The French sunk the submarine deal, not the U.S.
It should have been an easy diplomatic triumph for the new Biden administration: the announcement of a technology-sharing pact with close ally the United Kingdom to furnish their mutual partner Australia with nuclear-powered submarines capable of challenging China’s rapidly growing navy across the Pacific Ocean. Instead, much of the attention has been sucked up by a major diplomatic faux pas.
The deal shut out another key Western ally, France, even as it tacitly signaled that Australia was breaking from a 2016 contract worth an estimated $65 billion with French shipbuilder Naval Group to build 12 non-nuclear submarines, a huge blow to French industry that also undermined France’s foreign policy ambitions in the region.
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It’s true that Biden handled his coup with little finesse. His team failed to insist that Australia inform France of its withdrawal from their submarine deal well in advance of unveiling the pact with the U.S. and U.K.; instead they deflected inquiries from French officials about what was up.
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However, it is wrong for French officials to blame the United States for a betrayal because Washington furnished Australia with an alternate submarine sale option and to insinuate that the U.S. bears all responsibility for the French contract’s demise. In fact, the program was poorly conceived, with both France’s Naval Group and Australia’s government failing to accurately calculate the costs and delays in their particularly unwieldy undertaking. Without the American option, Canberra may well have sought a cheaper deal for submarines with Germany or Japan.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-french-sunk-the-submarine-deal-not-the-us/ar-AAOIPzr
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