Do armchair warriors really believe our submariners should fight in obsolete diesel-electric submarines in defence of our nation? Making the performative French President happy should never come at the expense of our defence force personnel.

Perhaps the French President should be reminded that ordinary Australians offered their lives in defence of France when he questions the right of Australians to make their own decisions about the equipment used for our defence.

Indeed, nobody is telling France to give up their nuclear-powered submarines.

My great-grandfather served for nearly three years in France. He was wounded during the Messines Offensive and was invalided to England after being gassed during the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux. But my great-grandfather’s service, and the service of the many other Australians since federation, gave us the freedom to air our views and to get to the truth of a matter.

Liberal democracies do this best, and the liberal arts tradition (which is increasingly neglected in policy debates) provides opportunities to get to the truth of a matter even in the absence of opposition. As John Stuart Mill stated in On Liberty (p. 36):

…if opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil’s advocate can conjure up.

We are fortunate, then, that many in the left-leaning media provide the strongest arguments and act as the most skilful devil’s advocates when assessing Australia’s decision to strengthen its security ties with its traditional allies and to obtain nuclear-powered submarines.

Imagine Emmanuel Macron’s undermining of Aukus falling on deaf ears unless Laura Tingle hadn’t pointed out that Australia’s strategic defence policy, based on Aukus and designed to protect Australians and our national interests, not only offended France but offended pretty much everybody else in the region.

Thankfully, Prime Minister Albanese has not been swayed by Macron (apologies for the paywall link, but in the interest of playing devil’s advocate, the left-leaning media hasn’t covered Albanese’s dismissal of Macron – and you do get what you pay for).

But Mr Albanese may well have fallen into what Mill (p. 41) considered to be ‘the deep slumber of a decided opinion’ (p. 41). Apparently, Australia’s decision not to go it alone and become a stand-alone power is the result of a siege mentality stemming from the disposition of Aboriginal lands. If only Australians reorganised their history, we might have managed without Aukus. But I digress.

If the devil’s advocate’s position is that Australia’s defence policy is offensive (not the sticks and stones variety), then we might consider the alternative to nuclear-powered submarines: diesel-electric submarines.

The cancelled French diesel-electric submarines have half the submerged speed, less battlefield flexibility, decreased range, and need to surface more frequently than nuclear-powered submarines. Diesel-electric submarines are also easier to detect. Add to these limitations the initial fuel source, diesel, and we contribute to global warming while relying on a fuel that would have been banned in Europe soon after the submarines were delivered.

And given the obvious inferiority of diesel-electric submarines and the lack of survivability, we might well consider developing modern variants of the CSS Hunley. With its hand-cranked propeller, the Hunley submarine would be Net Zero, crews would be super fit, and the submarines would be very difficult to detect (if an enemy would bother).

Range and speed might be an issue, but the difference between the range of the Hunley and French submarines, measured in metres and kilometres respectively, pale in comparison to the 30-year range provided by nuclear-powered submarines. But like the Hunley, nuclear-powered submarines are only limited by the crew’s ability to remain healthy while serving on the boat. So, there’s that.

But as Mill (p. 42) would say, our well-being ‘may almost be measured by the number and gravity of the truths which have reached the point of being uncontested’. If the core truth of our defence policy is to make other nations happy with our choices or to wage net-zero war, then surely options other than Aukus must be considered.

However, if our aim is to ensure our defence force can fight and win against an enemy that threatens our homeland, then a very different test of the efficacy of our defence policy is required. In the tradition of Mill (p. 42), such a test might provide the contrivance that allows one to assess one’s truth as if one were a ‘dissentient champion, eager for [one’s] conversion’.

To that end, those who question the efficacy of nuclear-powered submarines and Aukus can ask themselves a simple question: Would I be willing to fight the next war in a conventional submarine? I doubt the opinions of France or other nations would be at the front of one’s mind when considering such a proposition.