Spain views the tensions between France and the US over the Aukus alliance "with concern"

• Aukus Alliance, the new anti-China alliance

Spain views "with concern" the tensions between France and the United States over the constitution of the military alliance between the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, which has triggered a fierce diplomatic response from the Government of

.

This has been stated by diplomatic sources on the eve of the opening of the

United Nations

Assembly, which begins tomorrow, Tuesday in New York. The UN meeting opens just hours after an EU Council of Foreign Ministers scheduled for New York time on Tuesday night (early morning in Europe). The Council of Ministers will address the issue of the Aukus, which is the name of the alliance, based on the initials in English of its three members.

The French reaction to the pact has been one of

Paris has not only temporarily withdrawn its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra, but has referred to the Aukus as a

and called the UK a "vassal state of the United States." It is not only that Washington has preferred, once again, to the United Kingdom, but, also, of the cancellation of the purchase of twelve conventionally-powered submarines manufactured in France, worth more than 50,000 million euros. Instead, Australia is going to acquire American nuclear submarines.

But despite its diplomatic tantrum, France has met with very

from the rest of the EU. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, described today as "unacceptable" the treatment that Paris has received from Australia for the cancellation of the submarine contract, but did not make any reference to Great Britain and the United States.

France insists it reserves the right to retaliate, but its options appear limited. Paris

on certain decisions within NATO, and harden its position in the negotiations on fisheries and financial services still pending in Brexit, but it is not clear that these measures will have a significant impact on those processes. At the same time, the countries of central and eastern Europe - Poland and the Baltics - do not want, under any circumstances, to irritate the United States.

For its part, the Joe Biden government has adopted a position towards Macron that could be summed up in the traditional "forgive but hold on." The US president

with his Elysee counterpart, which is expected to take place in the next few days, once Macron has allowed a "decent time interval" to pass, to use a common expression in Washington, to make it clear that he is very angry. However, the United States insists that it is not going to offer him anything to compensate him.

Spain thus remains between Paris and Washington, with the aggravating circumstance that in 2022 it will host a NATO summit in which the strategy and goals of the alliance should be redefined.

Paris wants at all costs for Europe to achieve "strategic autonomy" at a time when the US is increasingly looking to the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, but it does not seem that the rest of the countries of the Old Continent are for the job.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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