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Q&A

Turnbull: AUKUS Subs Deal Is an

‘Own Goal’
“If you double-cross people, there is a price to pay,” said former Australian Prime
Minister Malcolm Turnbull about the controversial deal that jilted France.

By Jack Detsch, Foreign Policy’s Pentagon and national security reporter.

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Malcolm Turnbull, Australia's then-outgoing prime minister, speaks at a press conference in Canberra on Aug. 24, 2018. SAEED KHAN/AFP VIA GETTY
IMAGES

OCTOBER 6, 2021, 6:08 PM

It only took hours for the Biden administration’s deal to build nuclear-powered submarines with
Britain and Australia to create a diplomatic firestorm. France, whose contract to build diesel-
electric submarines for Canberra was subsequently canceled, recalled its ambassadors from both
Washington and Canberra. And now, the controversy is kicking up back in Australia.

Some of the harshest words for the trilateral submarine partnership, popularly known as
AUKUS, are coming from a surprising source: former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm
Turnbull, who recently spoke out publicly against the move. He fears that his successor, Scott
Morrison, has flat-out deceived the French, an emerging power in the Pacific, something that
could have long-lasting consequences for Australian relations with Europe. (Turnbull’s criticism
might not be too surprising: his government signed the deal to buy French submarines in 2016).

“The bottom line is, if you double-cross people, there is a price to pay. And what Morrison did
was reprehensible,” Turnbull said in an interview.

Foreign Policy took the opportunity to talk to Turnbull about the controversial deal and its
diplomatic fallout, Australia and its increasingly contentious relations with China, and
Canberra’s growing role in the Pacific.

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This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Foreign Policy: How do you see Australia’s role in the world changing as a result of its inclusion
in the AUKUS grouping and in the Quad?

Malcolm Turnbull: I think that as Australia’s economy has grown, we have greater economic
strength than we had 20 years ago, even 10 years ago. My view is that, in this region, Australia
has to engage with its neighbors, particularly the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and
Japan and South Korea, of course, and India. But it’s got to engage with its neighbors and look at
the region less as a series of spokes leading into Washington or Beijing but more as a mesh. And
that’s why I’ve ensured that the Trans-Pacific Partnership continued after the Americans pulled
out. I mean, that was no mean feat. I had to persuade then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
to stick with it, which he ultimately did, and we were able to keep that alive. You cannot assume
that every relationship you have is one that goes through Washington. That’s really important.

And this is why AUKUS, the decision on the submarines, is such a disappointment and, I think, a
very big mistake.

The best course of action for us, and I believe for the United States, would have been for
Australia to have stuck with the French agreement; built the first three submarines, perhaps as
diesel-electric submarines; and then transitioned to nuclear propulsion because, of course, the
Barracuda is a nuclear submarine that, at our request, the French agreed to have as a
conventional diesel-electric propulsion system.

I would say Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is clearly more comfortable dealing with
London and Washington, and that’s a mistake. The reality is, you can have both. AUKUS, apart
from the submarines—you’ve got to ask, what is it? The reality is that the cooperation between
Australia and the United States could not be closer. It is so close. It is seamless. The military
strategic collaboration between the United States and the United Kingdom is as close as it can be
between two different countries or, in this case, three different countries. So describing AUKUS latest
as a new alliance is just not true. It’s not an alliance at all. The alliance we have with the United
Germany’s Love Affair With Crime Fiction
States is the Australia-New Zealand-United States Security Treaty. That’s a mutual defense pact. OCTOBER 24, 2021, 3:00 AM

The alliance the Americans have with Britain is NATO.

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Whereas the partnership with France was a very significant move because what we were OCTOBER 22, 2021, 5:20 PM

acquiring was a new partner in the Pacific. France is in the Pacific. It’s got 2 million citizens SEE ALL STORIES
between the Indian and Pacific oceans, and the damage that has been done to that relationship
is enormous. I mean, more for Australia than for the United States, but it’s very significant. And I
just think it’s a big strategic mistake.

FP: Back on AUKUS…

MT: I am not a critic of AUKUS. I mean, AUKUS is fine, there’s nothing wrong with it. But if you
take the submarines out of it, it is essentially an enhancement, an embellishment, of the
arrangements we already have. Nobody has actually been able to say what is the stuff that we’ll
be sharing with each other that we don’t share with each other already.

But the submarine decision, I think, is a real mistake. I think it’s a mistake from Australia’s point
of view. Instead of having construction of a submarine beginning in 2023 and the first one in the
water in 2032—and instead of having the ability to transition to nuclear power with LEU [low-
enriched uranium], which is clearly preferable—we’re now in a situation where we have literally
nothing except 18 months of discussion and no expectation of a new submarine before 2040.

The outcome of it has been that the U.S. administration has been embarrassed, as U.S. President
Joe Biden acknowledged in his statement from his meeting with French President Emmanuel
Macron. The French have been legitimately appalled. The Europeans are appalled. It has
undermined trust between the United States and Europe. It has smashed trust between Australia
and France. I have to say, I think it has been an own goal.

FP: Given the “awkward birth” of AUKUS, as you termed it in a recent speech, what’s the worst-
case scenario for Australia’s relationship with Europe coming out of this?

MT: Right, this week, Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan is in Paris for the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development meeting. He cannot get a meeting with the French
trade minister. The talks between Australia and Europe on a free trade agreement have been
postponed. The Europeans have just put them back. France had been historically a protectionist
country and had actually been a strong supporter of an EU-Australia free trade agreement. You’d
TRENDING
be very optimistic to think that would continue. The French equivalent of the Chamber of
Commerce won’t even meet with Tehan. 1 China’s Sham Meritocracy Has Created a
Burned-Out Generation
Let’s assume that nobody is going to look Morrison or another Australian leader or official in the
2 China Is a Declining Power—and That’s the
eye and say, “You are an untrustworthy person. I’ll never have anything to do with you.” But the
Problem
bottom line is, if you double-cross people, there is a price to pay. And what Morrison’s
government did was reprehensible. It led the French to believe that all was chugging along at the 3 Biden’s Summit for Democracy Will Include
Some Not-So-Democratic Countries
same time as it was planning to dump them. It was acting in bad faith.
4 ‫وﺣﺪوا اﻷردن وﻓﻠﺴﻄﯿﻦ – ﻣﺮة أﺧﺮى‬
I’ve only spoken to a few people in the Biden administration, but my impression is that there is
quite a bit of embarrassment and regret in Washington about this. Because if you look at it from 5 The Spy Who Could Have Saved Syria
an American point of view, if you want to have an Australian submarine fleet that had, you know,
more capability—at least in terms of endurance, particularly in shallow waters in littoral areas—
there are advantages for diesel-electric boats. A diesel-electric boat that is running underwater
on batteries is actually harder to detect than a nuclear-powered submarine because with a nuke,
the reactors are always running. The advantage of nuclear-powered submarines is that they can
go longer, faster, underwater.

I think from an American point of view, we could have maintained a good, trusting relationship
with France. We could have potentially had French-designed, LEU-fueled nuclear-propulsion
boats. That would have ticked every box. At the moment, we’ve got the prospect 20 years from
now of having American-designed submarines or British-designed submarines but with
American naval nuclear propulsion, using weapons-grade uranium. You’ve got to remember that
Morrison has said there will be no nuclear industry in Australia. And he said this capability will
be sovereign. So what he’s basically saying is the nuclear reactor is like a sealed battery that you
plug into the boat and you don’t have to touch it for 35 years. That’s just not right. The British
and American navies have had long experience with naval nuclear propulsion; both are nuclear
weapons states that have got large civil nuclear industries. It’s a very different context.

So this is what we’ve got: a much bigger capability gap than we had before. We’ve got an
affronted France and, by extension, Europe. There has been a lot of damage done to trust. And
we’ve got the prospect—and that’s all—of a solution with the United States that is, I think, very
difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile with no nuclear industry in Australia or Australian
sovereignty over the capability. Because that’s the other thing: If you’ve got submarines that are
effectively leased or, you know, maintained and sustained by the U.S. Navy, then they’re not
really Australian boats, are they?

FP: You talked about the capability gap. Your Collins-class submarines will retire by 2030, right?
And nuclear submarines would arrive in 2040, maybe? I’m curious how you see Australia
surviving that gap.

MT: I don’t know. I don’t think anyone has got an answer to that yet. There has been talk about
releasing American submarines, but the problem is that, do you think the U.S. Congress is going
to be attracted to taking a Virginia-class submarine out of service from the U.S. Navy and
Australia effectively operating it? I could see the United States saying, “Yeah, we’re very happy to
have Australian crew embedded on Virginia-class submarines from a training point of view.”
But, just, there’s no way that would give us sovereign capability. So I would say we’ve got a
serious problem with the retirement of the Collins-class submarines. And I can’t see what the
answer to that is. I’m afraid at the moment, if that’s a result of the awkward submarine deal—
that is, increasing Australia’s submarine capability gap—I don’t see how that was in anybody’s
interest.

FP: It sounds as if you’re concerned this is just not going to fly politically in Australia for very
long.

MT: My concern is that it just won’t happen. That we’ll end up with nothing.

FP: And the question is, how can you rectify it?

MT: Look, it’s very hard to explain. Morrison was my treasurer. I know him very well. This looks
as if it’s all political, you know, media-focused, wanting to have a big announcement. But, gee,
AUKUS was given plaudits for about a week, and then people started to reflect on the reality of it.
I didn’t say anything about it because Morrison was going overseas, and I don’t like to say things
that are going to be critical of the prime minister when he’s out of the country. So I waited until
he returned. And then I gave a 30-minute speech, which was very detailed.

People have said, “Oh, you know, Malcolm doesn’t like Morrison,” or whatever, but nobody has
said the speech is wrong. You can’t deny that the French were deceived. That’s clear. That was
actually the strategy. Morrison decided to string the French along while he was planning an
alternative. So he dumped the French on Sept. 15. Our defense and foreign ministers and their
counterparts in France had a meeting on Aug. 30 and in the communique emphasized the
importance of the submarine partnership. It’s just mind-blowing. It’s so deceitful.

FP: Australia seems to be turning away from the economic ties it has had with China and toward
going more all-in with Washington. Why is this happening so suddenly?

MT: I think our position with China has been largely reactive. China has sought to coerce
Australia. And some of it is so blatant, it’s almost comic-book material, like the list of 14
demands that the Chinese Embassy issued, for instance, which included muzzling our press
and, you know, all sorts of things—it was just ridiculous. It has been so counterproductive. It
obviously is designed to cater to domestic public opinion in China, but it has been utterly
counterproductive both here and in the region.

FP: You just mentioned Chinese coercion in Australia and political interference. Do you see
Chinese political interference in Australia as overhyped?

MT: Look, I think these issues always tend to get overhyped, right? But just because something is
being hyped doesn’t mean it isn’t real. It’s like with Huawei. I mean, I’ve never made an
allegation that Huawei is involved in espionage or has been a vehicle for espionage, ever. My
point was hedging risk. We were really identifying a loaded gun rather than a smoking gun.

What I’ve described is that the way we have to deal with China in the West is with boundaries of
trust. We all have boundaries of trust. There are things that, you know, we’ve just met, we’re
having a nice chat, but you’re not going to tell me things. You would tell your best friend or your
work colleague or your wife or whatever. So we all have boundaries of trust. And so what we have
to recognize is that there are some areas where we are going to hedge and where we can work
collaboratively—and where we cannot, we will not work collaboratively. And this is in obviously
sensitive sectors, telecommunications being a good example. But there are many other areas
where we can. The Chinese government’s indignation about this is, really—it can’t be genuine.

I’ve often said this, that all of this indignation that pours out of Beijing and this anger and so
forth is all instrumental. Trust is something that takes a long time to build up but can be
wrecked very quickly. And again, it’s no different in personal relationships. You know, you get to
know someone. You take a long time to trust them, and then they double-cross you, and you go,
“Oh, I was mistaken, that’s it,” and do not have anything more to do with that guy.

Jack Detsch is Foreign Policy’s Pentagon and national security reporter. Twitter: @JackDetsch

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