France Is Outraged by U.S. Nuclear Submarine Deal With Australia / Biden shuns EU with Asia-Pacific power play / Why Australia wanted out of its French submarine deal

France Is Outraged by U.S. Nuclear Submarine Deal With Australia

 

French officials accused President Biden of acting like his predecessor, saying they were stabbed in the back and not consulted.

 

Roger Cohen

By Roger Cohen

Sept. 16, 2021

Updated 1:12 p.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/world/europe/france-australia-uk-us-submarines.html

 

PARIS — France reacted with fury on Thursday to President 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 and involved language not seen since then. “This is not done between allies,” Mr. Le Drian said. His specific comparison of President Biden to his predecessor appeared certain to infuriate the American president.

 

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,” Mr. 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.”

 

“This looks like a new geopolitical order without binding alliances,” Nicole Bacharan, an expert on French-American relations, said. “To confront China, the United States appears to have chosen a different alliance, with the Anglo-Saxon world confronting France.” She predicted a “very hard” period in the old friendship between Paris and Washington.

 

Mr. 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 America’s oldest allies, that claim appeared to have backfired.

Today, we’re taking another historic step to deepen and formalize cooperation among all three of our nations, because we all recognize the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term. We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region and how it may evolve, because the future of each of our nations and indeed the world depends on a free and open Indo-Pacific enduring and flourishing in the decades ahead. This is about investing in our greatest source of strength, our alliances, and updating them to better meet the threats of today and tomorrow. You know, as the key project under AUKUS, we are launching consultations with Australia’s acquisition of conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines for its navy. Conventionally armed. I want to be exceedingly clear about this. We’re not talking about nuclear-armed submarines. These are conventionally armed submarines that are powered by nuclear reactors. This technology is proven; it’s safe. The United States and the U.K. have been operating nuclear-powered submarines for decades.

 

Britain is the American partner in the deal, another irritant to France after the British exit from the European Union and Mr. 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 beneath the surface.

 

At a deeper level, the deal challenged Emmanuel Macron, the French president, 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, Mr. Macron wants France to lead the E.U. toward a middle course between the two great 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. President Biden is particularly sensitive on the question of American 20th-century sacrifice for France in two world wars and French prickliness over its independence within the alliance. Mr. Macron has not visited the White House since Mr. Biden took office, nor is there any sign that he will soon.

 

The European Union released a long statement Thursday called “The E.U. 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 Mr. Macron’s quest for a policy that does not risk rupture with China but does not bow to Beijing either. France said the strategy confirmed “its desire for very ambitious action in this region aimed at preserving the ‘freedom of sovereignty’ of all.”

 

The document did not mention the American 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.

 

Presenting Europe’s strategy, Josep Borrell Fontelles, the E.U. 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,” Mr. Borrell said. “Despite that, we weren’t informed.”

 

The American-British-Australian agreement, he argued, was another proof that the E.U. needs to “exist for ourselves, since the others exist for themselves.”

 

Roger Cohen is the Paris Bureau Chief of The Times. He was a columnist from 2009 to 2020. He has worked for The Times for more than 30 years and has served as a foreign correspondent and foreign editor. Raised in South Africa and Britain, he is a naturalized American. @NYTimesCohen

 

Biden shuns EU with Asia-Pacific power play

 

Paris is furious at what it is slamming as a betrayal.

 

BY STUART LAU, JACOPO BARIGAZZI AND DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

September 16, 2021 4:17 pm

https://www.politico.eu/article/biden-eu-asia-pacific-france-china-power-play/

 

It was the worst possible day for the EU — and its defense heavyweight France — to learn that they're not in the geostrategic big league when it comes to countering China's rise in the Asia-Pacific region.

 

Only hours before EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was due to unveil Europe's own woolly Indo-Pacific strategy on Thursday, he was outplayed in a hard-power move by America, Britain and Australia. The three countries announced a landmark pact that would allow cooperation on top military technology and allow Canberra to build nuclear-powered submarines.

 

It was doubly infuriating for the EU camp that Brexit Britain was the only European ally invited to the top table.

 

This Asia-Pacific power shift is an especially bitter blow to France, which now looks to set to lose out on a multibillion-dollar submarine supply deal with Australia. It's the worst transatlantic blow-up since the Iraq war in 2003, and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said: "It's a stab in the back. We had established a trusting relationship with Australia, and this trust was betrayed."

 

Unsurprisingly, France immediately doubled down on calls for Europe to forge a course of "strategic autonomy" with less reliance on U.S. technology and the American military.

 

The promise of trilateral U.S.-U.K-Australia cooperation on anti-China technologies such as artificial intelligence will also sting in Brussels. Later this month, the EU and U.S. are due to meet for talks in Pittsburgh on precisely that theme — aligning technological standards.

 

The chief problem is that America has shown increasing signs of frustration with the EU's softer approach to China. Regardless of incoming U.S. President Joe Biden's wariness, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron raced to finalize a landmark investment agreement with China at the end of last year. While American diplomats want the Pittsburgh talks to focus on forging tech ecosystems that box out China, European officials are at pains to play down any anti-Beijing dimensions of tech cooperation.

 

Yet France will almost certainly be the immediate diplomatic flashpoint. Paris is questioning the new three-way alliance (AUKUS) in relation to the contractual rights of its own diesel-electric submarine deal. "This is not over," Le Drian said. "We’re going to need clarifications. We have contracts."

 

In a joint statement with his defense counterpart, Florence Parly, Le Drian directed his ire directly at Washington.

 

"The American decision, which leads to the exclusion of a European ally and partner like France from a crucial partnership with Australia at a time when we are facing unprecedented challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, be it over our values or respect for a multilateralism based on the rule of law, signals a lack of consistency which France can only notice and regret," the two ministers said.

 

Is France an Indo-Pacific player?

For France, which was the first EU country to adopt an Indo-Pacific strategy in 2018 and went on to persuade Germany, and the whole of EU, to follow suit, the latest developments could well lead to a rethink about its strategic positioning.

 

"It's a big blow to Macron and France's position of itself as a major Indo-Pacific partner," said Hervé Lemahieu, director of research at Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank.

 

Benjamin Haddad, who leads the Atlantic Council think tank's Europe Center, said: "It’s stunning honestly, and [there] will be an earthquake in Paris. ... [It] will leave long-term damage on the French defense and political establishment — more than a 'normal' diplomatic spat."

 

An EU-based diplomat, however, said that the European fallout would be mostly confined to France, and the EU's Indo-Pacific strategy reached well beyond the military dimensions. "Germany, for instance, has been trying to talk about trade diversification [away from China] under the Indo-Pacific strategy," he said.

 

In fact, in a sign of continued regional goodwill, Germany on Thursday announced a new stop in Darwin in northern Australia for its Bayern frigate that is now on course to the South China Sea.

 

"It’s a reality check on the geopolitical ambitions of the EU," another diplomat said. While on the one hand there's a bad optic that the EU and its member countries "somehow don't manage to be seen as a credible security partner" for the U.S. and Australia, "we shouldn’t make too much of the Indo-Pacific strategy: The EU is not a Pacific player."

 

While France recalibrates its relations with Australia, Japan offers a useful diplomatic lesson. Even though it was rejected for a defense contract with the Australians — and the deal ultimately went to the French — Tokyo successfully maintained solid ties with Canberra to face the common Chinese rival in the region.

 

"Japan and Australia have bridged those periods of tension and mistrust," said Lemahieu. He added that India, with which France also has a good relationship on security, could play a constructive role in ensuring that the EU is not entirely frozen out.

 

Borrell also insisted on Thursday that there was no question of Europe being excluded as a regional player. "The EU is already the top investor, the leading development cooperation provider and one of the biggest trading partners in the Indo-Pacific region," he said.

 

Transatlantic tempest

It's hardly as if Biden weren't already trying to put out fires in Europe given the precipitous and chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

 

The U.S. president's foreign policy team has been in overdrive to contain the fallout from the departure, which has dented America’s reputation worldwide but especially among European allies who dutifully backed the pullout decision.

 

 In recent days, in a bid to shore up alliances, Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan has telephoned Romanian Foreign Minister and National Security Advisor Bogdan Aurescu, Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė and Hiski Haukkala, secretary general and chief of cabinet for Finnish President Sauli Niinistö.

 

Back in Brussels, the show must go on.

 

Confronted by a barrage of questions about the new Indo-Pacific alliance — which technically has nothing to do with the EU — Borrell didn't hide his "regret" about the American move.

 

Still, Borrell was also eager not to let the French reaction dominate the EU's newfound geopolitical interest.

 

He cautioned against "dramatized" sentiments and vowed full support for the EU's cooperation with "the Quad" — the anti-China security alliance of the U.S., Australia, Japan and India.

 

And he implored his audience: "Don’t put into question our relationship with the United States that has been improving a lot with the new administration."

 

 For now, however, it's a plea that has yet to land in Paris.

Why Australia wanted out of its French submarine deal

 

Canberra has signaled for months it was seeking to walk away over cost blowouts and delays.

 

BY ZOYA SHEFTALOVICH

September 16, 2021 6:50 pm

https://www.politico.eu/article/why-australia-wanted-out-of-its-french-sub-deal/

 

SYDNEY — “A stab in the back” is how French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian described Australia’s move to tear up a submarine deal worth more than €50 billion to instead acquire nuclear-powered subs from the United States.

 

France could have seen it coming.

 

Canberra signaled in June it was looking for a way out of the contract, signed in 2016 with French company DCNS (now known as Naval Group) to build 12 Barracuda submarines.

 

Questioned by a Senate committee about issues with the project, Australia's Defense Secretary Greg Moriarty said: "It became clear to me we were having challenges ... over the last 15 to 12 months." He said his government had been considering its options, including what it could do if it was "unable to proceed" with the French deal.

 

Moriarty's admission came after his government in April refused to sign a contract for the next phase of the French submarine project, giving Naval Group until this month to comply with its demands. There were reports dating back to the beginning of this year that Canberra was seeking to walk away.

 

Here's why Australia wanted out of the contract — and what could happen next.

 

Cybersecurity

Trouble began brewing almost immediately after Canberra chose the French bid ahead of alternate designs from Germany and Japan in April 2016.

 

That August, before the Australian deal was formally signed but after it had been announced, the company DCNS admitted it had been hacked after 22,000 documents relating to the combat capacity of its Scorpene submarines being built in India were leaked, raising concerns about the security of its Australian project.

 

The Australian defense department warned the submarine-builder it wanted top-level protection for its project.

 

And while politicians from Australia's ruling center-right Liberal Party sought to downplay the implications of the hack on the Barracuda subs, opposition figures jumped on the revelations, with some calling for negotiations with the French firm to be suspended.

 

Budget blowout

Despite that, Australia later that year signed its largest-ever defense deal with DCNS for 12 Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A conventional diesel submarines.

 

Canberra was reportedly particularly keen on the French bid because of the ability to switch the Barracudas from diesel to nuclear power — technology that was deemed political poison so recently after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, but that the government believed could become more palatable in time.

 

The project was meant to cost 50 billion Australian dollars (€31 billion). But that figure has since almost doubled.

 

At last count, the Barracudas were going to cost around 90 billion Australian dollars (€56 billion). And that's before the government factored in the cost of maintenance — which in November 2019, the department of defense told a Senate committee would set Canberra back a further 145 billion Australian dollars (€90.1 billion) over the life of the subs.

 

And that wasn't all.

 

 

 

Australia urgently needed new subs to replace its six aging Collins-class submarines, which were slated for retirement in 2026. Without subs, Australia would be left vulnerable at a time of increasing tensions with China. But the first Barracuda couldn't be delivered until 2035 or later, with construction extending into the 2050s.

 

To avoid a gap, the Australian government announced earlier this year that it would completely rebuild all six of its Collins-class submarines, at a cost of billions.

 

Timeline

Delays also plagued the submarine project, with the Australian defense department and Naval Group having to extend multiple major contract milestones.

 

In 2018, the Australian government was so angry about a hold-up in signing a crucial strategic partnering agreement over disputes about warranties and technology transfer that then-Defense Minister Christopher Pyne reportedly refused to meet with French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly and Naval Group executives when they visited Australia. The agreement was eventually signed in February 2019.

 

Jobs

But perhaps the main sticking point in the doomed deal was the dispute over local industry involvement.

 

When he announced the deal in 2016, then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull stressed the Barracudas would be built in Australia, with 90 percent local input, sustaining 2,800 local jobs — viewed as a bid to shore up support for his government ahead of an election, which was then just weeks away.

 

Few thought it a coincidence that the subs would be built in Adelaide, home to the seat held by the defense minister, Pyne — and once considered the headquarters of Australia's car manufacturing industry, which his party had effectively killed.

 

But the promise of thousands of Australian jobs and a boon for local industry soon faded, too.

 

By 2020, Naval Group had revised the 90 percent local input figure down to 60 percent. By 2021, the French firm was pushing back against even that, saying Australian industry wasn't up to scratch.

 

Pulling the plug

It's clear the deal was troubled for years. So what made Canberra pull the plug now?

 

Simply put, it needed a viable alternative. Or as Defense Secretary Moriarty coyly put it to the Senate in June: "I wouldn’t refer to it as Plan B — I’d say prudent contingency planning."

 

Enter AUKUS, a new alliance between Canberra, London and Washington, which will make it easier for the three countries to share information and technology, and pave the way for Australia to get its first nuclear-powered submarines. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Thursday that the new subs would still be built in Adelaide, "in close cooperation with the United Kingdom and the United States."

 

It's clear that while Paris is upset with Australia, it is particularly furious with the part the U.S. played in the switcheroo.

 

France's Le Drian said the move was reminiscent of U.S. President Joe Biden's predecessor in office, Donald Trump: “What concerns me as well is the American behavior," he told Franceinfo on Thursday morning. "This brutal, unilateral, unpredictable decision looks very much like what Mr. Trump used to do … Allies don’t do this to each other … It’s rather insufferable."

 

What happens next

South Australian Senator Rex Patrick, a fierce critic of the French project, told local media that Canberra had already spent about 2 billion Australian dollars (around €1.24 billion) on the project.

 

"There will be an exit fee," Patrick told the ABC Thursday. "But the cost of doing that [walking away] is substantially less than continuing in my view."

 

Le Drian indicated Paris would fight the move. “This is not over," he said. "We have contracts. The Australians need to tell us how they’re getting out of it. We’re going to need [an] explanation. We have an intergovernmental deal that we signed with great fanfare in 2019, with precise commitments, with clauses; how are they getting out of it?"

 

In 2017, the Australian government revealed the terms of one of its contracts with Naval Group, under which either Canberra or the French firm could terminate unilaterally "where a Party’s ability to implement the Agreement is ‘fundamentally impacted by exceptional events, circumstances or matters.’"

 

Whether the delays, cost overruns and broken promises amount to "exceptional events" seems destined to be a question for the courts.

 

If Canberra does decide to pull out, the contract stipulates "the Parties will consult to determine if common ground can be found to allow continuation of the Agreement. If no common ground is found within 12 months, the termination will take effect 24 months after receipt of the original notice to terminate."

 

That timing seems to gel with the announcement of the AUKUS alliance: The leaders said they would work over the next 18 months to figure out how best to deliver the technology for Australia's new nuclear submarines, which the U.S. traditionally has shared with only the U.K.