The United States and France: a lasting quarrel?
Audio 02:42
Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Joe Biden at the last NATO summit in Brussels on June 14, 2021. AP - Brendan Smialowski
By: Bruno Daroux Follow
6 mins
Back to the tension between France and the United States, after Australia's decision to cancel its contract to purchase French submarines in favor of a new contract with Washington, for propulsion submarines nuclear.
How to explain this brutal gesture of the Americans vis-à-vis France, one of their main allies?
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The most plausible answer is that the United States felt that their role was more important than that of France in this sensitive region of the "Indo-Pacific", as it is called today. And they did not hesitate to put pressure on Australia so that it puts itself under their protection, even if it means angering France very much, to whom they blow at the last moment a very important contract - more than 50 billion dollars. euros - supply of submarines to Australia. The fact in itself is very derogatory. The way to act is even more so. As Jean-Yves Le Drian summed it up: “
It does not happen between allies
".
Only there you have it, necessity rules.
The Australians and the Americans also assert that they had warned Paris of a possible cancellation of the contract with Naval Group, which France continues to deny forcefully, repeating that it was simply put in front of a fait accompli.
Zero consultation
In any case, beyond this matter of contract, Washington wanted to set up "Aukus", a security alliance between Washington, London and Canberra.
It is about responding to the challenges posed to the Western order by China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and especially the South China Sea.
This alliance was built between Anglo-Saxons, without any consultation therefore with France, which however, say the Americans, plays an important role in the Indo-Pacific region.
Too important, no doubt, or too autonomous.
Hence the choice perhaps of the Anglo-Saxon front, of the loyal and obedient allies who accept, like Australia with this contract, that the United States keep control of the use of the submarines that they are going. sell - and expensive too.
America first
A month after the withdrawal from Kabul, where President Biden had hardly consulted his NATO allies, here is a new manifestation, to say the least inelegant, of the disregard that the United States makes of the allies of the Old Continent . We are quite far from the intentions displayed by Joe Biden, who promised a diplomacy based on alliances and values. And we are not very far, in fact, from Donald Trump's way of doing things, as the French foreign minister pointed out.
So there is certainly a difference in style, compared to the days of Trump: Joe Biden and his Secretary of State, the very Francophile Anthony Blinken, sought to appease Paris, insisting that France was a "
Vital partner
".
But there are words and there are actions.
And these acts describe a much more brutal reality.
That of a superpower which does not hesitate, when its strategic interests are at stake, to make France a collateral damage.
Knowing that the anger of Paris will not be able to last very long, as the relations between the two countries are close, and as one is much more powerful than the other.
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