French President Emmanuel Macron sees the loss of his country's submarine deal with Australia as a catastrophe, the New York Times said, indicating the weakness of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) due to the mistrust among its members.
And the newspaper reported - in a news analysis prepared by Roger Cohen, head of its office in Paris - that there is an idea circulating in French political circles about the possibility of France withdrawing from the military leadership of NATO, which rejoined it in 2009, after an absence of 43 years.
The New York Times analysis criticized the French president's response to the nuclear submarine deal and the Aukus agreement, calling it a "big gamble."
The newspaper said that Macron directed his foreign minister to use vocabulary that does not belong to the dictionary of the diplomatic language, not to mention the diplomatic discourse between allies, when he described what the United States had done as "lies", "duplicity", "brutality" and "contempt", as he summoned The French ambassador to the United States.
She pointed out that this audacity is not new to Macron, who assumed the presidency at the age of 39, as he had previously summoned the French ambassadors to Turkey and Italy during his presidency in response to what he considered insults to his country.
She said that the most important question - related to Macron's response to the cancellation of the submarine deal that France concluded with Australia in 2016 - is whether the French president has sufficient papers for this?
The announcement of a tripartite security partnership between the United States, Britain and Australia - which included a deal to supply nuclear submarines to Canberra - led to a crisis between Paris and Washington.
Based on the new partnership, Australia last week canceled an agreement with France to build a fleet of conventional submarines to be an alternative to nuclear-fueled submarines using American and British technology, after concluding a tripartite security partnership with the two countries within the “Ocos” agreement;
This dealt a severe blow to French-American relations.
And the newspaper considered that although Macron had previously described “NATO” as in a state of “clinical death” in 2019, France’s thinking about leaving the alliance indicates the depth of the crisis between Paris and the three countries, which French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian had described as "The Serious Crisis".
She said that the deal left a feeling of humiliation in France, which will not easily forget what it sees as an "unbearable" American slap, in the words of the French Foreign Minister.
The New York Times indicated that France - as part of its response to the security partnership between the three countries - seeks to transform phrases beloved by Macron - such as "European strategic autonomy" and "European sovereignty" - into a tangible reality, and its foreign minister has stated that this is the way The only one for Europe to "remain a part of history".