France furious over nuclear sub deal
Agreement between US, UK, Australia decried as ‘brutal’
PARIS — France reacted with fury Thursday to President Joe Biden’s announcement of a deal to help Australia deploy nuclear-powered submarines, calling it a “unilateral, brutal, unpredictable decision” that resembled the rash and sudden policy shifts common during the Trump administration.
The angry words from Jean-Yves Le Drian, the foreign minister, in an interview with Franceinfo radio, followed an official statement from him and Florence Parly, the minister of the Armed Forces, calling “the American choice to exclude a European ally and partner such as France” a “regrettable decision” that “shows a lack of coherence.”
The degree of French anger recalled the acrimonious rift in 2003 between Paris and Washington over the Iraq War.
“This is not done between allies,” Le Drian said.
His indignation reflected the fact that France had its own deal with Australia, reached in 2016, to provide it with conventional, less technologically sophisticated submarines. That $66 billion deal has now collapsed, but a harsh legal battle over the contract appears inevitable.
“A knife in the back,” Le Drian said of the Australian decision, noting that Australia was rejecting a deal for a strategic partnership that involved “a lot of technological transfers and a contract for a 50-year period.”
Scott Morrison, the Australian prime minister, did not mention France in the videoconference with Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, during which the deal was announced Wednesday. Nor was France consulted on the Australian about-face and the new agreement.
“This looks like a new geopolitical order without binding alliances,” said Nicole Bacharan, an expert on French-American relations. “To confront China, the United States appears to have chosen a different alliance, with the Anglo-Saxon world confronting France.”
Beijing on Thursday expressed outrage at the deal, criticizing it for embracing a cold war mentality that will stoke an arms race, damage international nonproliferation efforts and threaten regional peace and stability.
The United States and Britain “are using nuclear exports for geopolitical gaming tools and applying double standards which is extremely irresponsible,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said. He called on the pair, with Australia, to “do more to contribute to peace and stability.”
Biden said the deal was “about investing in our source of strength, our alliances, and updating them.”
At least with respect to France, one of the U.S.’ oldest allies, that claim appeared to have backfired.
Britain is the U.S. partner in the deal, another irritant to France after the British exit from the European Union and Johnson’s embrace of a “Global Britain” strategy aimed largely at the Indo-Pacific region. French suspicion of an Anglophone cabal pursuing its own strategic interests to the exclusion of France is never far behind.
The deal also challenged President Emmanuel Macron of France in some of his central strategic choices. He is determined that France should not get sucked into the increasingly harsh confrontation between China and the United States.
Rather, Macron wants France to lead the EU toward a middle course between the two powers, demonstrating the “European strategic autonomy” that stands at the core of his vision. He has spoken about an autonomous Europe operating “beside America and China.”
Such comments have been an irritant — if no more than that given how far Europe stands militarily from such autonomy — to the Biden administration. Biden is sensitive on the question of American 20th-century sacrifice for France in two world wars and French prickliness over its independence within the alliance.
The European Union released a statement Thursday called “The EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific,” committing European nations to deeper involvement at all levels in the region. It said the bloc would pursue “multifaceted engagement with China,” cooperating “on issues of common interest” while “pushing back where fundamental disagreement exists with China, such as on human rights.”
The wording broadly reflected Macron’s quest for a policy that does not risk rupture with China but does not bow to Beijing either.
The document did not mention the U.S. and British deal with Australia that will allow Australian submarines, potentially armed with cruise missiles, to become a potent player in the Pacific in a way that may alter the naval balance of power in an area where
China has been extending its influence.
Josep Borrell Fontelles, the EU foreign policy chief, said in Brussels that the submarine deal reinforced the bloc’s need for more strategic autonomy.
“I suppose that a deal like that wasn’t cooked the day before yesterday,” Borrell said.
The American-British-Australian agreement, he argued, was another proof that the EU needs to “exist for ourselves, since the others exist for themselves.”