Nuked
The Submarine Fiasco that Sunk Australia's Sovereignty
Andrew Fowler
Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2024
Paperback 224pp RRP: $35.00
Reviewer: David Rees, August 2024
In September 2021, the Australian PM, Scott Morrison together with the US President, Joe Biden and UK PM, Boris Johnson formally announced the formation of the AUKUS partnership. Its purpose was to retain stability in the Indo-pacific region due to China’s increasing threat to the region’s security as well as Australia’s interests. Under the partnership, Australia, for A$368 billion would procure eight nuclear powered submarines from the USA and UK with some being built in Australia. At the same time, the previous contract with France for acquiring twelve non-nuclear submarines was cancelled.
To many Australians the announcement came as a bolt out of the blue, especially the change of the submarine type to nuclear using highly enriched uranium reactors. It was even more of a surprise to the French Naval Group and the French President Emmanuel Macron. In April 2016, the French had won a bid to jointly design and build twelve non-nuclear submarines for the RAN, against competition bids from a Germany and Japan. Although there were problems about the degree of local build content offered by the French, these were thought by the author not to be sufficient to cancel the contract with them.
The author Andrew Fowler is a journalist and former investigator on the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent and Four Corners TV programs. He is very opinionated in his views about the submarine contract and his analysis of it is very controversial. He tries in his book to fathom why the procurement of submarines became such a political fiasco. A difficult task, as most of the procurement information, processes and decisions were made behind closed doors. However, he is able to provide a detailed story with some insight from the redacted information available and interviews with politicians and key government staff, into what he believes are some deception politics behind the major changes in Australia’s military capability and its impact on the country’s sovereignty.
It is often stated that one over-riding objective of defence policy and posture is not only to deter an aggressor from attacking one’s country but also to provide effective war fighting capabilities. Fowler argues that one can either adopt an independent defence posture or rely on a joint defence posture with trusted allies. Up to now Australia has supported the latter on both sides of politics without compromising any sovereignty. However, like former prime minister Paul Keating, he views the AUKUS partnership as an arrangement which puts Australian sovereignty at risk. He cites a statement from General Douglas Macarthur to John Curtin in 1942 during the Second World War:
The US has no sovereign interest in the integrity of Australia, its interest is in the strategic impact of the utility of Australia as a base from which to attack and defeat the enemy.
Whether this is valid 82 years later in regard to the AUKUS partnership is a moot point! At least the book is one way of stirring up further controversy in spite of some people saying that AUKUS is here to stay and critics should get used to it.
(For background information on the RAN submarine acquisition, there is an excellent article by Mike Rawlinson in the June 2024 RUSI Quarterly Newsletter and updates from Michael Small in earlier Newsletters.)
The RUSI – Vic Library is most grateful to the publishers for making this work available for review.