Why did Australia torpedo the “contract of the century” with France so suddenly? Two years ago, Canberra canceled at the last minute an order for 12 submarines from Naval group worth 56 billion euros, preferring to turn to American nuclear-powered submersibles to better counter China in the Indo-Pacific region.
Tuesday, ABC News provided a detail which will undoubtedly challenge Jean-Yves Le Drian: five months before Australia put a “stab in the back” on France, Donald Trump would have revealed secrets about American nuclear submarines to an Australian billionaire close to the Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
The American channel claims that special prosecutor Jack Smith, who is investigating the unauthorized sharing of classified information by Donald Trump – who will be tried next May in the White House Archives affair – questioned the king several times from the Australian cartoonist Anthony Pratt. He is one of Australia’s richest men, and has also been a member of Donald Trump’s Florida country club since 2017.
Nuclear warheads and stealth
It was precisely at Mar-a-Lago that Donald Trump would have, in April 2021 – three months after leaving the White House – shared sensitive information with Pratt on the American fleet. Notably the number of nuclear warheads that ballistic missile submarines carry and the distance at which stealth nuclear-powered submersibles can approach their Russian equivalents without being detected. ABC News and the New York Times point out that it is unknown whether the information provided by Donald Trump was accurate – and truly secret – or whether he was boasting.
The submarines ultimately ordered by Australia from Washington do not carry a nuclear warhead, but the stealth of nuclear propulsion was one of the main advantages over the Naval Group’s conventional submarines.
Information shared with 45 people
According to ABC, Anthony Pratt shared this information with 45 people, including six journalists, 11 employees, 10 Australian officials and three former prime ministers. It is not known whether Scott Morrison was one of them.
What we do know is that when Morrison made a state visit to the United States two years earlier, he visited a Pratt Industries factory in Ohio with Donald Trump. And that Anthony Pratt told investigators that he immediately passed this information to Australian officials because he was pleading for Canberra to sign an agreement with Washington.
In his memoirs, Scott Morrison claims to have discussed technical points with Washington in 2020, just in case. But according to Guardian, it was only in “March or April” 2021 that Australia began to think about a plan B for its submarines and initiated discussions, first with the United Kingdom, then with the States -United. Boris Johnson, Scott Morrison and Joe Biden notably exchanged views in June at the G7 in Cornwall. In September, they announced the AUKUS strategic partnership, ultimately leaving France and Emmanuel Macron with little consolation: compensation of 555 million euros.