Tribune. The brutal announcement on September 15 of the trilateral agreement between the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, dubbed “Aukus”, created new loopholes and new resentment within the Atlantic Alliance. This agreement brings nothing new for regional security compared to those long existing between the United States and Australia, except cooperation on nuclear submarines, which gives it an unprecedented dimension. .
The United States and China are seeking to assert their preeminence in the Indo-Pacific zone and are stepping up demonstrations of force. Australia has long hesitated in its positioning vis-à-vis China, its main trading partner. Dormant for several years, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) between the United States, Australia, India and Japan was relaunched in November 2020. The Biden administration appeared to want to extend the alliance to the South Korea and other countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). Aukus is a game-changer with Asian allies who worry or distance themselves. Australia is showing increasing mistrust of China, which threatens it with retaliation. The context hardens, while a new step is taken in the arms race.
France intended to build a strategic partnership with Australia based on the supply, by the French defense industrialist Naval Group, of twelve conventional Attack-class submarines. The progress of the contract, signed in 2016, and which has since been the subject of numerous commercial, media and political attacks, did not justify a breach. This setback is a severe blow to the French naval industry because it could tarnish its image in future calls for tenders. Naval Group’s order book does not cause major concern in the short and medium term thanks to the major national programs, but sectoral difficulties could appear quickly.
Deploy in the China Sea
Finally, France was never consulted on the option of nuclear propulsion or on the supply of Barracuda attack submarines., three times cheaper, it seems, than the American Virginia-class submarines. When the submarine program was launched in 2007, the mission of the Australian Navy was to prevent piracy, trafficking and illegal immigration. The French offer met this need. Australian studies established that nuclear propulsion would be extremely expensive and very high risk, Australia had therefore given up. Although the reservations expressed in 2007 are still valid, Australia has finally decided to acquire nuclear submarines. It no longer intends simply to protect its surroundings and its exclusive economic zone, but aims to deploy itself at great distances, in particular in the China Sea. It locks itself up in the confrontation between blocs and henceforth forbids itself a middle way.
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