Broken contract… but soon to be renewed? Emmanuel Macron said Thursday in Bangkok that the offer of French cooperation on submarines with Australia remained “on the table”. “She is known, she remains on the table,” he said, recalling that they were conventionally powered submarines, the day after a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali.
The conclusion of the AUKUS alliance between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom had led Canberra to cancel in 2021 a mega-contract for the acquisition of twelve French conventional submarines, which would have been built in Australia. The Oceania country has decided to buy US or British nuclear-powered submarines instead, a major change for a country with weak nuclear capabilities.
However, the delivery of these submarines is likely to take time as the Australians must quickly renew their capacities in the face of a China with growing influence in the region. “We will see how they adapt to the difficulties,” said Emmanuel Macron, noting that “for the moment, they have not decided to change their strategy on the subject”.
Conventional or nuclear submarines?
Labor Anthony Albanese, the new Prime Minister of Australia since May, has pledged with Emmanuel Macron to repair the damaged bilateral relations between the two countries. “There is a fundamental choice which is whether or not they produce submarines at home or whether they decide to go nuclear or not,” noted the French president.
The Head of State recalled that France does not deliver nuclear-powered submarines abroad and that the offer therefore remained conventional. “We’ve never been on a strategy like this,” he said. The French solution offers Australia an alternative which guarantees its “freedom and sovereignty”, he pointed out, recalling that the submarines would have been built there.
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The crisis with Australia has seriously undermined the “Indo-Pacific” strategy of France, which has many territories and maritime areas in the region and intends to have a place there. President Macron will try to relaunch these strategic ambitions at the Apec summit in Bangkok, where he is the first European head of state to be invited.
“In this highly contested region, which is the scene of a confrontation between the two leading world powers (..) our strategy is: to defend freedom and sovereignty, balances preserving maritime freedoms, balanced cultural exchanges, exchanges economic, the development of technologies without a hegemonic model prevailing”, underlined Emmanuel Macron.