[The three-nation pact announced Wednesday by Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, called AUKUS, is clearly aimed at China, although the three leaders did not mention Beijing. China is thought to have six nuclear-powered attack submarines, with plans to increase the fleet in the next decade.]
By Karen DeYoung, Michael E. Miller and Lily Kuo
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves
Le Drian called the Australian decision, which effectively canceled a
$66 billion agreement to buy 12 French diesel-powered submarines,
“unacceptable” and “incomprehensible.”
As for the United States,
"this unilateral, sudden and unforeseeable decision very much recalls what
Mr. Trump would do," he said in an interview with France Info radio.
The French Embassy in Washington
promptly canceled a Friday night gala commemorating the country's naval
assistance to American forces during the Revolutionary War. In what Paris
clearly saw as an added insult, Britain is also part of the U.S.-Australian
deal.
White House press secretary Jen
Psaki said that France was "aware in advance" of the new agreement,
although Secretary of State Antony Blinken indicated that awareness came only
in the past day or two.
A French official said Paris
learned of the decision, which was negotiated for months among the three
participants, through media reports. "We were not informed of this project
until the information was published in the American and Australian press, which
preceded Joe Biden's official announcement by a few hours," said the
official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic
sensitivity of the subject.
Asked what President Biden thought
of Le Drian's Trump comparison, Psaki said that "the president doesn't
think about it much" and that he was focused on "security in the
Indo-Pacific."
The three-nation pact announced
Wednesday by Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and British Prime
Minister Boris Johnson, called AUKUS, is clearly aimed at China, although the
three leaders did not mention Beijing. China is thought to have six
nuclear-powered attack submarines, with plans to increase the fleet in the next
decade.
The AUKUS countries will work over
the next 18 months to hash out the details of the deal, including the type
— either U.S. Virginia class or British Astute class — and price of the
submarines, Morrison said. It will be years before the first Australian
nuclear-powered submarine is deployed, he said.
The nuclear-powered subs will be
faster, more capable, harder to detect and potentially much more lethal than
conventional submarines. They will carry conventional — not nuclear — weapons,
the three leaders emphasized.
Only six nations, including France,
have nuclear-powered submarines, and the United States had previously shared
its technology only with Britain.
In Beijing, Foreign Ministry
spokesman Zhao Lijian described the agreement as "an outdated Cold War
mentality" and told Australia — which has been locked in a trade war with
China for years — that it should "prepare for the worst," without
giving details.
Speaking at a regular news briefing
in Beijing, Zhao said the AUKUS alliance “undermined regional peace and
stability, aggravated the arms race and hurt international nonproliferation
efforts.”
China’s state-run Global Times
described the United States as “losing its mind trying to rally its allies
against China” and accused Australia of becoming a “running dog” of Washington.
In Australia, however, the pact was
widely viewed as a new chapter in bonds with the United States after questions
about whether the relationship was wobbling. Biden’s decision not to call
Morrison, a partner in Afghanistan, until two days after U.S. troops left
Kabul, stung in
Australia.
After years of promising to pivot
to Asia, first under President Barack Obama and now Biden, the United States is
finally taking a major step in that direction, said Ashley Townshend, a defense
expert at the U.S. Studies Center in Sydney.
“This is a tectonic development,”
he said of the submarine deal. “It is exceedingly significant for Australian
security.”
Not everyone in Australia was
pleased about the deal. Australian Sen. Rex Patrick, an independent who is also
a former naval submariner, called for an inquiry into the agreement, saying it
raised questions around the country’s commitment to nuclear nonproliferation.
Adam Bandt, leader of the Greens, called the submarines “floating
Chernobyls.”
The leader of the opposition Labor
Party, Anthony Albanese, expressed support for AUKUS but criticized the prime
minister for the “failure” of the French submarine deal, which already cost
billions.
French officials insisted that the
significant economic loss paled beside what was a diplomatic affront. “It’s
really a stab in the back” from Australia and a betrayal of trust, Le Drian
said.
“I’m very angry today, and bitter.
. . . This is not something allies do to each other,” he
said of the Australians.
But Le Drian saved his most severe
scorn for the United States and for Biden, including the comparison to Trump.
Trump and the government of French
President Emmanuel Macron battled over multiple issues, including trade and
tariffs, and what the French considered Trump’s basic rudeness. In late 2018, after
Trump linked domestic economic protests in France to Macron’s support for the
Paris climate accord, Le Drian angrily responded, “I say this to Donald Trump
and the French president says it, too: Leave our nation be.”
The deepest modern rift between the
two countries, however, came in early 2003, when France loudly refused to
support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying that “nothing” would justify the war.
Biden’s pledge to restore a close
relationship with Europe, and his praise of France as the closest of allies,
was supposed to relegate those conflicts to the past. Blinken, at a Thursday
news conference with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and their Australian
counterparts, said that “we cooperate incredibly closely with France on many
shared priorities in the Indo-Pacific, but also beyond, around the world.”
“We’re going to continue to do so,”
he said. “We place fundamental value on that relationship, on that partnership,
and we will carry it forward in the days ahead.”
After the announcement, two senior
French officials complained to White House national security adviser Jake
Sullivan, one on the telephone and one in person, according to officials from
both countries.
Both Blinken and Psaki emphasized
that the decision to drop the French submarine contract and make a deal with
the United States and Britain was an Australian one, and that it had nothing to
do with U.S. relations with France.
“There are a range of partnerships
that include the French, and some partnerships that don’t,” Psaki said. “The
French have partnerships with other countries that don’t include us. That is
how global diplomacy works.” While France and the United States are both
members of NATO, the United States also maintains defense, economic and
intelligence pacts in the Indo-Pacific.
In expressing their outrage, French
officials noted that, unlike Britain, France is an Indo-Pacific nation, with
more than 2 million citizens in island territories across the two oceans
and a robust military presence. France released a strategy for the region in
2018; the European Union released its Indo-Pacific strategy this week.
Australia commissioned its new
submarine fleet in 2016, as tensions with China were beginning to rise. But the
French deal had been troubled almost from the start. In June, after Australian
complaints about production delays, cost overruns and disagreements over the
use of local contractors, Morrison met with Macron in Paris.
Morrison, the Sydney Morning Herald
reported at the time, gave the French a September deadline to convince his
government that the project could continue.
At a dinner for the Australian
leader, Macron called the agreement a “pillar of our partnership and the
relationship of confidence between our countries,” and said, “I want to assure
you of our full and complete commitment.”
Miller reported from Sydney and Kuo
reported from Taipei, Taiwan. John Hudson, Anne Gearan and Felicia Sonmez in
Washington contributed to this report.
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