Jean Marcou, Professor of Law at Sciences Po Grenoble, researcher at CERDAP2 and associate researcher at the French Institute of Anatolian Studies in Istanbul.
The termination of the of the "contract of the century", under which France was to supply twelve submarines for the Barracuda program (diesel-electric version of the of the new Suffren-class nuclear attack submarines to be delivered by Naval Group is to deliver to the French navy) to Australia. and generated a chain reaction whose developments are financial, technical, strategic strategic, diplomatic and even electoral. More generally, with less than a year to go before the presidential elections, all of a sudden the the question of France's place in the world, and the international choices international security choices.
Limited financial impact limited
Won in 2016 against competition from Germany and Japan, this 56-billion euro the consecration of a French armaments policy based on a powerful based on a powerful military industry, supported by the State to meet to meet the needs of national defense and make its costs profitable through the by exporting part of its production. Paradoxically, the financial financial consequences of Australia's about-turn do not appear insurmountable. insurmountable. France will in all likelihood be compensated, and the "contract of the century contract of the century" represents only 10% of Naval Group's sales whose order books are full, since the builder is due to replace replace the French Navy's fleet of nuclear attack submarines and to meet major orders from India and Brazil. At In addition, a large proportion of submarine components were to be manufactured by Australian or even American companies.
But this abrupt cancellation of the Franco-Australian agreement is bound to have an impact on the French arms export dynamic. The tripartite alliance between Americans, Australians and British(AUKUS), concluded on this occasion, should enable Canberra to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, the French offer having been judged unfairly unsuitable, even though such propulsion had not been proposed to the Australians to avoid disseminating this sensitive technology. In any case, the sudden death of this Australian contract is damaging to the image of a company that was in an ascendant phase, and is causing concern among employees of the Cotentin peninsula, whose Cherbourg shipyards build Naval Group's submarines.
A Chinese-American obsession underestimated by France and Europeans
The central dimension of this affair is, in fact, strategic. France has certainly been deprived of a market, but above all its position is threatened in a crucial geopolitical area where it believed itself to be inescapable: the Indo-Pacific. In this case, theAUKUS is not just a supplier of new weapons for Canberra, but above all intends to become the Western pole responsible for curbing Chinese ambitions in the area. The main lesson of this new Anglo-Saxon alliance is that France is not one of the Americans' first circle of allies. The ruggedness of the American initiative, reminiscent of the hasty decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, confirms that Joe Biden, whom many had cast as a Jimmy Carter clone, is a coldly realistic president who can be ruthless. Donald Trump had gone so far as to say that "Sleepy Joe" would be no match for a world-class chess player like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Clearly, he didn't know him very well!
For his part, Jean-Yves Le Drian, the head of French diplomacy, did not hesitate to denounce "a stab in the back", which could have been made by the predecessor of the current tenant of the White House. However, equating Biden with Trump risks leading France into further misinterpretations, which is undesirable in the current context. In reality, the creation ofAUKUS illustrates the rapid transformation of the way Americans look at the world. It is now fixed on the Pacific and focused on China, while its previous European and Middle Eastern interests have been relegated to the background.
The new U.S.-China rivalry, initially perceived as an economic and technical phenomenon (the famous Tech Cold War), is now taking on an openly assertive security and military dimension. From his very first international appearances and statements (at the G7 and the NATO summit in June 2021), Joe Biden has made no secret of the fact that China is, in his view, the number-one threat to the West. What's more, behind Biden's Chinese haunting is the conviction that Beijing's economic successes have helped destroy jobs in the United States, paving the way for populism and Donald Trump. The Europeans, and France in particular, have probably failed to perceive the intensity and depth of this new approach, adopting instead a strategy of waiting, neutrality and even condescension.
Up until now, Australia has in many respects held similar positions, reluctant to align itself with the United States, which helped to secure the "deal of the century" with Paris. As for Emmanuel Macron, before the G7 summit, he distanced himself from the American president's hostility towards Beijing, pointing out that cooperation between Americans and Europeans was based on NATO, a transatlantic organization founded at the time of the Cold War, whose objectives and enemy certainly needed to be redefined. But he also declared : "China is not part of the Atlantic geography, or there's something wrong with my map. However, after the international summits last June, the White House did not change its line, while the Australians moved closer to American positions, a major change that the French did not see coming. By September 2021, as a number of American commentators explain, the Franco-Australian agreement found itself at odds with the new American defense strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and Washington simply dismissed it out of hand.
France makes its anger diplomatically
The decision and, of course, the method used (total absence of consultation) have Paris. The cancellation of a gala commemorating the Franco-American naval victory at Chesapeake Bay during the the War of Independence, as well as the recall of the French ambassadors in Canberra and especially Washington, are part of the diplomatic language. For France France, the aim was to express extreme discontent. While it's true that Franco-Australian relations have in the past gone through difficult times (notably at the time of the French nuclear tests in the Pacific and the the Rainbow Warrior affair), such a deterioration in such a deterioration in Franco-American relations is unprecedented. event.
The fact that the UK seems to have been spared France's fury was initially surprising. In reality, keeping our ambassador in London allows the French government to show, somewhat contemptuously, that the British have only played a secondary role in setting upANKUS, and probably also to avoid unnecessarily complicating the current relationship between the two countries (which is already fairly degraded by clear disagreements on migration issues).
Basically, it's probable that British integration into the new Indo-Pacific alliance was not an absolute requirement, but it did give the agreement an Atlanticist, even global, dimension. Boris Johnson may have benefited from it, because it reinforces the Global Britain strategy he presented as the alternative to leaving the European Union, and because it precedes a foreseeable free-trade agreement between London and Washington, but it is also likely that the Australians, who wanted to be supported in their choice by their former metropolis, had the economic means to obtain British support (trade agreements within the Commonwealth).
Searching for a way out of the crisis and French presidential election prospects
The most important is whether Paris and Washington will be able to overcome this crisis crisis, or whether their relations are entering a period of lasting period of lasting stagnation. Clearly, American leaders have French anger, acknowledging that France is a "vital partner" in the Pacific. "vital partner" in the Pacific, or hailing the military's elimination of by the soldiers of Operation Barkhane of jihadist leader Abou Walid Al Sahraoui. But these ointments of "diplomatic ointment" will not suffice the affront. The French ambassador to Washington, before his recall was received twice at the White House by Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden's National national security advisor to Joe Biden. And it has been announced that the French French and American presidents to have direct telephone contact shortly, at the latter's request. It is not impossible that some form of compensation will be offered to France. It may involve association with American strategy in the Pacific. However, we can also expect the realist Biden ask France to move closer to American positions, in other words, to bring China into his Atlanticist geography; a demand that would not be without risk for the French be without risk for the French president, at a time when the campaign for the presidential election campaign is underway.
The questioning the "agreement of the century" drew disapproval from opposition forces, who denounced it as a failure of Emmanuel Macron's foreign policy. of Emmanuel Macron's foreign policy. The most virulent reactions came from the right and extreme right, with Xavier Bertrand and Valérie Pécresse regretted that France was no longer respected by its allies, while Marine Le Pen pointing to "a triple economic, military and political disaster political disaster" and calling for a commission of inquiry. On the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon focused on the United States, the "great beneficiary beneficiary" of the cancellation of the Franco-Australian agreement, saying it was explaining that it was high time "to get out of NATO". So the ecologists and socialists have said little on the subject, it seems that French political class as a whole has not yet fully reacted to the on this issue, waiting to see how it will end and whether it can be presidential campaign.
It is true that that international policy issues are not high on the electorate's list of and that, in this case, domestic political debates are likely to be domestic political debates are likely to take over. The fact remains that, in this case, Emmanuel Macron's image has been damaged, even challenged, notably by the by the three Anglo-Saxon leaders pacting at his expense on the other side of the world. the other side of the world. For the time being, the head of state seems to have chosen, to everyone's surprise back into the realm of national memory, asking the harkis for forgiveness and announcing a law on the subject before the end of the year. The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, is thus representing France at the annual session of the UN General Assembly, while he waits on the Aventine to have a frank discussion with his with his American counterpart; a way for the President to keep his distance away from the national debate for a while, before returning to it in a more this time, as a candidate.