The recent contretemps between the US, Australia and the UK on one hand, and France on the other has been largely treated as a contracting dispute. We all know the basic outline of what occurred. Australia had agreed to buy 12 new submarines for France for $66 billion. This was a big contract for France and a major defense purchase for Australia, but then the deal fell through.

More accurately, it wasn’t simply that the deal fell through, but that Australia decided to buy the submarines from the US instead. Not incidentally, the submarines that France had planned to sell Australia were diesel-electric powered while the submarines the US will sell to Australia are nuclear powered. This is not a minor detail. Additionally, the new purchase is part of a broader US-Australia-UK defense cooperation effort in the South China Sea. This cooperation does not include France, a longtime ally of the other three countries.

The media has largely covered all of by focusing on the purchase itself, pointing out that France was not told about Australia’s decision until the deal with the US was finalized, that the US sold Australia a superior product and that the contracts, the one that was carried out and the one that wasn’t, were both very important to the defense industries in their respective countries.

All of this may be true, but it all misses the larger and more important point.

Australia is purchasing nuclear submarines from the US, because it wants stronger defense in the face of an increasingly powerful China. Australia now becomes only the seventh country to have this kind of submarine and the only country, other than the UK, with which the US has shared the relevant technology. That, at least, would be the American and Australian perspective on the deal. Another way to phrase this would be that this contract ratchets up tension not just between Australia and China, but between the US and China. That, not the contracting question itself, is the more important story here.

The Biden administration has continually sought to walk a fine line on China. They are aware that there is a level of conflict, beyond the low intensity one that has simmered for a while now, that would be very damaging for both countries as well as for much of the world beyond China and the US. However, the US remains concerned about China’s actions, its increased power in many parts of the word, support for regimes hostile to the US and human rights abuses. Additionally, Biden faces pressure at home from a Republican Party which, desperate to conceal their deep complicity in the previous administration’s sketchy relationship with Moscow, seeks to reassert its hawkish credentials by accusing Biden of being soft on China-whatever that means.

Equipping a close ally with nuclear powered submarines, capable of traveling further and faster, able to stay underwater longer and with a greater weapons capacity than non-nuclear powered submarines, is significant and is the precise kind of move that would make American policy makers of both parties apoplectic if, for example, China sold similar military equipment to a country in the western hemisphere.

President Biden’s decision to finally conclude the US war in Afghanistan was interpreted by many to mean that the US was going to pursue a very different approach to foreign policy. Biden’s comments at the United Nations General Assembly indicate that as well. “We've ended 20 years of conflict in Afghanistan. And as we close this period of relentless war, we're opening a new era of relentless diplomacy.” The submarine deal with Australia suggests the exact opposite. This is certainly not lost on China. The Chinese Foreign Ministry characterized the deal as "severely damaging regional peace and stability, intensifying an arms race, and damaging international nuclear non-proliferation efforts."

While France’s protests have framed the incident, particularly in the American media, France is more or less peripheral to the real importance of the deal. However, French concern was advantageous for Biden as he has avoided having to explain the effect this decision had on US-China relations, and the possibility of some kind of Chinese move in response-particularly to the left and anti-interventionist wing of the party.

The US-China relationship remains the most important bilateral relationship, not just for each of these countries, but for the world. It is not an exaggeration to say that without some cooperation between these two powers, global efforts like fighting Covid and addressing climate change will be completely hamstrung. It also remains the case that there are myriad disagreements and numerous flash points, including in the South China sea. Navigating this relationship will be the major foreign policy test of Joe Biden’s administration. The events of the last few weeks indicate that this may not go smoothly.

Photo: cc/madison.beer

Lincoln Mitchell