USA to sell Nuclear Subs to Australia

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

https://www.ft.com/content/6b7ec872-a8a8-4afa-975c-1d035b94a8f4
Paris and Brussels reel from Australia’s defence deal
Agreement is wake-up call for EU and France about their waning influence in post-cold war world

US president Joe Biden’s new strategic pact with Australia and the UK not only torpedoed a multibillion-dollar French deal to sell submarines to Canberra but also came as another brutal wake-up call for the EU and France about their waning influence in the post-cold war world.

The agreement announced on Wednesday has come at an intensely awkward moment for the EU, which on Thursday also formally announced its own Indo-Pacific strategy with particular focus on working with regional partners in the interest of security and defence.

As part of the new arms deal, Canberra will procure nuclear-powered submarines as the US and its allies confront an increasingly assertive China. The US, Australia and the UK are already part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance that also includes Canada and New Zealand.

The decision by Australia to ditch France in favour of the US and UK follows America’s failure to consult its European allies on its Afghanistan withdrawal plan.

[...]

In Brussels, the fallout from the submarine deal overshadowed the announcement by Josep Borrell, head of the bloc’s diplomatic and security arm, of its new strategy to project more power in the Indo-Pacific.

“I was not aware . . . we were not involved,” Borrell said of the US-UK-Australia partnership. “And I assume an agreement of such a nature was not brought together overnight.”

[...]

Jean-Yves Le Drian, French foreign minister, described the decision as “really a stab in the back”.

“We built a relationship of trust with Australia and this trust was betrayed,” he told France Info radio.

LMAO, I thought, it was Orange Bad who should be anti-EU and pro-Brexit/pro-Anglosaxon.

French Golden Boy should step up EU on autonomy, when Merkel's gone.

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

Lmao, Biden really becomes, whom Democrats accused Trump to be.

Incompetence on FP - re:Afghanistan.
Rasism - re:not sharing vaccines with sh*thole poor countries.
Soft on Russia - re: Nord Stream 2.
Lets down EU - re:Afghanistan debacle and now this.

Will he break down NATO, hihihi? 

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1438458620329476099
https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1438459355012247558

Gee! Good!

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1438951742608117764

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

Back last december when the EU was in the final phases of negotiating CAI (Investment Agreement with China), the incoming Biden foreign policy team publicly and privately urged them to hold off until January to enable Biden admin and EU to draw up common approach to China. EU snubbed them, and Macron (who previously had been sceptical) was instrumental in getting it over the line, not least to try and display strategic autonomy.

France has a right to be jilted, but frankly when you have an administration with the most pro-france foreign policy chief one could possibly imagine (Blinken) doing this, then maybe some self-introspection would help too.

I don't know, if it is comparable. Frank dialog vs cancelling a 100B hours before announcing a new one (allegedly? under the press of US, why would otherwise little Australia f**k with France?).

What did Blinken do in terms of pro-french FP?

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

Yeah, I know that, but I don't really understand how it translates in a pro-France FP.









https://twitter.com/John_Hudson/status/1438966850910629893

Hehe, mad Frenches are lovely.

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

Looks like, because "one senior U.S. official" said so?


Even if this is true, the Americans are nor dumb, nor naïve in the matter of geopolitics, while the Aussies certainly are. Also, according to the French they didn't get a frank answer [from Blinken] just week before the announcement.

So they decided to keep the work to a very small group of officials, and made no mention of it to the French, even when Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken met their French counterparts in June.

Mr. Biden made no mention of the plans during a chummy chat with Mr. Macron at a summit meeting in June in Cornwall, where they sat in lawn chairs by the sea and talked about the future of the Atlantic alliance. (Mr. Biden, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Morrison met together the same day, discussed the emerging deal, and in a vague statement which seems more revealing today than it did then, referred to “deepening strategic cooperation between the three governments” to meet a changing defense environment in the Indo-Pacific.) Three days later, Mr. Morrison met separately with Mr. Macron, but left no impression he was rethinking the deal, the French insist.

According to French officials, Mr. Blinken also stayed silent on June 25 when his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, welcomed him back to Paris — where Mr. Blinken spent his high school years — and extolled the importance of the French submarine deal.

And as recently as Aug. 30, when the French and Australian defense and foreign ministers held their annual “consultation,” they issued a joint communiqué that said the two countries were committed to deepening cooperation in the defense industry and “underlined the importance of the Future Submarine program.”

By that time, the Australians not only knew the program was dead, they had nearly sealed the agreement in principle with Washington and London.

The French ambassador to the United States, Philippe Étienne, said in several interviews that he first heard of the deal in leaked news reports appearing in the Australian media and in Politico. Other French officials said they had been suspicious that something was up a week ago, but did not get an immediate response from Mr. Blinken or Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III. The first American official to discuss the details with Ambassador Étienne was Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, a few hours before the public announcement on Wednesday.

American officials insist it was not their place to talk to the French about their business deal with Australia. But now, in light of the blowup, some officials say they regret they did not insist that the Australians level with the French about their intentions earlier.

Hahaha, so humiliating and nonchalant towards the French. Haven't France learned their lesson yet?

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

Ummm....

Maybe the US could just supply much higher quality subs at a cheaper cost than France and Australia chose to cut their losses on the T&Cs with their French Contract?

Usually the most obvious explanation is the best--- really is anybody actually arguing about the quality of US vs French Nuclear Subs?

Anybody who believe French will do better---- raise your hand now.

I don't know, how anyone (but, muh Muricans) could miss it, but the main problem is how America treated its ally (no warnings, no "negotiations" etc), not the contract per se.

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

https://twitter.com/jeneps/status/1454865188587515924

One more reason to nuke the hell out of the Aussies.