Tag Archive for: Australia

Australia can count on Vietnam to support AUKUS

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That only a handful of people in Canberra knew that the AUKUS pact was being negotiated is a minor concern for those living on China’s borders.

Any discussion about how AUKUS is perceived in the region should take in the view from Vietnam, which sees the agreement involving Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States as self-evidently in Australia’s national interest. Hanoi sees AUKUS as both a trilateral security alliance and a vehicle to enable Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines using technology provided by the UK and US. It does not have a problem with that.

AUKUS has emerged as the Indo-Pacific region observes China’s power politics, increasingly aggressive and bullying actions in the South China Sea and coercion in trade and international relations. The Vietnamese believe the best response to a threat is to be well prepared for the worst, and that is evident in their defence posture. They’ve no difficulty believing that Australians see the threat to their own national security as real and imminent. They also recognise that AUKUS is about Australia’s future strategic preparedness.

On the most optimistic estimate, Australia will not have a nuclear-powered submarine from this agreement for at least 10 years. It has paid an immediate price, souring bilateral relations with countries in Europe, Asia and Southeast Asia. France’s irritation was understandable, and perhaps intensified by a view that a low value was placed on the only European country with significant military forces in the Pacific.

Unsurprisingly, the sharpest criticism came from China, which characterised AUKUS as reflecting a ‘cold-war mentality’. While diplomatic niceties were observed at the AUKUS launch so that the country of concern wasn’t mentioned by the three leaders, it’s clear that it is intended to counter China’s aggressive posture, especially its actions in the South China Sea. Beijing has gone far beyond making claims based on contested historical evidence and rights rejected by an international tribunal in The Hague in 2016, to create and occupy terrain with significant military capabilities.

Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have reacted to AUKUS in diverse ways. Indonesia and Malaysia quickly voiced their individual concerns that it could lead to a regional arms race. They subsequently voiced their opposition jointly at a media conference in Jakarta. The Indonesian and Malaysian foreign ministers appeared to put pressure on their ASEAN counterparts to reach a consensus on AUKUS at the 38th and 39th ASEAN summits being held this week.

On the other hand, the Philippines has indicated its support, seeing AUKUS as enhancing Australia’s power and helping maintain the regional balance. Singapore, a comprehensive strategic partner of Australia and a longstanding US ally, did not indicate support but expressed hope that ‘AUKUS would contribute constructively to the peace and stability of the region and complement the regional architecture’. Similarly, Vietnam, an increasingly influential voice in the region and an Australian strategic partner since 2018, has not indicated support or opposition to AUKUS or to Australia getting nuclear-powered submarines. A Vietnamese spokeswoman just emphasised the need for all nations to contribute to peaceful development in the region. The remaining ASEAN members—Brunei (the 2021 chair), Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand—have been silent on AUKUS.

Hanoi’s neutrality on AUKUS and Australia’s submarines can be construed as hidden support rather than opposition. Vietnam, as the target of coercive Chinese action, strongly supports an international rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific which aligns with the AUKUS commitment.

Vietnam emphasises its strategic relations with all three AUKUS countries and is increasing political trust with Australia in particular. Hanoi’s pragmatic foreign policy has made the national interest the country’s top priority.

Vietnam’s interpretation of an international rules-based order hinges on the fundamental principles of equality, as spelled out in the preamble of its declaration of independence and endorsed at the 1955 Asian–African Conference in Bandung, and the observance by all nations of a common set of rules.

When, in 1979, China launched its bloody month-long invasion of Vietnam in support of Cambodia’s Pol Pot regime, Vietnam called that an act of hegemonism and a betrayal of the ‘Bandung spirit’. The two countries normalised diplomatic ties in 1991, but Vietnam is considered a little brother of lesser size and power. Therefore, a rules-based order is understood in Vietnam as a pushback against inequality. However, China’s perception of ‘big’ and ‘small’ countries does not only apply to Vietnam.

At the 2010 ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi, China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, stared at his Singaporean counterpart and declared: ‘China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.’ Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China’s ‘big country diplomacy’ and Mao-era ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy have brought aggression and bullying over the South China Sea and in the coercive trade action used against Australia after its call for an international investigation into the causes of the Covid-19 pandemic. Chinese diplomats frequently respond to external criticism aggressively and express hostility towards their host countries.

China’s disregard for internationally accepted rules is most obvious in the South China Sea. In 2016, it refused to recognise the ruling of an arbitral tribunal in favour of the Philippines, which found China had breached the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The decade-long delay in having a rigorous code of conduct accepted by all claimants to settle disputes has mainly been caused by China’s insistence on having its own claims articulated by its ‘nine-dash line’ argued on a historical basis that is at odds with UNCLOS.

Meanwhile, China has quickly militarised its artificial islands in the South China Sea, making repeated incursions into other claimants’ waters and preventing them from fishing within their special economic zones.

The US and Australia have consistently indicated support for Vietnam in responding to China’s coercion. Speaking in Hanoi in 2019, Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared: ‘Vietnam matters to Australia.’ Morrison said that if any of Australia’s neighbours were left to suffer coercion, ‘then we are all diminished’. In July, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace called out ‘aggressor states coercing regional neighbours’.

Hanoi has not yet formally replaced the century-old ‘Asia–Pacific’ with ‘Indo-Pacific’ in its foreign policy documents. This sensitivity by Vietnamese leaders in their public statements may reflect a wish to avoid Beijing claiming Vietnam is siding with the West. However, Vietnam supports multilateral statements such as the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, and welcomes such initiatives as long as they contribute to ‘peace, stability, cooperation and development of the region based on rules and respect for international law, as well as respecting the legitimate rights and interests of all countries, including ASEAN’s central role in the evolving regional structure’.

Hanoi’s stance, tempered by realism, is constrained by the historical ‘four nos’—no military alliances, no aligning with one country against another, no foreign military bases on Vietnamese soil, and no use of, or threat to use, force in international relations. However, the country’s interests are evidently aligned towards positions embraced and boosted by Australia, the UK and the US, and supported by others including Japan, India and the European Union.

Vietnam implicitly opposes China’s incubation of an order in which small countries pay deference to a big country and international affairs are governed by Beijing’s rules.

Vietnam is a strategic partner of Australia and the UK and a comprehensive partner of the US. But former Vietnamese diplomats take the view that the Vietnam–US relationship is already of a strategic nature given their all-embracing and profound cooperation. President Joe Biden’s administration has suggested a formal upgrade to a strategic relationship and many would argue that’s just a matter of time.

Bilateral ties between Vietnam and Australia continue to deepen. In an online talk with his Vietnamese counterpart, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, in May, Morrison proposed elevating the bilateral relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership in 2023, the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties. That would make Vietnam the second ASEAN nation, after Singapore, with which Australia has such a close relationship—noting that Singapore is a special case.

When Chinh met with Australia’s ambassador to Hanoi, Robyn Mudie, this month, the Vietnamese media emphasised the growing trust between the two countries over international and regional affairs and their shared concerns.

Hanoi’s strategic relationship with the individual AUKUS countries is deepening with increased defence cooperation as Vietnam aims to boost its self-defence capabilities to protect its sovereignty.

Its de facto shift from its strict ‘three nos’ to ‘four nos’ defence policy reflects China’s frequent encroachment on Vietnam’s waters and continuing aggressive actions in the South China Sea. Pragmatism has prompted Vietnam to consider developing defence and military relations with other countries while qualifying this with ‘depending on circumstances and specific situations’, as stated in its 2019 defence policy. There’s no suggestion it would cooperate with AUKUS in an alliance, but there’s no hurdle to continuing cooperation with each AUKUS member.

While Vietnam is committed not to join military alliances, it has no reason to reject an alliance that poses no threat to its national security or interests and which is likely to be of benefit.

It sees AUKUS as being like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (involving the US, India, Japan and Australia) as in an alliance it can leverage to improve its self-defence capabilities and garner collective action to resist China’s coercion and bullying.

Vietnam’s veiled support for AUKUS is consistent with its pragmatic foreign policy, pursuing the national interest as the supreme priority in its diplomacy. Vietnam understands that it needs investment, trade and technology from the US, the EU, Japan, the UK, India, Australia and other countries to achieve its centenary development goals. Consequently, it will not side with China to oppose AUKUS as it has done with the Quad. Moreover, Vietnam is fully conscious of where immediate threats to the national interest and security come from, while it struggles with a huge trade deficit with China.

Australia has time to persuade its neighbours that AUKUS is a win for the long term. If Australia needs to garner support for this arrangement, it can count on Vietnam both bilaterally and as a member of ASEAN.

The suggested move to an agreed comprehensive strategic partnership in 2023 is evidence of increased political trust between the two countries. Leveraging on that, Vietnam will use the consensus card to ensure that the language of any ASEAN joint statement on AUKUS would be more formalistic than critical.

ASPI’s decades: Covering climate change

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ASPI celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. This series looks at ASPI’s work since its creation in August 2001.

For a think tank devoted to strategy, the need to combat climate change leads naturally to the realms of defence and national security.

ASPI’s early work on climate change was driven by Anthony Bergin from the time he joined the institute in 2006.

Bergin had been director of the Australian Defence Studies Centre at the Defence Force Academy (1991–2003), and his writing on climate drew on his study of oceans policy, the South Pacific and Antarctica.

Bergin twinned his research on terrorism with his study of climate change. His responses to the two scourges rhymed: the need for Australia to ‘harden’ and build resilience, for the Australian people to clearly understand the policy challenges, and for all arms of government to think about lines of leadership, responsibilities and coordinated responses.

Bergin hunted for answers that joined up Australia’s governments, police, emergency services, insurers and businesses. A central thought running through his writing was the impact of climate change on the role and structure of Australia’s military.

In 2007, Bergin and Jacob Townsend issued A change in climate for the Australian Defence Force discussing how the ADF must rebalance its mix of missions and create new mission types. The task was to look out two to three decades to examine the implications for strategy, force structure, capability and the way the military uses energy.

ADF missions would blend disaster relief, development assistance and state-building, Bergin and Townsend wrote. The biggest challenge would be changing Defence’s behaviours and systems without reducing the ADF’s operational capability.

Relief missions would demand the capability to move and land large volumes of supplies. The navy might require more shallow-draft ships to land in disaster‑stricken areas and heavy-lift helicopters for ship‑to‑shore transport, or even hovercraft:

For the ADF, the rapid response that disasters demand may require bigger surge capacity, a larger logistics capability and maintaining higher states of readiness. Additional resources would be needed, while extreme weather will add complexity to military missions and maintenance schedules.

In the following decade, Bergin hailed as ‘absolute game-changers’ the navy’s biggest vessels, the Canberra-class landing helicopter docks, which were longer than the previous aircraft carrier. The ships could respond to disasters in Australia as well as in the region:

The LHDs will focus on regional military support, including in disasters (they can be deployed as floating hospitals and command and control centres); evacuation missions (such as a raid from the sea to recover hostages); and peacekeeping. They will also play a key role in extreme natural disasters at home.

At ASPI’s 2007 Global Forces conference, Brahma Chellaney argued that beyond the environment or economics lay a new topic: ‘climate security’, expressing the ominous link between global warming and international security.

Climate change would be a ‘threat multiplier’, Chellaney said, raising the risk of water wars, while different weather patterns would impinge on military operations. The most severe effects of climate change would occur where states were poor or fragile:

Intra-state and inter-state crises over water and food shortages, inundation of low-lying areas, or recurrent droughts, hurricanes or flooding may lead to large displacements of citizens and mass migrations, besides exacerbating ethnic or economic divides in societies. It is thus important to examine the risks of global warming, including potential situations in which climatic variations could be a catalyst for conflict within or between states.

ASPI explored the policy implications of the scientific findings and the expanding demands of national security, and Bergin produced or co-wrote a series of studies.

Australian domestic security—the role of Defence: The primary ADF focus was on warfighting, but a shift or broadening of military culture was needed. Expectations of Defence in domestic security had increased: ‘Government is attracted to using the ADF because it projects strength.’ Potential roles included maritime surveillance, special-event security and mass-gathering protection, communications and community liaison, and critical infrastructure protection.

An Office of National Security: Australia needed a national security strategy, created and run by an independent entity reporting directly to the prime minister, much like the Office of National Assessments.

Taking a punch emphasised resilience, robustness and alternative supply options as answers to terrorism and climate-caused disasters—building the ability to deal with large-scale catastrophic events. Disaster response loomed as ‘a core mission’ for the ADF, influencing equipment decisions and military basing around Australia.

Cops and climate: Australia’s eight police forces would be the ‘thin green line’, facing disasters and environmental refugees, enforcing emissions trading schemes and protecting precious water.

All in a day’s work—business and Australian disaster management: There’d be a dollar in it, but business is happy to help. And they’re already in place.

Rudd’s Army—a deployable civilian capacity for Australia: In 2009, the Labor government considered a deployable civilian capacity for the rapid use of civilian experts in international disaster relief, stabilisation and post-conflict reconstruction. Bergin and Bob Breen recommended an emergency response register (medical teams, engineers, logisticians, sanitation experts and communications technicians) and a register monitoring the quantity and location of commercial stocks for emergency aid.

Hardening Australia argued that the disasters of climate change would ‘become larger, more complex, occur simultaneously and in regions that have either not experienced the natural hazard previously or at the same intensity or frequency’. The nation needed to harden critical infrastructure just as it should harden the preparation and coordination of its emergency response system.

In 2010, Here to help explored the developing Defence role in disaster management. Extreme weather events would increase the vulnerability of the growing populations in coastal developments and in bushfire-prone areas. The ADF would be called because of the continual per capita fall in the number of volunteers and emergency services personnel and ‘growing community and political expectations to use military resources to support whole-of-government counter-disaster efforts’.

Financing Australia’s disaster resilience posed fundamental questions about the roles of private insurance and government in reducing future losses from natural disasters: ‘We need a new approach to financing the costs of natural disasters and encouraging those living in high-risk areas to be better prepared. The reality is that all Australian taxpayers will have to bear a share of this cost.’

In 2013, Heavy weather said that the ADF would inevitably be involved in mitigation and response tasks. Seeking to deflect the politics of scepticism or denial, the report argued that this wasn’t a ‘green’ view, but was about the need to prepare Australia’s military to deal with disruptive forces. An interagency group should examine ‘climate event scenarios for Australia and the Asia–Pacific’ and the implications for national resilience and regional stability. The ADF chief should have a climate adviser and should work with the Five Eyes allies (Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US) to plan military responses to extreme weather events.

In 2014,Working as one: a road map to disaster resilience for Australia reported that natural disasters cost the Australian economy $6.3 billion per year, and that was projected to rise to $23 billion by 2050. Rather than ‘just waiting for the next king hit and paying for it afterwards’, Australia must build the resilience of individuals and local communities as well as state and federal agencies.

As strategy is always about responding to change, the discussion of climate security had become one element of responding to climate change.

Drawn from the book on the institute’s first 20 years: An informed and independent voice: ASPI, 2001–2021.

ASPI’s decades: Climate and security

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ASPI celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. This series looks at ASPI’s work since its creation in August 2001.

The world has reached a set of big judgements on global warming and started to act. The arguments are intense, as they should be, about the future of the planet.

Yet the facts are in. Climate change is happening. The science is settled.

The way we live our lives will change in many dimensions. The world will suffer more extreme weather events and disasters.

Climate change will undermine political and economic stability and increase the risk of conflict in the Indo-Pacific, and it threatens the very survival of Pacific island countries.

Governments are committed: nations accounting for 70% of world GDP and greenhouse gases have targets for net-zero emissions, typically by 2050, and the developed world has pledged deep cuts by 2030.

Dollars follow the facts in what governments must do, and what public and private investment will do. Across the globe, the business, industry and finance sectors plan for a decarbonised future, altering today’s share market and the insurance predictions for tomorrow.

Tackling the climate crisis is a great challenge of our times: to have a fighting chance of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C ‘requires nothing short of a total transformation of the energy systems that underpin our economies’.

The F flag flying for fossil fuels now means they have a fading future. The fact of that fading is even announced by a previous megaphone for big oil, the International Energy Agency: the energy economy will be transformed ‘from one dominated by fossil fuels into one powered predominantly by renewable energy like solar and wind’.

As a major resource exporter, Australia grapples with the world’s turn away from carbon. Hard truths batter our leaders.

The previous four prime ministers were all hurt by the politics and policy of climate change. The issue contributed to the ‘it’s time’ factor that defeated John Howard, deeply damaged Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, and was a designated reason the Liberal Party twice dispatched Malcolm Turnbull, once as opposition leader and then as prime minister.

The warming war still divides public opinion. A poll in June found that more than half of Australians (56% to 58%) believe that climate change is happening and that the heating is caused by human activity; 59% believe Australia needs to follow the lead of other countries and make action a priority.

ASPI’s response to the crisis is the Climate and Security Policy Centre, created with this judgement:

Climate change is a global systemic threat that will have enormous consequences for Australia’s national security and for international security more broadly.

The impacts of climate change are already being felt globally in record-setting extreme weather events that are contributing to poverty, hunger and humanitarian disasters.

The pace at which these and other climate impacts emerge is accelerating. The existing commitments states have made to reduce greenhouse gases are inadequate to prevent warming beyond the 2-degree cap set in the Paris Agreement. Even with additional reductions, the climate will continue warming for decades from the greenhouse gases already released to the atmosphere.

The impacts in the Indo-Pacific region, the most disaster-prone globally, will be profound. Climate hazards will not only exacerbate existing regional challenges, such as separatist movements, territorial disputes, terrorism and great-power competition, but also contribute to food insecurity, population displacement and humanitarian disasters on an unprecedented scale. The cascading impacts will undermine political and economic stability and increase the risk of conflict. For Pacific island countries, climate change is an existential threat.

The objectives of the Climate and Security Policy Centre are to:

  • evaluate the impact climate change will have on security in the Indo-Pacific region, including by identifying the most likely paths through which disruptive climate events (individually, concurrently or consecutively) can cause cascading, security-relevant impacts
  • develop practical, evidence-based policy recommendations and interventions to reduce climate change risks and promote their adoption by policymakers
  • increase Australian and regional expertise, understanding and public awareness of the links between climate change and national security
  • identify the implications of those links for key stakeholders, including the Australian Defence Force, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, other government agencies, parliamentarians and the private sector.

In writing about climate change, an old journalist cliché takes on new life: ‘Only time will tell.’ And the old serial throw-forward line applies in many ways: ‘To be continued.’

Drawn from the book on the institute’s first 20 years: An informed and independent voice: ASPI, 2001–2021.

First Nations people and the security of Australia’s north

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Australia’s strategic policy leaders have long been acutely aware of the importance of the nation’s north to economic, ecological and tactical security. The vast expanse of country has been continuously cared for by First Nations peoples for over 65,000 years. Through their cultures and languages, they have deep understandings of the land and its inland and marine waters, an immutable connection to country and historical economic and cultural connections to Australia’s northern neighbours. But consideration of the role of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their perspectives has been largely absent from the policy agenda until very recently.

To understand the role First Nations people have to play in the north, it’s worth contrasting the historical and present-day experiences of Indigenous Australians living in northern regions with those in southern jurisdictions. While Indigenous citizens across Australia are more likely to experience economic disadvantage and suffer the consequences of institutional (and personal) racism, geographic and demographic differences play a substantial role in shaping the lives of individuals, communities and economies.

Well before European settlement, First Nations people in northern Australia established trade and cultural relationships with what are now Southeast Asian nations, including Macassan Trepang traders of southern Sulawesi and across the Torres Strait to what is now Papua New Guinea and Indonesian New Guinea. These millennia-long relationships present an opportunity to reactivate a new dimension in not only trade, but also regional defence and biosecurity arrangements. Historically, cultural exchanges were also an important part of the trading relationship and it’s worthwhile considering them in the development of free trade agreements.

First Nations people account for 15% of the overall population in the north compared to just 3% in the south. Outside of the major northern settlements, the proportion is even higher—between 15% and 25% across the Northern Territory and northern parts of Queensland and Western Australia. First Nations people make up more than 50% of the population in a third of local government areas. And, according to current demographic trends, Indigenous people will make up around half of the working-age population in the north by 2050.

Historical and more recent political and policy developments have resulted in Indigenous Australians now having ownership or legal interests in over 80% of the northern landmass, including around 85% of the Northern Territory coastline. This makes the Indigenous estate of the north several orders of magnitude larger than its equivalent in the south, and given Australia’s geographic location and geopolitical position, the strategic importance of this land to national security can’t be overstated.

While Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participation in Australian Defence Force tactical units, particularly the North-West Mobile Force, or NORFORCE, is notable, the involvement of First Nations people in the operational security of the north remains substantively underbaked, given their existing potential and resources. In many parts of northern Australia, members of about 80 Indigenous land and sea ranger groups are the only human presence for thousands of kilometres, and their knowledge of these remote areas is unparalleled. From a surveillance perspective, Indigenous land and sea ranger groups are an underutilised security asset.

When considering the capacity of Indigenous ranger groups to support surveillance, it’s important to recognise that the scope of ‘surveillance’ in a national security context must include biosecurity surveillance. Australia’s multibillion-dollar agricultural and tourism sectors, along with our health system, depend on our ability to monitor and effectively control incursions of pathogens and invasive species. Given the sheer length of the northern coastline, and the remoteness and vastness of the northern landmass, providing a level of biosecurity surveillance that delivers adequate protection for Australia’s population and economy through conventional means verges on impossible. As custodians of the land, with knowledge of its form and management stretching from the deep past to the ever-changing present, Indigenous people are an obvious, yet too often overlooked, resource in Australia’s biosecurity arsenal.

Indigenous Australians are increasingly being recognised not only as ‘traditional’ custodians of the land, but as the rightful, legal owners. Third-party settlements and access agreements created by legislation or contracts pertaining to the Indigenous estate have resulted in billions of dollars residing in trusts and other arrangements for which First Nations groups are beneficiaries. Though we are yet to see the large-scale activation of this asset base, Australian jurisprudence, legislation and policy are increasingly following international trajectories in recognising Indigenous rights to land, resources and self-determination.

Optimal activation of the Indigenous asset base (in the north and elsewhere) requires further reform to provide legal rights with respect to the ability to appropriate value from land, water, cultural and intellectual property rights. Currently, the legislated interests of First Nations peoples in their traditional lands, to say nothing of their other assets, is unnecessarily complex and inequitable. These interests range from exclusive possession under fee simple or ‘fee simple–like’ title, to rights that provide a form of shared tenure. In many circumstances, that amounts to little more than a right to interfere in matters pertaining to their lands.

While reform to Commonwealth and jurisdictional legislation will certainly be required in this regard, significant and immediate improvements can be made through less complex measures. For instance, it requires no legislative change for third parties to demonstrate an appreciation of the legal and ethical rights of Indigenous owners as they engage in land-use negotiations, or for those parties to ensure that Indigenous rights are reflected in commercial contracts.

In addition, to be effective counterparties and developers in their own right, traditional owners require the rights and resources, including civil and economic governance arrangements and capacity development, to freely manage their own financial assets on their terms.

It’s worth reminding ourselves that the entire Australian community and economy stands to benefit from the expansion of economic activity in our north. The scale and abundance of natural resources and unique cultural and intellectual property belonging to First Nations communities and organisations, and the proximity of those assets to growing regional minerals, food, energy, carbon and tourism markets, means the region can’t be truly developed without genuine, equitable participation by First Nations people.

AUKUS, nuclear submarines and the tyranny of default thinking

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Now that the initial euphoria over the announcement of the AUKUS agreement and Australia’s decision to acquire nuclear submarines has passed, it’s time to unpack some of the deeper meaning. The mandated 18 months of consultation will take place, and there’s the possibility of a new defence white paper.

Frankly, I wouldn’t expect much from either.

The consultation will result in recommendations, undoubtedly of a technical and political nature, about industrial policy, South Australian appeasement and Royal Australian Navy submariner recruitment and training. The estimated cost of the eight boats might even be revealed. As for a new white paper, why bother? The important decisions have already been made.

A defence white paper is meant to be a strategic-level document that provides a vision for the nation’s security policy and underpins the armed forces’ acquisition of equipment and concept of warfighting. But the government has already announced its intentions. It has terminated the French submarine contract and declared its plan to acquire nuclear-powered boats with the assistance of the United States and the United Kingdom. This means that the government has finalised the strategic decision-making that a white paper is meant to elucidate. In other words, it’s game over for strategic decision-making within Defence. A new white paper would serve only to justify the choices already made.

So let’s examine these choices. Clearly the government has decided to further strengthen Australia’s relationship with the US. There’s nothing new or exciting about that. It is Australia’s default setting. By embracing AUKUS, the government also signals its continued faith in the strength of the Anglosphere.

In seeking AUKUS, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has made a more explicit act of fealty to the alliance with the US than even Harold Holt’s Vietnam-era ‘All the way with LBJ.’ He has made a bet on the ability and willingness of the US to protect Australia from China. As bets go, this one is all in.

As any gambler knows, however, there is no sure thing, and this deal is particularly suss. The first problem is pretty straightforward. Australia won’t receive its nuclear submarines until the late 2030s, if not the 2040s. Even a US admiral thinks it’ll be decades. This means Australia will have a capability gap that by the government’s own reasoning cannot be met by a conventional submarine, even a life-extended Collins class.

Then there’s the issue of the unknown cost. At present, the best guess is that the eight submarines will cost more than the 12 French Attack-class boats. Nuclear submarines are larger and more complex than conventional ones and will require the building of new infrastructure in Adelaide. A sum of around $100 billion doesn’t seem unreasonable. At that price the submarines will consume a large part of the defence budget and the opportunity cost will be the lack of funds for other, perhaps more useful, capabilities.

The more troubling part of the gamble is its infatuation with the Anglosphere. The heyday of one of its members was so long ago that you have to be an octogenarian to remember it. The other, the US, experienced a violent insurrection against a legitimately elected government just nine months ago and is so riven by partisanship that a civil war isn’t beyond imagination.

The government’s bet gives the impression that it thinks cultural ties trump interest. Culture is important, but in international relations it’s interest that matters. Unfortunately, despite the enthusiastic friendship and shared language within the Anglosphere, Australia resides in a part of the world that is a low priority for the US. Europe, the Middle East and North Asia matter much more to America than the Southwest Pacific. When the US committed troops to the region in World War II, it wasn’t because America cared about Australia; it was solely because Australia offered a launching point to the Philippines and then to Japan. When empires decline, the peripheries are the first to be cast off.

Morrison has wagered far too much. Throughout the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, a series of Australian leaders followed the lead of John Howard and made the nation’s flag the most important contribution to the US-led coalition. Other countries did the same. The military capabilities on offer were always of lesser significance. Of course, a war in our region will require a greater commitment than just the flag, but, as former head of the Office of National Assessments Allan Gyngell says, in AUKUS Australia has ceded ‘quite a high degree … of Australian sovereignty’.

Australia’s ability to operate nuclear submarines is likely to be dependent on US agreement, which in turn will lead to deeper integration into the US military. ABC journalist Laura Tingle has come to a similar conclusion, writing that the government has effectively contracted out its national security and defence policy. It’s hard to disagree. In the US, as discussed in Foreign Affairs, academic Caitlin Talmadge suggests that the US got the better end of the deal. She’s right; it is not often a state surrenders its sovereignty for the sake of a future promise.

In accepting AUKUS, Australia has again looked to the past without showing any interest in thinking hard on other options. The loss in automatically defaulting to one’s comfort zone is that it closes off other options before they’re even considered. Analysis before decision-making could have avoided this and provided more assurance that the government is working towards an achievable and beneficial strategic end. In my paper Planning to not lose, published by the Australian Army, I outlined a strategic policy to safeguard Australia based on a defensive posture that exploits new technologies and develops closer ties with our neighbours without any sacrifice of our sovereignty.

Perhaps it’s time for Australia to broaden its security horizons through divergent thinking rather than cruising to the default mode.

AUKUS and Australia–Indonesia relations: 2+2 clever by half

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Amid the commentary on Australia’s handling of France over the decision to switch to nuclear-powered submarines, Canberra’s treatment of another close partner and the reaction that has caused have received relatively scant attention.

The Australian government’s dealings with Indonesia on the submarines and AUKUS was no less maladroit.

Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi’s carefully crafted communiqué on AUKUS and its headline first act was muted compared to Paris’s understandable fury at being so shamelessly gulled. On the surface, it simply called on Australia to keep to its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and encouraged Canberra to settle differences ‘peacefully’ through dialogue and international law, specifically the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

But Marsudi’s pointed use of adverbs like ‘deeply’ hint at more profound concerns, and the dynamics of Indonesian politics are likely to plunge them even deeper.

One doesn’t have to swallow the line of some observers in Jakarta that Southeast Asians are universally upset by Australia’s ‘arrogant’ actions on the grounds that buying such boats will imperil the region’s aspirations to being a zone of peace.

They aren’t. Some have welcomed AUKUS and what it brings, including Australia’s boats. Their fears about China lie behind this.

Even many Indonesians are unconvinced that signing up to the ASEAN peace treaty guarantees either amity or cooperation when Beijing is busy enforcing its absurd nine-dash-line pretensions to ownership of the ‘North Natuna Sea’.

Some have been quick to urge Indonesia to step up its military responsiveness to China’s latest incursion into its exclusive economic zone, which the government has done, albeit without any accompanying statement from Retno expressing concerns, deep or otherwise, about Beijing’s actions.

One Indonesian parliamentarian, a former major general, has even claimed that an ‘anti-communist’ group within Indonesia’s military was keen for Indonesia to join the US ‘bloc’ and transform AUKUS into ‘AUKUSI’.

That said, it’s true that many Indonesian commentators, like their government, want to put the emphasis on international law and ASEAN-centred diplomacy in dealing with Beijing. For them, AUKUS and Australia’s submarines are an affront to both.

Moreover, President Joko Widodo’s administration doesn’t see the need to pick sides—much as Australian governments used to argue until recently—especially when it sees material advantage in flirting with both.

The Australian government isn’t oblivious to this sentiment, or the need to play to it. Foreign Minister Marise Payne has recited her mantra that Australia wants to help towards the region’s peace and security under the wise helmsmanship of ASEAN.

But the government’s actions have made these words sound more hollow than ever. Sequencing the Jakarta-hosted 2+2 meeting just one week before the AUKUS announcement is a glaring example.

Whatever hints Australia’s ministers might have given their Indonesian counterparts, it’s clear that Jakarta was as blindsided as the French.

This is not to say that Canberra should have let the Widodo administration into the secret. Our comprehensive strategic partnership is way too short of being truly strategic for that.

But this not how to treat partners in a relationship that we sensibly want incrementally to grow more closely aligned, even if anything approaching a truly meaningful and influential strategic relationship is still little more than a pipe dream.

We could and should have done things differently, more respectfully and frankly—and held the talks after the AUKUS announcement.

Canberra could have told its partners in Jakarta some time beforehand that something was going to happen that would affect their interests, begged their understanding that this needed to be held close for the time being, reassured them that we’d taken full account of Indonesia’s position, and explained that we must brief our partners.

Of course, after the announcement the Indonesians may have expressed their discontent by abruptly postponing the talks. The optics would not have been ideal. But all it would have shown is that the two countries held different positions and that Australia at least showed Indonesia the respect of giving it some forewarning and the chance to discuss the matter as equals.

On the other hand, had the talks proceeded, we could have demonstrated plausibly that we’d listened attentively to what Indonesia was telling us and would behave accordingly. We could have allowed Jakarta to highlight how concerned it was that Australia keep to its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its stated adherence to ASEAN regional leadership and its Indo-Pacific vision. We could have politely and respectfully argued that deterring hegemonic behaviour that threatened ASEAN’s principles and the sovereignty of its members necessitated a credible deterrent, but that we of course shared the goal of sustainable peace and prosperity.

Instead, by carrying on blithely with the talks before the announcement, we’ve left the impression of duplicity and arrogance. Too many Indonesians have associated the first characteristic with us since East Timor’s independence, if not before. But arrogance is especially frowned upon in Indonesian culture and often associated with neo-colonial tendencies.

We’ve not only added superficial credence to the argument now raging in Jakarta that Australia has crawled away from ASEAN and back to its ethno-racial brethren and the pretensions of deputy sheriffdom. We’ve given more resonance to the arguments of those insisting that Australia is no less a threat to ASEAN states’ interests in keeping their region peaceful than China, notwithstanding that the AUKUS and Quad states haven’t claimed any disputed atoll as their own and turned it into an unsinkable aircraft carrier.

We’ve flared the preconception that Australia is cavalier about Indonesia’s desire that foreign submarines—especially ‘nuclear’ ones—don’t secretly ply waters it regards as its tanah air (homeland).

The dynamics of Jakarta’s politics and its structures of government risk deepening this impression. Indonesia’s system affords a significant role in international affairs to its legislature. Distinct from the executive in Indonesia’s presidential system, the parliament’s commission responsible for foreign and defence issues not only exercises actual powers but also serves as a bully pulpit to shape public opinion, often in the direction of nationalist populism.

Australia has often been a favourite target of this body’s more jingoistic members, and little could inspire them more than the prospect of their southern neighbour being up to its perceived usual tricks and treating Indonesia with contempt.

The commission’s members have acted true to form, with some urging the administration to confront Australia for threatening the region’s peace and taking measures that have ‘implications for the defence … or the sovereignty of our country’.

The commission’s censure will add to the negative perceptions of AUKUS and Australia’s military ambitions already in the public domain. Australia even seems to have engendered suspicions that it’s secretly planning to arm its submarines with nuclear weapons, regardless of our assurances to the contrary.

Our assurances risk carrying as much weight in such quarters, including in the commission, as our insistence that we have no designs on Papua, even though both are true.

In democratic Indonesia, administrations can ill afford to disregard such political posturing, and the administration’s messaging has subtly adjusted. After appearing before a closed commission hearing, Deputy Foreign Minister Mahendra Siregar reaffirmed that Indonesia was ‘worried’ that Australia’s nuclear submarine plans would destabilise the region by provoking an arms race, pointing the blame for such ‘disturbance’ more openly than Retno.

All this affirms that unless Australia starts investing as much strategy and trust in diplomacy as it does in military preparedness—if not in sheer dollar terms, then at least in skill, integrity and nous—we risk doing little to ‘shape’ our region besides helping a select few deter China from forcefully reshaping it.

It’s hard to be optimistic that the government will do so. Too often the political optics seem to be paramount. And in questions of national security, it has shown little evidence, despite modest boosts to the aid budget for Southeast Asia, that it holds its foreign ministry in the same regard as defence, whether as a source of advice or as a prop for its announcements.

The view seems to be that the domestic case for doing more to pursue our foreign and strategic interests is more marketable standing in front of impressive weapons or next to American presidents than behind culturally astute diplomatic tradecraft.

The government might well claim that with Indonesia, this approach works fine. It may assume that AUKUS will not lead to Jakarta repudiating our strategic partnership agreement, let alone rejecting the Bushmaster vehicles Australia has gifted it or recoil from the other small but welcome enhancements to the defence cooperation agreement both sides committed to during the talks.

By such superficial measures, it might well be right. We’ll manage our way out of any immediate tension, which Jakarta will wish to limit.

But as the past fortnight has underlined in very dark tones (especially in our relations with France), tin-eared diplomacy accrues costs, especially in disaffecting and even offending those we need most to influence.

For the time being, Australia and Indonesia disagree fundamentally over the relative utility of dialogue and alliance-based hard power in deterring a would-be hegemon and preserving sovereignty, and about how much of the latter is necessary if the former can have any power of persuasion.

We should expect this disagreement to persist for the foreseeable future. The Widodo administration’s successor will likely think the same way.

That’s fine. We can disagree.

We should certainly not be dissuaded from taking measures we consider vital to our national security just because Jakarta holds a profoundly different perspective. (Whether the course Canberra has chosen is the right one is an entirely different debate.)

But if one of our strategic objectives is a relationship with Indonesia that has matured beyond the transactional into a genuine partnership built on mutual trust and respect, we will need to relearn how to pursue that more adroitly.

In time, we could help nudge Jakarta at least into shifting closer to those of its ASEAN partners less ambivalent about China’s real threat and how realistically to address it, while lending more credence to our claims in Washington that we are attuned to, and influential in, our region.

This will take more than just scheduling meetings better, though that would help.

Nuclear submarines will propel Australia into a new strategic league

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In a world largely inured to shocks, the announcement that Australia, in partnership with the United States and the United Kingdom, would acquire nuclear-powered submarines was a bombshell. We haven’t over-egged this development—it was dramatic. It was made possible because the US and the UK—especially the US—agreed to share one of their most precious packages, the technologies that have made their submarines the quietest in the world for decades.

The US has long made it clear that there were pockets or suites of technologies that it couldn’t share, even with its most important allies, because they gave it a decisive edge and sharing would inescapably increase the risk of their leaking to adversaries. Apart from submarine quietening, these crown jewels include stealth technologies for aircraft and shrinking the size and weight of nuclear warheads.

The remarkable exception being made for Australia, and the cancellation of its submarine contract with France, reverberated through the community of US allies and friends, along with the three partners’ judgement that they could make this happen while protecting their compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The decision also exposed graphically the extent to which confidence in the stability and peace of the Indo-Pacific region has been eroded.

The fallout from the submarine announcement will continue for some time. We shouldn’t allow this acquisition to dominate our response to worrisome regional developments and trends. Australia is as well placed as anyone to drive a more energetic search for regional arrangements that will allow even a player as large and as singular as China to find a place that neither antagonises nor intimidates. Even so, there’s a dimension of the fallout from this decision for Australia that I think remains underappreciated.

We must imagine what it will feel like to have a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines on deployment in the Pacific and Indian oceans, even a force equipped with only the basic conventional anti-ship and land-attack weapons that these boats typically carry.

Australia will be considered capable of making a decisive contribution to managing a crisis or a conflict up to and including the upper reaches of modern conventional warfare. And we must assume that everybody will be making this judgement—ourselves, our allies and close friends, and our adversaries—and they’ll be seeking to shape our behaviour to their advantage.

There’s also a view that joining the nuclear submarine club could make it harder for Australia to stay out of trouble. This is the strand of thinking that Australia might end up compromising its sovereignty.

A more sober and responsible reaction would be to recognise and prepare for the fact that we will be stepping into a new league. The professionalism with which we operate and maintain this capability, and protect its secrets, will have to be sustained at the highest level.

Even more important is the expectation that we will find it more difficult in a crisis or conflict to wait for the bigger players to take the next step and shape the options of smaller states. If nuclear-powered submarines are a sharp step-up in capability, we need a matching step-up in our intelligence and diplomatic capacities to reassure ourselves as well as others, friend and foe alike, that the managers of this capability will be independent, well informed, prudent and responsible.

How will the Australia–Japan relationship fare under Prime Minister Kishida?

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Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party has elected Fumio Kishida as its new leader, slating him to be the nation’s 100th prime minister. Kishida received overwhelming backing from parliamentarians ahead of rival candidate Taro Kono, who was favoured by grassroots LDP supporters.

And yet, for the first time in Japan’s history of constitutional democracy dating back to the 19th century, a woman, Sanae Takaichi, might well have become prime minister. Takaichi pledged to follow the domestic and foreign policies of former prime minister Shinzo Abe and won the support of strikingly more MPs, including Abe, than political pundits predicted.

If she had become prime minister, Australia’s strategic cooperation with Japan would have gained even more traction and rapidly developed into something that could be called an alliance. It’s a shame for Canberra and Tokyo that she wasn’t able to break through the glass ceiling this time.

In Japan’s representative democracy, which is not unlike the Westminster system, the new president of the ruling party is automatically made prime minister by a parliamentary majority vote.

Kishida is likely to prove a good ‘second best’ for the Australia–Japan strategic relationship.

Abe forged a strong relationship with three Australian prime ministers, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison. His speech to parliament in Canberra on 8 July 2014 will long be remembered as setting the tone for the relationship between the two democracies.

Eventually he and Morrison travelled to Darwin where they solemnly laid a wreath together, reflecting on the past and renewing their appreciation of the great power of reconciliation.

All of this was closely witnessed by Kishida, Abe’s long-serving foreign minister.

Kishida, whose constituency is Hiroshima, has a passion for the abolition of nuclear weapons that was sometimes at odds with Abe’s emphasis on nuclear deterrence. Kishida was more in tune with US President Barack Obama, who spoke in idealistic terms.

But, at the same time, Kishida is fully aware that the biggest challenge for Japan now and in the future will be to stand up tall against China, and that Japan must be strong to do so.

To that end, he also knows that it is far better for Japan to work with allies with which it shares fundamental values than to confront China alone. In this respect, Kishida is a realist.

When the news of AUKUS reached Japan, there were two reactions in the Tokyo policy community.

One was respect for Australia’s decision. While there was concern among Australians about their country ‘going nuclear’, the prime minister and government unhesitatingly decided that what was needed for military purposes should be procured.

It’s also fair to say that they tried hard to make the most of the old ties of the English-speaking alliance. Britain, too, was keen to have a foothold in the Indo-Pacific, since it had just separated from Europe and was advocating a global Britain. Strengthening relations with Australia was logical and necessary.

Seen this way, and with Australia’s robust relationship with the US taken into consideration, AUKUS has drawn the most advantageous triangle for Australia.

Respect for Australia then became envy. If Australia needs nuclear-powered submarines, Japan, which shares a waterway with China, needs them even more.

Unlike Australia, Japan has a long history of nuclear technology. But since Fukushima, it has become increasingly irrelevant, and may even disappear. Even though it has nuclear technology, Japan has no equivalent of a Rolls Royce with the technology to power submarines.

If only the country could do as Australia did and equip itself with nuclear submarines—perhaps under the framework of what could be called JAUKUS with Australia, the UK and the US.

While that’s logical, it cannot be carried out so long as public perception forbids it. That’s where Japan stands, making many, including this author, envy Australia for its decisiveness.

Let us hope that Kishida will add strength to what is now the deepest strategic partnership between Australia and Japan in history.

The raison d’état behind Australia’s submarine decision

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French anger over Australia’s decision to dump the diesel–electric submarine project is entirely justified and understandable. Even if, as some argue, the project’s inadequacies were increasingly apparent, there seems little doubt that Australia seriously misled France’s Naval Group, with whom it had contracted to build 12 conventional Shortfin Barracuda submarines.

The surprise Australian decision to instead acquire nuclear-powered submarines from the US and UK under the new AUKUS agreement will damage diplomatic and trade relations with France, further delay the acquisition of new Australian submarines, and also prove extremely expensive.

But while the French complaints of backstabbing, betrayal and duplicity may embarrass Australia and harm its global reputation, the Australian decision was ultimately dictated by two concepts historically familiar to France: raison d’état and the balance of power. France was arguably the first state to discover and to deploy these concepts in its international relations.

Simply stated, raison d’état justifies foreign policy actions based on the primacy of the abiding national interest in survival—especially when a nation abandons openness and honesty. Balance of power involves a nation or a group of nations combining to match the power of potentially hostile adversaries. The idea is to create an equilibrium, however unstable, to help improve security and ensure survival.

Australia has always sought security in powerful alliances intended to balance and deter potential adversaries. The defence of the nation-state has always been the gravest responsibility of Australian statecraft. In recent years, the rise of an increasingly aggressive, expansionist and militaristic China has confronted Australia with serious concerns about its peace, stability and long-term survival in the Indo-Pacific. Raison d’état and the balance of power have inevitably become more visible principles dictating Australian policies.

The 2016 decision to acquire the French-designed conventional submarines was progressively challenged by China’s aggressive activities in the South China Sea, its ruthless suppression of Hong Kong democracy, its threats against Taiwan and its South Pacific expansionist ambitions. China already has a large and partly nuclear-propelled submarine fleet and a formidable surface navy. Its activities have raised real and reasonable concerns about freedom of navigation and open sea lines of communication in the region.

Australia’s move into the AUKUS partnership with the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as its decision to dump the conventional submarine project in favour of nuclear submarines, was dictated entirely by the imperative of balancing Chinese power by acting according to the demands of raison d’état. It was a momentous policy shift entirely dictated by the policies and attitudes of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

While French leaders are directing their anger at Canberra, they might, in the interests of historical fairness, acknowledge the powerful French origins of raison d’état and balance-of-power policies in international relations. In his magisterial 1994 volume Diplomacy, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger notes that it was the French statesman Cardinal Richelieu who ‘promulgated the concept of raison d’état and practiced it relentlessly for the benefit of his own country’.

Richelieu, Kissinger notes, said that nation-states received credit not for doing what was right but for being strong enough to do only what was necessary. Australia decided, quite reasonably, that China’s behaviour had forced it to do what was necessary to ensure the adequacy of its future submarine fleet by opting for nuclear propulsion—even if France didn’t think it right. In short, the end justified the means.

It is of course uncertain whether Canberra’s decision will eventually produce a balance-of-power equilibrium. Pursuit of raison d’état can, as Kissinger writes, lead to a quest for primacy. China’s quest for primacy is what has pushed Australia into AUKUS and towards nuclear-powered submarines.

Kissinger asks the key question: how far would one go before the interests of the state were deemed satisfied? Will nuclear arms eventually follow Australia’s move to nuclear propulsion? Will Australia’s embrace of raison d’état threaten what Kissinger calls ‘self-destructive tours de force’. We simply cannot know, but Canberra had little choice in the current strategic environment even if it unceremoniously dudded France. It can only plead that France and its great cardinal were very good role models indeed.

Some Australians, offended by recent French insults, have responded by evoking Australia’s sacrifices on the Western Front in France during World War I. This is tantamount to adolescent name-calling. Australia saw the empire of which it was part threatened with destruction during the 1914–1918 war. So it was an enthusiastic belligerent acting for its own raison d’état.

We are still all playing the same old survival and stability game, and sometimes we can callously hurt good friends.

Australia must work to salvage relations with France

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Accusations of backstabbing. Cancelled meetings. Ambassadors recalled. You’d be forgiven for thinking Australia had committed a mortal sin against France.

In reality, despite the characteristic French bluster, the change of direction on Australia’s submarines reflects the kind of shrewd decision-making that nations like France constantly employ.

That’s not to dismiss French consternation. But Australia must look beyond the emotionally charged rhetoric to understand Paris’s underlying interests.

For all the talk of mateship and fraternité, France never would have agreed to the submarine deal if it didn’t stand to make a substantial profit, just as Australia would only continue the program as long as it remained its best strategic option. And like any large procurement, the contract built in off-ramps, anticipating changing circumstances and compensation.

Paris will understand the brutal logic of Australia’s decision, a trait hardly absent in its own strategic culture. And doubtless it would have done the same in Canberra’s shoes. This will temper the long-term fallout and diminish Paris’s claim to the moral high ground for too long.

In the meantime, some diplomatic hand-wringing is unavoidable; Australia needs to accept it’ll be in the French freezer for a while. President Emmanuel Macron’s credibility is personally tied to the deal, and a tough re-election campaign looms. The people of Cherbourg, where the submarine project was based, will suffer economically. And the French defence industry, the world’s third largest arms exporter, will kick up a stink to deter other customers from rescinding.

In short, France needs to punish Australia—or, perhaps more accurately, needs to be seen to punish Australia. Foreign villains—in this case, the old English enemy and its colonial progeny—help shift the blame away from the French government.

Australia needs to see this for what it is. The AFiniti agreement might be quietly forgotten and we’re unlikely to see a French president deliver a keynote address on Sydney Harbour again soon. But none of France’s core interests in the Indo-Pacific were ever contingent on the submarines. Its people and possessions in the Indo-Pacific remain—as does its permanent military presence.

France’s intent towards the region is well established—and it has been the driving force behind a more coherent European approach. The French aren’t about to change their worldview because of a cancelled defence contract. Above all else, though, the single most powerful factor driving strategic convergence between Europe, the US and Australia remains—that is, an increasingly aggressive China. Don’t underestimate the ability of a common adversary to focus the minds of squabbling allies on what really matters.

The challenge for Canberra won’t be about resolving a clash of fundamental interests with France, but about rebuilding the means to influence and cooperate with Paris.

Australia needs some quick wins here, especially with ongoing EU free-trade negotiations and the Glasgow climate talks around the corner.

First, Canberra should negotiate generously and in good faith on the compensation to Naval Group. This will demonstrate respect and help the French save some face.

Second, Australia should lean on history to remind the French that the relationship is bigger and more profound than a procurement disagreement. Canberra could offer to make a significant investment in maintaining Commonwealth war graves in France and upgrading the remembrance infrastructure, using French labour.

And third, some strategic concessions could be made to French producers in FTA negotiations, though Australia should be careful linking trade and defence.

Gestures alone, however, will not be enough.

There’s no shortage of smaller defence procurements Australia could source from French providers. More substantially, Canberra should present concrete proposals for French troop rotations in Australia and potentially even a basing arrangement for French ships.

Australia should also be working intensely with its AUKUS and Quad partners on a formal security offering. Intelligence-sharing might be a good start.

December’s New Caledonia independence referendum, though, presents Australia’s greatest opportunity.

Any degree of New Caledonian independence carries risk for Australia and France. Neither country would say it openly, but the stabilising effect of the French political and military presence is the surest guard against a pro-China independent government emerging in New Caledonia.

Australia can be France’s most valuable external partner in New Caledonia, working closely together to shape what a more autonomous New Caledonia might look like. Australia also enjoys far stronger relations with New Zealand and Melanesia, especially Vanuatu, meaning it can coordinate regional influence over New Caledonia’s future much better than France can.

If New Caledonians do opt for independence, then Australia will be a powerful moderating voice against any rash moves as Noumea discovers its own foreign policy. Australia can also help maintain a French military presence in the region should France have to withdraw to any extent from New Caledonia.

The submarine decision has set Franco-Australian relations back at least a decade. But compelling reasons of strategic convergence mean Australia should be optimistic that it can rebuild influence with France.