Australian Submarine Deal, Asian Security Summit, Blinken in Finland, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, a UN agency reviews the nuclear submarine deal for Australia, the Asian security summit, known as the Shangri-La Dialogue, takes place, and U.S. Secretary of State Blinken visits new NATO member, Finland. It's June 1st, 2023 and time for The World Next Week. I'm Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins.

MCMAHON:
Carla, let's start out by going nuclear, and by that, I mean nuclear power, of course. Next Monday, at the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors meeting, Director General Rafael Grossi will report on the AUKUS submarine deal. That's the deal in which the United States and United Kingdom help equip Australia's navy with nuclear-powered submarines. So why is the IAEA getting involved in reviewing and reporting on this?

ROBBINS:
So Bob, when the AUKUS deal, and I love that term, was first announced in 2021, all of our attention was on two things, how much of a strategic challenge would this pose to China, and how much it really infuriated the French. As I'm sure you recall, the French were supposed to be selling diesel-powered subs to Australia for more than $60 billion, and Washington and London cut this deal behind Paris' back, and it took an enormous amount of groveling by the Biden team to calm Macron down, but they didn't give him a taste of the deal and this was going forward. 

What got very little attention at the time, even I'm a nuclear nerd, were the arms control implications. We need to reinforce the point, these are nuclear-powered submarines. They're not submarines carrying nuclear weapons, but their nuclear reactors use weapons-grade fuel, in other words, fuel that could be used in a nuclear weapon.

The Chinese, not surprisingly, cried foul, claiming that the deal is a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which does ban the transfer of nuclear technology for military uses to a non-nuclear weapon state, which Australia is, okay? It's complicated, but follow me. They were so worked up about AUKUS, that its ambassador at the IAEA has reportedly been personally insulting Grossi in private meetings for not denouncing the deal. In fact, the NPT does not ban non-nuclear weapon states from building or operating nuclear-powered ships even for military use, but until now, only the five NPT recognized nuclear powers, the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, and France, have had nuclear submarines. 

The problem is monitoring the fuel. The NPT requires the non-weapon states declare all their nuclear material to the IAEA, and the monitors from the IAEA are supposed to verify that none of that is being used to secretly build a weapon, but as you can imagine, monitoring a reactor on a submarine, especially one with top-secret high-tech is not going to be easy, so there is a loophole in the IAEA's basic safeguard agreement. These are the agreements they negotiate with states for monitoring, that allows non-weapon states to withdraw the nuclear material used in a nuclear reactor from the inspections requirement, okay? Now, I know this is complicated, but it's really worth paying attention to. No one believes there's a danger that the Australians can or would divert the reactor's highly-enriched uranium fuel. It's supposed to be delivered in welded units, and why would the Australians want to go nuclear?

But many experts have warned that the U.S., UK, and Australia are setting a dangerous precedent and states that might want to pursue a secret nuclear weapons program could say they want nuclear-powered submarines, and then divert the fuel for their own secret weapons program. The IAEA, meanwhile, is insisting that this loophole isn't a get-out-of-jail free card for anybody, not for Australia, for the U.S., or UK in this deal, and as you can imagine, the U.S., UK, and Australia all have a strong interest in keeping the IAEA happy, and more important, credible. Keep in mind, they rely on Grossi and the IAEA to raise the alarm about Iran's misdeeds and that, if any other potential proliferators. So what Grossi is reporting on is where he stands on efforts to reach some sort of an agreement with the AUKUS states that will allow his inspectors to ensure that none of the fuel has gone walkabout, fuel that nobody really thinks is going to go walkabout. Grossi has vowed that, and I love this quote, "We're going to put together a solid watertight system." I don't think he meant that as a joke, so the precedent's important, and we'll see what sort of a deal they cut.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I think that really lays it out, Carla. I mean, Grossi, among other things, far exceeded his pay grade in recent weeks. I mean, you mentioned the Iran inspections, which are being watched closely. Iran is now supposedly providing IAEA with some intel on what they're up to most recently in some places. Also, he's been in the middle of trying to secure the world's most powerful nuclear power plant, which is in Ukraine in a war zone, the Zaporizhzhia plant, and he's been warn repeatedly that if this plant is not secured, we're talking about not just a regional, but a global nuclear crisis, and on top of that, now he's got to keep three western powers in line in terms of abiding by this deal, so I'll be interested to see what language he uses and the extent to which countries like China seize on it to further rebuke or raise issues with the AUKUS deal in general.

ROBBINS:
Well, keep the Grossi credible is really important, because that's the point of the IAEA. They're supposed to be, if not Caesar's wife, they're supposed to be close to it. These inspectors go in. They've got these agreements with states. It's not the stronger set of agreements.

One of the weaknesses of the NPT, like all treaties, is that states negotiate with the IAEA. "You can go here, you can't go there." They do have limitations on what they can do, which is why you see the cat and mouse game with the Iranians, but we need them, and we need them to be credible, and we need them to raise the alarm when there's a problem, so even though there's this loophole in the agreement for these nuclear submarines, it's really in everybody's interest to come up with some sort of an agreement to prove that there is not a get-out-of-free deal, not even for the U.S., or the UK, or for Australia.

MCMAHON:
And we should note that these nuclear submarines, if everything goes to plan, would not be an operation until, I think the late 2030's, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, we're talking about a pretty big timeline before that happens. Is that right?

ROBBINS:
Well, it's a phased deal from my understanding of it. First, we're going to sell the Australians some submarines, and then supposedly the Brits and the Australians are going to work together and design some submarines, but all along, they're supposed to come up with a set of, both technical means to make sure these welded canisters to keep the fuel safe and the Australians have made a whole bunch of commitments, they're not going to have a training reactor on their territory, they're not going to enrich or reprocess any sort of nuclear fuel, do any of those things that other countries like the North Koreans and the Iranians have done to divert to illicit programs. They are going to try to prove that they're doing everything right because this really isn't about a secret nuclear program, it's really about having a strong, strategic presence in Asia.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I was just going to get to that. That's the backdrop to all this, is that the U.S. is trying to secure into the future at this linchpin of an alliance as China continues to assert its sovereignty over a huge swath of the Pacific, right?

ROBBINS:
That certainly was the idea behind the AUKUS deal. I'm a nuclear nerd, but when this was laid out, I didn't even realize that this was going to come down to an issue of credibility for the IAEA, an issue of coming up with a whole set of new rules to deal with nuclear submarines and highly-enriched uranium fuel, and all these other issues here. What fascinated me about it was this was a whole new challenge to the Chinese, of course, and how incredibly annoyed the French were.

MCMAHON:
C'est juste.

ROBBINS:
So Bob, let's stay on the topic of Indo-Pacific security. Starting Friday in Singapore, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, IISS, will host Asia's premier defense summit, the Shangri-La Dialogue. I always love that. I expect someone to be singing in the background when they say Shangri-La. While prominent leaders like Japan's Prime Minister Kishida, Ukraine's President Zelenskyy, and Australia's Prime Minister Albanese are expected to speak, I suppose everyone is going to be watching what happens, or more likely, doesn't between the Chinese Defense Minister General, Li Shangfu, and U.S. Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin.

Is there any chance that these two are going to sit down for a talk about how to lower tensions, and if the Chinese continue to blow off Austin, there could be some pretty awkward moments in that room.

MCMAHON:
Yes, it's not looking likely that this Shangri-La Dialogue will include any mini dialogue between the U.S. and Chinese top defense officials at this point. Things keep on happening, and the refusal to meet from the Chinese side was attributed to, among other things, the fact that the U.S. has sanctioned the new defense minister for a 2018 weapons purchase from Russia, but there are a whole host of other things that are kind of spoiling the air between the two countries. Just last week, there was a midair military encounter that the U.S. called unnecessarily aggressive between a Chinese military aircraft over the South China Sea. The U.S. craft that was in neutral international territory was buffeted in the afterwash of the flyby, and so that has caused problems. There's a bigger problem here, though, as well, and this was alluded to by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and some comments yesterday, that either two countries need to be on a path to communicating.

They're not communicating much, whether it's through big events like the Shangri-La Dialogue or just normal routine communication. We'll recall that after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan late last summer. China cut off some of the normal lines of communication and protests. There have also been ongoing antagonisms overall what the Chinese had called a weather balloon over the U.S., that the US officials have pretty much confirmed as a intelligence reconnaissance vehicle, that the U.S. then shot down, that had added to a new round of antagonisms between the two countries, and there are ongoing recriminations about U.S. messaging on Taiwan, U.S. messaging on China in general, and the two countries have both professed their desire to not ratchet up and escalate the tensions, and yet, they keep on moving in that direction. 

This meeting, the Shangri-La Dialogue is sort of like the Munich Security Conference, the Asian version of that, that we talk about Munich every year early February. It is a great opportunity for leaders and other officials to get involved in sessions, that there's something like 600 delegates from almost fifty countries taking part in Singapore, and one hopes that there will be, if not, a formal encounter, maybe a casual one or some opportunity for the defense secretary and the defense minister to bump into each other, shall we say, and have some sort of conversation that helps ease the air, but there's a big agenda. As you mentioned, there's other prominent leaders there. It's this sort of coming out speech by the new Australian Prime Minister Albanese is taking place. He's the keynote speaker, actually. There are going to be discussions on cyber issues, and Asia's got a lot going on in security.

We just had the North Korea try to launch a satellite with a ballistic missile. It failed, but it rattled a lot of countries. The South Koreans issued in Seoul a very troubling alarm that got people rattled for a good half hour or so. Japan also issued some warnings on Okinawa related to the launch, and the launch even earned a rebuke from the UN Security Council because there are UN sanctions against North Korea for testing ballistic missiles in this way. North Korea vowed to keep testing away, so we'll see what happens there, but plenty to talk about regardless of the U.S.-China problems, but those are really big, and I think many of the countries there would like to see these two countries talking to each other and talking regularly.

ROBBINS:
So there are reports that the EU's Foreign Policy Chief Borrell, will meet with Li, with the defense minister, at the meeting, and POLITICO is saying that the German and Dutch defense ministers could also meet with him. Is there any sense that they could be a bridge between these two, or do they have their own agenda with the Chinese?

MCMAHON:
I think very much, they could be a bridge. That would be a hope, that the Europeans are going through their own sort of "derisking" policy with China right now, but I think they could serve as a bridge there. They are keeping a dialogue open. They do have their issues, but not in terms of the kind of hard defense concerns that these two superpowers have that are rubbing up against each other, and so I think it's going to be really important that talking take place in all sorts of fashions. 

Again, the defense minister is new. He's there for a reason, and I think China wants to be present in a lot of the discussions that are taking place at this dialogue, so let's see if we can get some other countries involved. By the way, Singapore, the host country, tries to serve this role when it can. It certainly has lots of involvement with China across the board, trade and otherwise, and so I think we're going to watch Shangri-La, with a little more interest than we have in the past, Carla.

ROBBINS:
So it's interesting, all the meetings in Europe are all Ukraine all the time. Do you think it's still going to be all Ukraine all the time there, or is it going to be all North Korea all the time there? Any sense of what the agenda is?

MCMAHON:
I mean, Zelenskyy would like it to be Ukraine, and he may have the record for showing up the most regional and international summits for the past year now. He has been everywhere. We've mentioned he was at the Arab League. He will certainly be popping up at the NATO Summit in Vilnius that's coming up in July, and he wants to keep NATO on the agenda. As we speak, there's been a whole week worth of Russian attacks now on Kyiv. You're starting to see an increasing number of attacks in Russian soil. Ukrainians are disavowing direct involvement, but also acknowledging them, and that's a new wrinkle that will be watched very closely, and the long-anticipated Ukrainian offensive against the Russian forces is supposed to take place soon. That could be something that also is front and center. 

China, again, has a potentially crucial role as some sort of a broker because of its partnership with Russia and because Xi and Putin tend to have a relationship, in which they can talk about these things, but it's not shown any sort of indication that it's going to exercise any leverage to weaken the Russian position certainly, and does not want to be associated with a loser in that regard. So yes, to answer your question, I think Ukraine will be an overtone as well, but the U.S.-China issues, and certainly Taiwan in and of itself, could consume a lot of the oxygen in the room.

ROBBINS:
You covered the UN. You remember all these questions, "Did they pass by each other in the hall?," "Did they have to shake each other's hands?" It'll be interesting to watch the dynamics.

MCMAHON:
The last time I recall that happening when I covered the UN was when Fidel Castro made a point of bumping into Bill Clinton and shaking his hand during Clinton's last UN General Assembly set of meetings, so that was interesting theater.

ROBBINS:
Well, usually, that theater is well-plotted out. We'll see whether both sides plot went out at Shangri-La.

MCMAHON:
Well, Carla, it's not Shangri-La, but it is the Nordic region, and there are some gorgeous vistas there. Antony Blinken has been making the rounds, and tomorrow, Friday, he's going to visit the newest NATO member, Finland. He's going to be in Helsinki to meet with Prime Minister Sanna Marin and Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto. Why is the United States focusing on the Nordic region so much in the past few days?

ROBBINS:
Finland is the last stop of a four-day visit, focused mainly on getting ready for this July's NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. Lincoln's first stop was in Sweden. The NATO member still in waiting, where he called on Turkey's newly reelected President, Erdoğan, to lift his objections so Stockholm can attend the summit that you mentioned as member number thirty-two. Then, he went on to Oslo for a so-called informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers, so this is a new format, unveiled last year in Germany with only ministers in the room and no prepared remarks to encourage supposedly frank debate. The Swedish foreign minister was also invited. It's all Sweden all the time these days, and his last stop will be in Finland, the newest for now, member number thirty-one. 

So the key topics on this trip and those that will likely engage the U.S. and its European allies from here until July are Ukraine, whether it has enough military support for the long-awaited spring offensive. Kyiv is asking for more armored vehicles, more tanks, more air defense system, more training. If the Americans have their way, enough of a long-term defense commitment to sidestep Kyiv's increasingly assertive lobbying for a commitment to a formal measurable path for Ukraine's NATO membership. They've been talking this up very loudly this week.

The U.S. would instead like to discuss bilateral, even multilateral security guarantees, as well as a long-term commitment of military equipment to deter future Russian assaults. We're talking after the war ends, talk of establishing a new Ukraine NATO council for more formal consultation on military issues, but it's increasingly looking like the U.S. is not going to get its way because not only Ukraine and eastern members of the alliance are saying that's not going to be enough. Britain is part of a group of countries calling for this clear path to NATO membership, and French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday called for Ukraine to be granted a path at the summit in July. So watch this space. Other topics, getting ready for the summit, we'll be talking about more in the coming weeks.

MCMAHON:
It's getting very intriguing, and on top of it, you have the Turkish President, Erdoğan, playing a crucial role again, in whether Sweden is going to get in sooner rather than later, and his emergence at the summit is going to be very interesting as well, but the Nordics and Finland, as a member now, that's coming into the fold, presents all sorts of interesting opportunities as well because it is a long-border country with Russia. Any sense whether Finland is going to assert any sort of a new posture in that region, or anything that will get the Russian hackles up?

ROBBINS:
It's interesting that the Russians didn't get crazier about Finland. I thought they would be, but it's really hard to read Putin these days. You don't know if it's a bandwidth issue. He seems much more focused on not getting Ukraine in. Why Finland didn't make him crazier, given the length of the border, is something that completely puzzles me. It is, when you think about it, one of the greatest defeats that Putin has faced.

As the line goes, he wanted less NATO, and he got more NATO, and we'll see what Erdoğan does. We were having a discussion yesterday with two of our council colleagues, Steve Cook and Henri Barkey, on Twitter about the effects of the outcome of the Turkish election, and there was a disagreement among these two excerpts, about whether Erdoğan was going to move forward on letting Sweden in and how much he wanted to curry good favor with NATO, and particularly, with the United States, so we'll have to see. Certainly, every other NATO member, except for Hungary, very much wants to see the Swedes there.

MCMAHON:
That was a very interesting Twitter Spaces discussion, Carla. Yes, I recommend people check it out. I think they keep the transcripts up there for a long time. The other thing that's worth noting is there's a meeting taking place, as we're taping this podcast, in Moldova, a neighboring small country to the west of Ukraine, that involves the EU and EU accession process, in which both countries are now involved in, and that's something that Russia has also strongly opposed, and that seems like it could be something that moves quicker, in some ways, than a NATO process, which I think the U.S. and with some backing from countries like Germany would try to slow-walk.

ROBBINS:
Well, for these countries, anything that brings them closer into the Western embrace is good, and I remember certainly, I'm sure you remember at the end of the Cold War, that there was a whole debate here of when, about, "Should we expand NATO, and wouldn't it be better if we just put the EU in?" Tom Friedman wrote this absolutely wonderful column. I think it was Tomato NATO or NATO Tomato. The whole point that he was arguing is put them in the EU. Don't expand NATO and infuriate the Russians, and that debate was continuing to go on even at the start of the Ukraine war. Anything that puts them in the embrace is great for these countries, but we all know that when push comes to shove, to use a cliche, they really want into NATO, not surprisingly because of the Article 5 commitment, which raises this very interesting question, of the Americans are much ...They like the idea of giving security guarantees in the long run to the Ukrainians. If you give them security guarantees, how different is that from being a NATO in the first place? 

So I don't exactly understand the objections. I can understand why you wouldn't want them in NATO right now, although there are some members of NATO, certainly in the eastern countries, and NATO saying, "Give it to them right now." If you gave them to them right now, there would be NATO troops inside of Ukraine, so that doesn't make, to me, pushing limits with Putin every day, but certainly, I don't really get the resistance to giving them a formal path.

MCMAHON:
For now, seeing the problems that Sweden's having getting in, it does seem like a remote prospect, but we will continue to watch this and we will be talking again ahead of the NATO summit, Carla.

ROBBINS:
Bob, I think it's time to pivot and discuss our Audience Figure of the Week, Yet Another NATO story, which listeners can vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at @CFR_org's Instagram Story. This week, Bob, our audience selected, "NATO to Send 700 Troops to Kosovo." Why is NATO sending more troops on top of the 3,800 already there?

MCMAHON:
So Carla, repeat after me. Balkan powder keg, and then we can go from there. So Northern Kosovo is one of the unresolved pieces of business from the now, almost twenty-five-year-old conflict involving Kosovo, in which NATO bombed Serbia into finally leaving, and Kosovo declaring its independence. The country now is recognized a little bit more than 100 countries as independent, although not Serbia, but in that period of declaring independence, there were still unresolved issues, including places where a number of ethnic Serbs still reside. We should note, it's worth clarifying, it's worth highlighting, underscoring and so forth, Kosovo was a long, a part of Serbia, even under the Yugoslav confederation. It has a special place in the hearts of many Serbs, rank and file Serbs, Serb nationalists especially.

We should note that the world's number one ranked tennis player, Djokovic, scrawled a Serb nationalist message on a video camera after his victory in the first round of the French Open, generating further concern about this issue becoming a politicized issue well beyond the region, but it's just to point out that Kosovo is an incredibly hot button issue. Yes, de facto, there is a country there, a country that has U.S. support, it has European support, but that has not resolved its issues with its Serbian minority, and it's a minority that still resides and still wants to have some sort of autonomy in any sort of future arrangement. 

As our colleague, Charlie Kupchan pointed out in a Q&A this week with Radio Free Europe, there actually had been the outlines of an agreement that will allow, under great pressure from the U.S. and EU, but both sides, Serbia and Kosovo, had agreed to some sort of arrangement, with details to be sorted out later, that would involve some sort of autonomy for Serbs in Kosovo proper. Kosovo authorities, led by ethnic Albanian leaders—the country's mostly ethnic Albanian—wanted to move forward with populating four cities in Northern Kosovo with ethnic Albanian mayors. They had an election, in which very few people took part because most of the residents are Serbs, and they boycotted the elections. Nevertheless, they decided to go ahead and place four Albanian mayors in office that triggered protests, and the protests got so fierce that it involved clashes that, in which both NATO troops, some twenty-five or so and Serbian protestors were injured. 

This is why NATO is sending more to the region. They need to pacify the situation and basically get back to, not square one, but at least the square that they were at earlier this year, when they agreed to move forward with some sort of an arrangement in which relations would be normalized, but details matter in the Balkans. Let's just look at the country of North Macedonia, which wanted to be known as Macedonia, but Greece protested for years and years. That finally did reach a resolution and there wasn't a conflict there over that.

Kosovo, again, because it was separated from Serbia proper and it was separated after a massive bloodshed, and after a NATO intervention is different. I should also mention, Carla, finally, that this is also an arena for Western and Russian tensions. Russia supports Serbia. Russia's, also, wants to take any steps that would slow the process of further Balkan integration into Western institutions. You can expect Russia to continue to be fanning the flames of concern and of rhetoric over this issue, but I think back to the original audience figure, what one hopes is that NATO pacifies the situation, and that basically both sides climb back from this latest blowup, meaning, that, I think Albanians are going to have to slow down the process of installing mayors, and I think Serbs are going to have to completely stop their protests on this and resume talks on what to do.

ROBBINS:
So the U.S. is usually the Kosovars' defenders, going back all the way to the support for the ethnic Albanians in 1999, which came on the heels, of course, of Serb-driven, Belgrade-driven massacres in Bosnia and a variety of other places, which is one of the reasons for the intervention, the fear that this was going to be repeated, but this time, the Biden administration is being very critical. They sharply rebuked Pristina, about forcing these mayors on them, and Washington's canceling Kosovo's participation in a U.S.-led military exercise, and suggesting that they're losing their enthusiasm for Kosovo moving forward on any discussion of eventually joining the EU or NATO. The Kosovars seemed quite surprised by this response, saying that they thought that Washington was overreacting and misunderstanding what was going on. I would think that in this situation, Washington has a huge amount of leverage, no?

MCMAHON:
Absolutely. Even though you have Kosovo Prime Minister Kurti saying there's been an overreaction on Washington's side, I think there's a general sense of, among experts and among officials who are friendly with Kosovo, that they overplayed their hand, and that they need to take a step back here because it was a provocative move to go in there after a sort of a shell election and try to take this step. One should recall there was a step to try to introduce new license plates for Serbian cars in Kosovo. That created some conflict and some serious protests, and that should have been a warning that this kind of move was going to be even more provocative, and so I think U.S. needs to use its leverage, and I think it looks like it's planned to do so. 

The meeting I mentioned, taking place in Moldova, is also going to involve some meetings with Serbian and Kosovo officials, with leaders of France and Germany to try to get things back to a little bit more of a calmer footing, and to move forward with a deal, again, that both sides had agreed to move forward on, which was some sort of normalization of relationships, and it has to be some sort of a timeline that both sides ultimately agreed to, because you can't have one side sort of rushing efforts over the other, or you're going to have incidents like this again and again. NATO's not going to be there forever either. I mean, it is rather extraordinary, and I think for people to realize that they're already, were 3,800 troops in the region, and now a further 700 coming, and there's a real concern for escalation, and I think that's why you're seeing the strong moves against the Kosovo action at this point.

ROBBINS:
Well, twenty-five years later.

MCMAHON:
Yes, twenty-five years later is just the blink of an eye in the Balkans, as you well know, Carla, so stay tuned. And that's our look at The World Next Week. Here are some other stories to keep an eye on. Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen meets with the U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House, Kuwait holds a general election, and Mexico holds its annual Petroleum Congress.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review while you're at it. We really do appreciate the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on CFR.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, with the Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Sinet Adous for her research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Miguel Herrero and licensed under Creative Commons. This is Carla Robbins saying so long.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye, and be careful out there.