Australia’s unilateral cancellation of its contract to purchase French submarines and sign up for the AUKUS security pact constitutes a sl...
Australia’s unilateral cancellation of its contract to purchase French submarines and sign up for the AUKUS security pact constitutes a slap in the face for French diplomacy – variously described as a “stab in the back” and a “betrayal” by French diplomats.
Though Paris may be shocked by this turn of events, it was somewhat foreseeable, for several historical, cultural and diplomatic reasons.
Under this “contract of the century”, agreed to between Paris and Canberra in 2016, France was to provide Australia with diesel-electric Barracuda submarines for a total of 34 billion euros over a 25-year period.
For France, the aim was to develop a partnership with the largest nation in the South Pacific, one that should have sealed a close and lasting agreement for half a century, thus reinforcing its diplomatic and military network in an area of great strategic interest.
While this plan may have been both judicious (because it proposed a third diplomatic path for the region, freed from the Sino-American stranglehold) and ambitious (because it gave France and Europe a renewed presence in the Indo-Pacific region), there were nonetheless near-insurmountable weaknesses in the French position that led to the failure of this collaboration.
Unusual alliance?
Let us be clear: the alliance proposed by France, while laudable, was nonetheless unusual. Rising tensions with China over the past three...
