Australia’s nuclear subs to save South Pacific
Sinking Rarotonga’s nuclear free zone along the way
Sunday 19 March 2023
Australia has spent decades digging large holes across its continent and shipping their contents around the world and predominantly to China. It's presumably been at a fair price to both buyer and seller. But folk in Canberra are anxious that Beijing wants more than just the minerals, they want all of Terra Australis. And they’re coming to take it. By force. Thus Australia is to spend A$368 billion over 30 years to get three second-hand nuclear attack submarines, and later a fleet of eight British and Australian built ‘SSN-AUKUS’ nuclear powered submarines. Presumably the technology for spotting 11,000 ton phallic boats moving through 300 metre deep water will have gone away, somewhere. Except it will not have.
This Australian decision does, at first blush, put it outside of the Treaty of Rarotonga, the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty which entered into force in 1986. Under it Australia agreed not to manufacture, possess, acquire or have control of nuclear weapons. Diplomats will argue over whether a nuclear powered submarine is a weapon as such. So far Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has given general approval to Australia’s plan. The Fiji Times on March 18, in ‘No subs with nuclear arms – Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka , quotes him after meeting visiting Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, saying the submarine deal will not affect the Rarotonga Treaty or the Non Proliferation Treaty: ‘These ones will not be armed with nuclear weapons.’ Rabuka added Fiji could benefit from employment in the construction of the submarines.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says under his country’s nuclear free law, the Australian submarines will not be allowed into New Zealand ports. What he didn’t say though was under the provisions of law of the sea innocent passage, nuclear powered submarine HMAS Albanese will be allowed to transit the Cook Strait, if it wants, underwater even (where, New Zealand’s P8 Poseidons will detect it but keep discretely quiet about it).
The Rarotonga Treaty was a Pacific Forum response to French nuclear weapon testing at Mururoa Atoll. At the time there was no great Pacific Island concern about nuclear powered warships, and places like Fiji and Tonga continued to welcome them even as New Zealand provided fleets of protesting escorts. Given the passive Pacific response to the SSN-AUKUS submarines so far, it's hardly likely to be an issue at this year’s forum summit in, ironically, Rarotonga. New Zealand will only have obscure representation at the forum; the summit nearly coincides with Aotearoa’s general election.
With US President Joe Biden expected to be in Rarotonga, one can be sure Australia’s A$368 billion project will get Pacific leader endorsement, and given the current Pacific Forum propaganda direction, they’ll even be dressed in Blue Pacific credentials. HMAS Albanese will surely be welcomed into Suva, Apia and Nuku’alofa. Even Tarawa. Australia might even throw in some attractive submarine names: HMAS Maui, HMAS Blue Pacific.
The Australian project is in part motivated by Canberra’s somewhat wrong-headed interpretation over what it believes China is doing with South Pacific nations ( Chicken Little’s China S'Pacific bases ). How submarines will counter China’s aid efforts in places like the Solomons or Kiribati is hard to fathom. Submarines cannot be parked in the harbour while crews go ashore to help a nation recover from a cyclone. If, in the current sky-is-falling Canberra assessment, China has a naval base somewhere in Melanesia and Kiribati, it remains a stretch working out what HMAS Albanese might do about it. The SSN-AUKUS programme is not, and cannot, offer any kind of security to Pacific states. Nuclear submarines are essentially about Deputy Sheriff Australia getting a bigger gun.
There seems to be a small problem though; FedEx cannot get the bigger gun to Australia until 2040, or so (and who's ever heard of an Australian built ship on time?), thus the wolf warriors of Beijing know they had better get on with it - according to the Sydney Morning Herald, within three years. For some reason one of John Clarke’s many brilliant quotes comes to mind: ‘Have you measured the 100m track, Mr Wilson?’
While former Prime Minister Paul Keating is right about China having no desire to invade Australia (especially when the alternative to military landing is to just buy or lease a place like Darwin harbour), Australian policy thinkers appear heavily influenced by Alfred Thayer Mahan, the US historian who felt, in the 19th Century, that sea power was everything. The relevance here is whether Canberra views the submarines as purely defensive, or offensive. If the latter, then the submarines are likely to be deployed off China, presumably to strangle their shipping (as the US did to Japan in World War Two).
But as I noted in ‘Choke point; strategic risk or just remote’, the key battleground is much closer to Australia. Draw a 900 kilometre line west from Kolombangara in the Solomons, where Australia fears a Chinese naval base will shortly be built, and it runs over a globally strategic if little noticed seaway. A choke point in fact, one that is bound to be motivating Beijing to take a greater interest in the South Pacific. Crucial minerals, such as nickel, pass through it. Shipping density charts published by website MarineTraffic underline the importance of the Louisiade Archipelago, a 600 kilometre piece of environmental paradise between Papua New Guinea to the west and the Solomon Islands, separating the Solomon Sea to the north from the Coral Sea. The islands, atolls and reefs cut across the region’s busiest shipping links: Asia with Australia’s east coast, New Caledonia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Access through is limited to three channels, the most important being the variously named Jomard Passage, or Channel or Entrance. Vessels transiting Jomard Entrance are primarily bulk carriers, as well as large numbers of oil, chemical products and LNG tankers. Most of New Caledonia’s nickel exports, mainly to China, pass through Jomard. HMAS Albanese might sink a ship carrying Newcastle coal: will that be prepaid & add, or free on board sir?
In May 1942 the Battle of the Coral Sea was fought mainly to the south of the archipelago. A Japanese fleet attempted to seize Port Moresby and the southern coast of New Guinea, but was turned back in a battle that involved aircraft and aircraft carriers over the horizon from each other. Whether China would have any better luck is debatable and highly unlikely, but indisputably an attack submarine or two lurking in the South Solomon Trench or the New Hebrides Trench would be a deterrent. Beijing might decide it's just cheaper buying Australian iron ore on the open market, rather than to fight for it.
SSN-AUKUS wargaming has to be all about deterrence. Anything else and from the moment HMAS Albanese fires a torpedo at a Chinese vessel (shipping, say, nickel from New Caledonia to Shanghai via Jomard Passage to make new iPhones for US customers) the future of Australia and the South Pacific will radically and instantly change, Tuvalu and others will have to declare whose side they are on.
The nonsense inherent in Australia’s belief that they are obtaining submarines to save the South Pacific from communism, is revealed in simple bookkeeping. Australia’s Lowy Institute data shows that Chinese bilateral aid and development finance to Pacific partner countries totalled US$204 million in 2008, peaked at US$334 million in 2016 and fell to US$188 million in 2020 even though this figure includes Chinese aid to two more Pacific countries – Solomon Islands and Kiribati, which switched from Taiwan for China in 2019. Australia proposes to spend around 3000 percent more of its national treasure to save the Pacific from China. Who is the bigger fool?
It will not go unnoticed in the Pacific that while Australia is cagey about giving aid, and insisting on responsible spending, it will blow A$400 billion on submarines instead of spending on regional development, health, education and good neighbour policies. Submarines are regionally useless. That said, it's easy to see Australia will soon have to open its navy recruitment up to Pacific Islanders: few Australians will be keen on either picking fruit, or sitting in the Tonga Trench waiting for a Chinese warship.
In essence, with this vast expenditure, Canberra loses the right to judge South Pacific nations for their economic decision making. And Australians sink vast amounts of their own treasure for something of dubious worth.
©Michael J Field
In other substack postings…
Anthropologist and another general
The American Samoa Mau committee submitted a letter: ‘The Samoan people object to having Samoa ruled by the Navy for 10 or 30 years more while the chiefs of Samoa are being educated for the purpose of conducting their own government affairs. The education of the Samoan people at present is sufficient to take care of their own affairs. The Navy rule must cease.’
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