President Biden has spent much of his first year making one foreign-policy message extremely clear: America’s alliances are back.
After four years in which Donald Trump repeatedly criticised NATO allies, questioned multilateral institutions and approached international relationships in unusually transactional terms, Biden has tried to present himself as almost the opposite. America would consult its allies again. It would strengthen partnerships. Democracies would cooperate to confront common challenges.
Then this week, the United States announced one of its most significant new security partnerships in years and managed to provoke an extraordinary diplomatic crisis with France.
On Wednesday, Biden appeared virtually alongside British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to announce AUKUS, a new security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Its most dramatic element is an agreement under which the United States and Britain will help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
Australia therefore cancelled an enormous existing agreement under which France’s Naval Group was supposed to provide twelve conventionally powered submarines. France says it was given almost no warning that the arrangement was about to collapse. Its foreign minister described the decision as a “stab in the back”. On Friday, President Emmanuel Macron took the extraordinary step of recalling France’s ambassadors to both the United States and Australia for consultations. France has apparently never before recalled its ambassador from Washington.
At first, this looks like an argument about submarines and an extremely expensive cancelled contract. It is much more interesting than that. AUKUS tells us something about how quickly the balance of international politics is shifting towards Asia, how seriously Australia now views China’s growing power, and perhaps most importantly, what countries actually mean when they call one another allies.
Because this week demonstrates that allies can share values, intelligence and security interests for decades and still seriously damage one another’s interests when their priorities diverge.
Australia’s strategic calculation is relatively understandable. The French agreement would have provided conventionally powered submarines. AUKUS instead opens the possibility of nuclear-powered submarines, although importantly not nuclear-armed submarines. Nuclear propulsion gives submarines major operational advantages, particularly range and endurance. For a country surrounded by enormous stretches of ocean and increasingly focused on security in the Indo-Pacific, that matters.
The geographic context has changed too. China has spent decades modernising its military and has become considerably more assertive in the South China Sea and across the wider Indo-Pacific. Beijing’s relationship with Canberra has also deteriorated significantly. Australia therefore appears to have concluded that the submarine capability it planned several years ago no longer matches the strategic environment it expects to face several decades from now.
That final point matters because submarines are not purchased for next Tuesday. Defence procurement can take decades. Australia is making a judgement about what Asia may look like in the 2030s and 2040s.
From Canberra’s perspective, abandoning the French agreement may therefore be brutal diplomacy but rational strategy. Governments have a responsibility to reassess defence programmes when circumstances change. Continuing to spend enormous amounts on a capability simply because cancelling it would offend another country would be difficult to defend if Australian officials genuinely believe the alternative better protects national security.
But a decision can be strategically rational and diplomatically disastrous at the same time.
France’s anger is not only about losing a commercial contract. Paris believed the submarine programme formed part of a much broader strategic partnership with Australia. France itself is an Indo-Pacific power: it possesses territories and citizens in the region and maintains military forces there. The cancelled submarine agreement therefore carried political meaning beyond the money involved.
Then Australia negotiated a replacement arrangement secretly with two of France’s closest allies.
That is why the way AUKUS was negotiated may matter almost as much as what it contains.
International politics depends heavily on information. Governments cannot cooperate effectively if they believe partners may be negotiating decisions affecting their interests behind their backs. Once trust deteriorates, countries begin protecting themselves against one another even when their underlying interests remain similar.
France and America have not suddenly become enemies. They remain NATO allies. Their militaries cooperate. They share intelligence and broad strategic interests. None of that disappears because of one submarine dispute.
But alliances are repeated relationships. What happens in one negotiation affects expectations in the next.
That is why recalling an ambassador is so significant. Ambassadors are normally recalled during serious diplomatic disputes, not because two close allies have an ordinary disagreement. Paris is deliberately communicating that it considers the manner of this decision a breach of trust, not simply an unfavourable commercial outcome.
There is also an irony for Biden. His administration argues that competing effectively with China requires stronger alliances. Yet AUKUS strengthens one group of allies while alienating another.
That may reveal a deeper problem with the phrase “the West”.
We often talk about Western countries as though they form one strategic actor: America, Britain, France, Germany, Australia and others supposedly sharing a coherent set of interests.
They don’t.
They share many interests and values. That is different.
France has its own defence industry. Britain has its own post-Brexit strategy. Australia has its own security concerns. The United States has its own priorities in Asia. European countries have different economic relationships with China. Geography affects each country differently.
An alliance does not eliminate national interest.
It creates a structure within which countries attempt to reconcile national interests that overlap but are never identical.
AUKUS makes that unusually visible.
Britain also has a specific reason to welcome the agreement. Since leaving the European Union, Boris Johnson’s government has repeatedly spoken about “Global Britain” and a greater British role beyond Europe. Participation in a major Indo-Pacific security arrangement with America and Australia gives that idea a concrete strategic form.
For Washington, the partnership strengthens a close network of states capable of operating alongside American forces in the Pacific.
For Australia, it provides access to military technology the United States has historically guarded extremely closely. Until now, Washington had shared its nuclear-submarine propulsion technology only with Britain.
The three countries therefore gain something significant.
France bears much of the immediate cost.
This is where describing international politics through friendship becomes misleading. If these were personal relationships, America’s behaviour would seem bizarre: why humiliate an old friend while repeatedly announcing how much friendship matters?
States do not have friendships in quite that sense. They have relationships built around interests, institutions and expectations.
Sometimes those interests align so consistently that the relationship begins to resemble friendship. But when a sufficiently important national interest changes, sentiment has limits.
That does not mean trust is irrelevant. Quite the opposite. Trust has strategic value precisely because states remain self-interested. A country needs confidence that an ally will share information, honour commitments and consult it before making decisions that substantially affect it.
Perhaps alliances therefore work best when nobody romanticises them. The expectation should not be “our ally will never act against our interests.” No sovereign government can credibly promise that.
A more realistic expectation is: “when our interests diverge, our ally will manage that disagreement predictably enough that cooperation remains worthwhile.”
By that standard, this week looks considerably worse for Washington and Canberra.
There is another actor that has barely been mentioned officially but sits behind almost every part of this agreement: China.
The AUKUS leaders did not announce the partnership by saying that its purpose was to contain China. They did not need to. The strategic context is obvious, and Beijing certainly understands it that way. China has condemned the agreement and argued that it damages regional stability.
The submarine deal is therefore part of a much larger transformation occurring across the Indo-Pacific. The United States is strengthening the Quad with India, Japan and Australia. Britain is increasing its regional presence. European governments are developing Indo-Pacific strategies. Australia is moving towards much deeper defence integration with America.
None of these developments individually creates a formal anti-China alliance comparable to NATO.
Together, they show that China’s rise is changing the behaviour of surrounding states.
This is an important distinction. Countries do not need to agree that China is an “enemy” to respond to the growth of Chinese power. They simply need to become uncertain about how that power might eventually be used.
Security policy deals heavily in possibilities rather than intentions.
China may insist that its military growth is defensive. Australian planners still have to ask what happens if future Chinese leaders use those capabilities differently.
The same logic operates in Beijing. China sees American alliances, military bases and naval deployments across Asia and asks what those capabilities could eventually be used for.
Then China strengthens its military.
America’s allies become more concerned.
They strengthen their militaries and move closer to Washington.
China interprets that as evidence that its original concerns were justified.
This is a classic security dilemma: one country’s attempt to make itself safer can make another country feel less safe, causing the second country to respond in a way that makes the first feel less safe again.
AUKUS may improve Australia’s deterrence.
It may simultaneously intensify China’s perception that the United States is constructing a coalition to contain it.
Both can be true.
That does not automatically mean AUKUS is a mistake. Refusing to strengthen defence capabilities because China might dislike them would effectively give Beijing control over other countries’ security policies.
But policymakers should recognise the feedback loop they are entering.
There is also a nuclear dimension that needs careful language. Australia is not acquiring nuclear weapons. The proposed submarines would use nuclear propulsion while carrying conventional weapons, and Australia remains committed to nuclear non-proliferation.
Still, transferring highly sensitive nuclear-propulsion technology is significant. Other governments may ask why Australia should receive access to technology denied to them, and the International Atomic Energy Agency will have to consider how safeguards apply.
Again, rules become more complicated when powerful states create exceptions for close partners.
This connects to something I wrote after the G7 summit in June. The United States frequently speaks about defending a rules-based international order. But the credibility of that system depends partly on whether other countries believe the rules are genuinely general rather than arrangements powerful states adjust when strategically convenient.
That does not mean every country must receive nuclear-submarine technology because Australia does. It means Washington will need a convincing explanation for why this case does not weaken the non-proliferation principles it wants others to respect.
India should also be watching closely.
AUKUS and the Quad are not the same thing. India is not part of AUKUS and has historically resisted formal alliance structures. But both developments reflect the same strategic shift towards the Indo-Pacific.
For India, China’s growing military power is not an abstract question. Indian and Chinese troops fought a deadly confrontation in the Galwan Valley last year, and the border dispute remains unresolved.
Closer cooperation with America, Japan and Australia therefore has obvious strategic value.
But India’s interests are still not identical to America’s.
India maintains a long-standing defence relationship with Russia. It values strategic autonomy. It does not necessarily want every regional institution transformed into an explicit anti-China military alliance.
This is precisely why alliances and partnerships need to be analysed from each member’s perspective rather than assuming everyone has joined the same geopolitical team.
Australia has decided that the strategic benefits of much deeper military integration with America outweigh the diplomatic cost of infuriating France.
Britain has decided that joining the arrangement advances its global strategy.
America has decided that strengthening deterrence in the Indo-Pacific is worth a serious dispute with Paris.
France has decided that the breach of trust is severe enough to recall ambassadors.
China has decided the arrangement threatens regional stability.
Each position makes considerably more sense when viewed from the interests of the country holding it.
That does not mean every position is equally justified. It means analysis should begin by asking what each actor is trying to achieve before deciding whether the strategy is likely to work.
I think this is where my understanding of alliances has changed most.
I used to imagine alliances primarily as groups of countries that liked and trusted one another because they shared values.
Values matter. Democracies often find cooperation easier with other democracies. History matters too. Britain and America possess extraordinarily deep institutional relationships.
But underneath all of that is a much less sentimental calculation.
Countries cooperate when cooperation makes them safer, richer or more influential than acting alone.
A durable alliance is one in which that calculation remains positive for long enough that institutions and trust accumulate around it.
The danger comes when governments begin treating that accumulated trust as though it were inexhaustible.
France will probably remain an American ally after this crisis. The strategic interests connecting the two countries are too extensive for one dispute to erase them.
But that does not make this week irrelevant.
Biden came into office arguing that America’s alliances were one of its greatest advantages over China.
He is probably right.
China has economic partners around the world, but the United States possesses a network of formal allies and security relationships that Beijing cannot easily reproduce.
That network is a form of American power.
Which means trust inside that network is also a strategic asset.
AUKUS may ultimately make America, Britain and Australia considerably stronger in the Indo-Pacific.
But power gained in one relationship can be partially offset by trust lost in another.
Foreign policy is rarely about choosing between interests and principles, or between allies and adversaries, as cleanly as politicians suggest.
More often, it is about deciding which relationship you are willing to damage in order to strengthen another.
This week, Washington and Canberra made that choice.
Paris noticed.
