Joe Biden feared AUKUS subs deal could weaken West’s unity on Ukraine

Bob Woodward’s new book reveals that Kamala Harris was sent to Paris to repair US-French relations over the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal.

US President Joe Biden in St Pete Beach, Florida, on Sunday. Picture: AFP

When Scott Morrison reneged on a $90bn deal with France to supply diesel-electric-powered submarines and negotiated AUKUS with the US and Britain, US Vice-President Kamala Harris was dispatched to Paris to “repair” US-French relations, which had fallen to a new low and risked Western unity over Ukraine, according to Bob Woodward’s new book.

French President Emmanuel Macron was “seething” over the $368bn trilateral AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine agreement and US President Joe Biden told Ms Harris that fixing relations with Paris was her primary assignment after the French ambassador to Washington was recalled “in a dramatic display of displeasure”.

After Ms Harris met Mr Macron in Paris, she told Mr Biden that he did not raise the AUKUS agreement at all. The meeting went well and felt good, she reported, and there was “no lingering acrimony over the AUKUS submarine deal”.

A second assignment for Ms Harris was to brief Mr Macron on the latest “intelligence about Russia’s war plans” ahead of the expected invasion of Ukraine. The US was worried about French unity as the West dealt with Russian aggression. “We need a plan and we need alliance solidarity,” Mr Biden told Ms Harris.

Woodward’s book, War, provided exclusively to The Australian in advance of its release today also reports that a French government official phoned US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and unleashed a loud and furious stream of invective after the AUKUS deal was announced.

“We are all taking incoming from our French counterparts and genuflecting and apologising,” US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told Woodward.

“Austin’s French counterpart called him up and gives him a 22-minute diatribe of American perfidy. When he finished, Austin replied ‘Acknowledged, next topic’.”

Mr Macron accused then prime minister Mr Morrison of lying to him about the cancelled submarine contract. The allegation was made at the G20 summit in Rome in 2021. When asked whether he believed Mr Morrison had lied to him, the President responded: “I don’t think, I know.”

The Australian subsequently reported in 2021 that then defence minister Peter Dutton believed if the French were told earlier about the cancellation of the contract with Naval Group, they would have pressured the US to withdraw from AUKUS and “probably” would have succeeded.

“If you had of informed the French earlier and they had of made that public and not respected the advice that we had given them, the Americans probably would have pulled out of the deal with the violent reaction from the French,” Mr Dutton said.

“The French would have approached it like that, knowing that they could upset or unsettle the Americans.”

Woodward’s highly anticipated book also reveals that then president Donald Trump secretly sent coronavirus tests to Russia’s Vladimir Putin; that US officials thought there was a 50 per cent chance Putin would use nuclear weapons in Ukraine; and Mr Biden’s frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling him a “son of a bitch” and “a bad f..king guy” to advisers.

Woodward was part of the journalism duo with Carl Bernstein that reported the Watergate break-in and cover-up that led to the resignation of US president Richard Nixon in 1974.

Bob Woodward’s War is published by Simon & Schuster Australia