France is Furious With Joe Biden After USA Drinks Nation’s Beer on Australia Submarine Deal
Richard Moorhead
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French diplomats are expressing their anger with President Joe Biden and the United States after the USA announced a deal with Australia to share nuclear submarine technology that co-opted an existing deal between Australia and France.
Under the agreement, announced Wednesday, the US and Britain will step in to provide nuclear submarine technology to Australia, with the latter cancelling a $40 billion nuclear submarine deal that was beset by manufacturing difficulties. The deal represents the first time that the United States has agreed to share nuclear submarine technology with a nation other than the United Kingdom.
French diplomats were quick to announce their fury over the deal, which appears to have been organized without notifying France that their existing agreement with Australia would be cancelled.
“This brutal, unilateral and unpredictable decision reminds me a lot of what Mr Trump used to do,” said Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on a radio program Thursday. “It’s a break in trust and I am extremely angry.”
The French government also released a statement claiming the submarine deal “only reinforces the need to make the issue of European strategic autonomy loud and clear,” suggesting new willingness to consider projects such as a European Union Army on the part of France, a proposal that could cause new frictions within NATO.
The former French ambassador to the United States even went so far as to claim the French Republic had been “stabbed in the back” by the Anglo-Saxon countries.
The world is a jungle. France has just been reminded this bitter truth by the way the US and the UK have stabbed her in the back in Australia. C’est la vie.
— Gérard Araud (@GerardAraud) September 15, 2021
Araud later called out the Biden administration directly.
What is striking is that the Biden administration didn’t do anything to cushion the blow it was deliberately delivering to France. No consultation, no association, no compensation.
— Gérard Araud (@GerardAraud) September 16, 2021
The development could indicate that divisions between the United States and European countries run far deeper than mere disputes during Donald Trump’s tenure on the presidential throne. With the Soviet Union long defunct, contentions between NATO partners may spell the gradual obsolesce of the alliance.
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