Japan and Korea react? What were the implications for non-proliferation? How do we deal with Canada, a fellow member of the Five-Eyes intelligence alliance, who also wanted technology which would be promised to Australia under AUKUS?
Australians close to the negotiations believe France is misrepresenting how surprised it was that the French Attack-class subs contract was cancelled. They claim Paris was given a series of very strong hints, including during Mr Morrison’s meeting with Mr Macron in June, that the French conventional boats may no longer meet Australia’s strategic needs.
Mr Morrison himself claims he told Mr Macron during their June meeting that the French submarines were not going to meet Australia’s needs. However, France was never told directly that their contract was doomed.
The French were completely blindsided by the creation of the AUKUS deal for Australia to obtain nuclear-powered boats with the help of the US and Britain. The fact that this new pact had been negotiated for months behind closed doors without France being aware of it is what has sent France into such a rage.
When asked in Rome if he thought Mr Morrison had lied over the affair, Mr Macron said bluntly “I don’t think, I know.”
So now Mr Biden has allowed Australia to be collateral damage for what he sees as the larger issue of repairing relations with France.
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