CN Live! speaks to Andrew Fowler about his new book Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty, how Australia deceived France, undermined its independence and helps threaten war with China. Watch the replay on demand.
In September 2021 the U.S., U.K. and Australia announced a joint project to build 8 nuclear submarines for Australia at a cost of AU$368 billion. To conclude the deal, Australia had to scrap an already concluded agreement with France to build twelve conventional submarines for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) at AU$50 billion.
France, which had been strung along by Australia until the same day AUKUS was announced, was furious. The Anglo-Saxon deal has dangerous overtones for the Pacific region as it ramps up unnecessary tension with China, Australia’s largest trading partner.
A new book, Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty by CN Live!‘s guest, the journalist Andrew Fowler, is a tale of treachery, deception and dominance, while Australia’s sovereignty is undermined amidst manufactured tensions with China.
The subservience of the Anthony Albanese government to the United States in its continuation of the AUKUS project begun by the previous prime minister Scott Morrison, in which Australia will fork out billions of dollars for submarines it does not need, in order to protect itself from an enemy it does not have, is at the core of Fowler’s book.
Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty is published by Melbourne University Press. It won a Walkley Award (Australia’s Pulitzer) for its author, Andrew Fowler, who joins CN Live! to discuss it.
Andrew is an award-winning investigative journalist and a former reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)’s Foreign Correspondent and Four Corners programs. Fowler began his journalism career in the early 1970s, covering the IRA bombing campaign for the London Evening News. He has been the chief of staff and acting foreign editor of The Australian newspaper.
Andrew wrote The Most Dangerous Man in the World, the story of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks in 2011, which was updated in 2012 and 2020. Fowler first interviewed Assange for Foreign Correspondent in 2010, which won the New York Festival Gold Medal.
His two other books are The War on Journalism (Random House, 2015) and Shooting the Messenger: Criminalising Journalism (Routledge, 2017). Fowler is a winner of the United Nations Peace Prize, has lectured on journalism at universities in Australia and the U.K., and has contributed to various academic papers.
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I hope this points out that the Aussies won’t get their subs until long after the war is over?
Head of USN in pacific is talking about war in 2027. These subs don’t come till the next decade, and that’s if American shipyards actually meet a schedule on a military contract.
Be a target today, and if you survive and if we win the war, then we’ll give you your nuclear subs.
And even that is trusting that America will actually honor a deal. 21st century America does not have a reputation for keeping deals that no longer bring profit or advantage.