Diplomatic Sensitivies Bruised All Around

"[The United States, the United Kingdom and Australia have embarked on a folly] severely damaging regional peace and stability, intensifying an arms race, and damaging international nuclear non-proliferation efforts."

"China always believes that any regional mechanism should conform to the trend of peace and development of the times and help enhance mutual trust and cooperation..."

"It should not target any third party or undermine its interests."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, Beijing

 

"Now that we have created AUKUS we expect to accelerate the development of other advanced defence systems including in cyber, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and undersea capabilities."

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson

 

"This brutal, unilateral and unpredictable decision reminds me a lot of what Mr. Trump used to do. I am angry and bitter."

"This isn't done between allies."

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian

 

"We all recognize the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term."

"We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region, and how it may evolve because the future of each of our nations and indeed the world depends on a free and open Indo-Pacific enduring and flourishing in the decades ahead."

U.S. President Joe Biden

 

Of the Five Eyes Intelligence group left out of this arrangement between the three ranking members, New Zealand and Canada have remained mute on the issue. They were no less than France taken by surprise at a move that left them stranded. France's outrage is of an entirely different dimension; it stands, through this arrangement, to lose a lucrative contract signed with Australia to produce a nuclear submarine program for Australia.

It is beyond laughable as the very height of sophistry for Beijing to declare itself offended at the impolite behaviour of the three allies, considering itself -- and rightly so, and very well earned -- the ultimate target of the move. It immediately inveighed against the dangerously unscrupulous pact that produced AUKUS to provide Australia with technology and capability for the deployment of nuclear-powered submarines, when it has been itself building a powerful, large and advanced naval fleet to rival that of the sole world power with the largest military on the planet -- the U.S.

Facts do get in the way of Beijing's shocked condemnation, since it is itself responsible for the alarm and foreboding felt by its neighbours as a result of the ruling Chinese Communist Party's belligerent aggression toward contested territory claimed by its neighbours but dominated by China. All the metrics of advanced technology aligned with military hardware have been used by China to threaten its neighbours and by extension its Western adversaries, alarmed at Beijing's new militarism.

 

For France, the AUKUS arrangement is a betrayal brutal and unpredictable. Insofar as it has lost a valued contract, and a lot of face in the process. Its allies drove an armed vehicle up its private alleyway and detonated it to France's consternation; this is not the least bit collegial. Traditionally on the edge of suspicion and challenge, France and Britain are both allies and competitor-adversaries. The pact, claimed Prime Minister Johnson, would reduce the costs of Britain's next generation of nuclear submarines. 

Pity that French shipbuilder Naval Group has been left out in the cold, mourning its loss of a $60 billion agreement to build a new submarine fleet for Australia, replacing its elderly submarine fleet. France now upbraids the Biden administration for 'stabbing it in the back'. Allies simply do not behave like this. Except that ... they do on occasion. Canada metaphorically shrugs and diplomatically screens its level of consternation. New Zealand has declared that Australia's nuclear-powered submarines are not to be permitted entry to its territorial waters.

 

Australia announced a nuclear-powered submarine deal with the US and UK on Wednesday, abandoning an agreement previously brokered with France. Credit: Shutterstock

 

"At the level of process, the mishandling of consultations with the French over the sub deal marks the third occasion in the last eight months in which the Biden administration appears to have committed an unforced error vis-à-vis alliance relations. The other two are the apparent lack of operational coordination with allies over the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the anger in Central and Eastern Europe over Washington’s willingness to accommodate Germany on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. For an administration that came into office preaching the importance of allies, these three instances paint a disconcerting picture of a team that either doesn’t prioritize relations with some close allies like France or cannot run an effective policy-formulation process that balances competing interests. Certainly, the lack of confirmed appointees at the departments of State and Defense matters to some degree here, yet these unforced errors occurred despite the fact that the president’s team is in place at the National Security Council. In order to convey the notion that the president won’t tolerate any more missteps with America’s closest allies—and to genuinely fix whatever isn’t working within the National Security Council (NSC)—the White House should reallocate responsibilities, juggle titles, and/or create a special assistant position in the NSC for coordination of allied efforts vis-à-vis Moscow and Beijing."

Dr. John R. Deni is a research professor at the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.