One telling aspect is that the UK ambassador wasn’t recalled - nor has the UK been mentioned in much of the discussion around the new alliance. It seems to be seen as pretty irrelevant.
UK just seen as opportunistic. The real bad boys are in Washington.
Some diplomatic signalling to the US had to be done.
As this is on top of the huge import duties to import French products such as wine / Champagne to the US.
Also the Australians, if they were going to break an existing agreement, needed to manage that carefully.
The China comments in the France24 article are interesting. China’s submarines are all over that area and not surprising this could develop into another proxy spat between China and the US this time using Australia.
Quite right to be hopping mad, you shouldn’t renege on deals like that. I suggest they sell the submarines to China instead.
The French anger is over the loss of a €60bn naval contract…understandably, particularly as design was underway.
It’s all about jobs in a pre-election year and that France was (allegedly)?surprised, though military press discussion had forewarned of Australian dissatisfaction with suitability of the subs.
Don’t be kidded by France’s stance…if BAe fell out with Saudi A they wouldn’t hesitates to sell Rafale to their airforce.
More about how America under Biden, that he is following Trump’s America First (6 nuclear subs = much work for American defence industry) and pulling out of Afghanistan without discussion with allies…that’s two America first what’s the third to be.
All this strengthens argument for Europe moving together as a united block. The Tory Party right have always placed the Special Relationship topmost, so when choosing between a Europe working as a political and diplomatic block or the SR they back the latter.
Only at Heads of Agreement stage Vero.
A long way to go before it became a contract to sign and dot the i’s and cross the t’s.
It’s been an ongoing transaction for 5 or 6 years and firmly enough agreed for the company to be sending personnel over to Australia in April.
Mind you we can’t complain that much seeing what we did with the frigates (involving Russia and Egypt).
The three dangerous rogue states in the World are the US, Israel and Saudi. Now, the bloody yanks are off again making trouble and the idiots in Oz are facilitating them, and the lickspittles in the UK hanging on to the coat tails. Now Truss heads to Washington, a poodle to the slaughter. Hope she packed some cheese.
Rubbish Jane. It was a stab in the back.
Obviously France will make political capital out of this. The US should have seen that coming. Biden has set himself up to be made to look duplicitous by repeatedly saying in public that he is looking forward to deepening his relationship with France and now it is plain for all to see that while he was saying that to their face, at the same time he was working on this behind their back.
Irrespective of the ins and outs of the contract, I think it is a fair point that any alliance needs trust, and how can you trust “allies” who behave like this and apparently think it is normal and actually rather clever.
It is a shame that so many of the UK’s entrances onto the world stage since Brexit have been been surrounded by questionable ethics.
Interesting also that New Zealand did not only not get involved - it seems they were not informed either. Seems to be a division within the anglosphere, with New Zealand closer to the EU approach to international relations and the rise of China.
It has crossed my mind to wonder whether Australia has its sights on replacing the UK as the US’s special friend in anglosphere and from there, becoming more dominant at the UK’s expense. One of the UK’s strategic advantages over Australia was that of being an EU member and therefore a bridge with the EU, and it no longer has this edge.
It is also another possible element in encouraging New Caledonia to move away from France, which would probably suit the US and Australians, there’s a referendum on independence coming up after all.
NZ hosts US submarines still so far as I know.
After the UK joined the EU, New Zealand had some very bad times due to the loss of export markets to what was until then the mother country.
There were frequent references to the UK turning its back on us, and to the number of New Zealand graves in Europe fighting for the British in two World Wars.
France has only just apologised to its islands in the Pacific that were affected by the long period France performed nuclear testing on Mururoa Island there after nearly 50 years. New Zealand hasn’t received an apology yet even though cancers upticked in NZ then.
Chinese submarines are all over the Pacific where they shouldn’t be and I don’t think NZ has any reason to privilege the UK any more, practically speaking the USA is the balancing force.
I’m pretty sure this has been known about by the powers that be in France for a long time.
Timing, timing, timing.
I read somewhere yesterday, it may have been in Reuters, that a US official has been quoted as saying that the reason they felt it necessary to keep it secret from France was that they were afraid France would try to sabotage the deal if they knew about it. They would not be explaining why they kept it secret, if they hadn’t.
There are no actual submarines
I didn’t realise there are 1.6M French citizens in the south Pacific and a huge territory, New Caledonia as well as the other islands. The whole thing looks less like an Australian plan for nuclear subs and more like a plan by the US to use Australia and increase its own presence in the region while reducing that of France. However Oz won’t see any of these imagined subs for 20 years!
It wasn’t well handled, but the projected result wasn’t up to scratch and the French refused to accept any Australian components. Who was paying the bill and calling the tune?
That is one way of looking at it.
The other way of looking at it is, countries entering into alliances usually expect to work together and build trust. If you treat your “allies” in exactly the same way you would treat a business partner that is purely a business partner and nothing more, ie your business interests count for 100% and theirs count for nothing, why be in alliance?
Countries will look at whichever side of the coin best suits their own political interests.
Handled well, there need not have two sides to the coin to play off against each other.