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France Recalls Its Ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia over a Submarine Deal

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Re: France Recalls Its Ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia over a Submarine Deal

#101

Post by le-mark »

roenxi wrote: post #53
trynumber9 wrote: post #3

It seems like a bit of an overreaction. Is shipbuilding that important to France?

France has a GDP of ~2,600 billion and the contact was something like 40 billion + potential overruns. Recalling an ambassador over a 1-2% of GDP slight seems pretty proportionate. It is a lot of money.

Agreed, this was huge huge deal for them. Reporting from Washington was Biden admin totally downplayed France objections, I was surprised actually. I think Macron is right to raise a fuss, but nothing will come of it. Europe doesn’t have a defense leg to stand on, that’s the current world order, right or wrong.

The other thing that surprises me is the Anglo centric makeup of AUKUS, Oceana anyone?

Re: France Recalls Its Ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia over a Submarine Deal

#102

Post by emmelaich »

tkojames wrote: post #16

It is super laughable because the nuclear powered version that they are building for themselves was a fixed bid contract for something like 10 billion for 8 subs.. and the Australian contract keeps going up and up something like 35 billion for ten subs. The diesel sub for Australia is based on the nuclear sub that they signed the fixed bid contract for. Anybody with half brain can tell they are making up the lost of…

Australian submarine situation has been a shit-show for 40 years. Glad its all over.

Re: France Recalls Its Ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia over a Submarine Deal

#103

Post by [deleted] »

tmilard wrote: post #31
rmk wrote: post #11

It looks like the vaunted experience of Biden and his team has not translated into any sort of deft policymaking, particularly in foreign policy. The messy pullout out of Afghanistan, followed by this scuttling of the deal in progress between Australia and France have reinforced the notion that Uncle Sam can not be relied upon, even by his closest allies. Pretty surefire way of helping fence-sitters become client sta…

Because I am french I will not say anything too dark. But yes, this SUB contract was big. Giant.And Naval Group is partially a state company. The Worth for french community is this : 1) French just hatted Trump. Deeply. His sense of hatting his allies ( Germany...) and loving his foes ( North Corea, ect). 2) As opposed, French loved Biden. More rounded, multi cultural, more social like in Europe. I would say french p…

[deleted]

Re: France Recalls Its Ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia over a Submarine Deal

#104

Post by jonnybgood »

rmk wrote: post #83
jonnybgood wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty surefire way of helping fence-sitters become client states of China. By offering to provide less costly subs in support of a war with China? Your comment is nonsensical given the context of the deal.

It's not the military hardware that I'm referring to, but the treatment of a longstanding ally that helped found the nation. Did the US participate in the tender? It appears to me that they just swooped in and offered the subs that had been picked over Germany and Japan's proposed subs. The French aren't recalling their diplomats from Germany and Japan, are they?

France, our long-standing ally, has no interest in providing support to the US against China’s aggression. Let’s deal with the reality of modern day geopolitics and not that of over 200 years ago.

Re: France Recalls Its Ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia over a Submarine Deal

#105

Post by dirtyid »

neltnerb wrote: post #76
dirtyid wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time France pulled ambassador from Australia was when Australia denied France from a weapons bid due to France testing nukes in the Pacific.

This is amazing, is it always about money? Surely there are other examples.

>always about money

Usually the messier politics behind the scenes, in this case there was little notification, embarrassed French Pacific ambitions (France has substantial territory/EEZ holdings next to Australia), and a few months before the French election. Also diplomatically a dick move for transatlantic relationship, EU just announced their Indo-Pacific strategy. Last time in 1995 also had AU messing with French embassy diplomatic bags, delaying French ships at AU ports and other shenanigans.

Recalls don't happen that often, especially between "friendly" countries. It's pretty wierd it happened twice between France and Australia. Arguably French deserved it, but Australia also seems to have gone full bogan.

US / France has their own drama, especially in MIC competition, i.e. US label France of conducting industrial espionage on par with China, meanwhile US poached lucrative contracts from France before. So both money and political influence.

Re: France Recalls Its Ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia over a Submarine Deal

#106

Post by turbinerneiter »

ekabod wrote: post #85
turbinerneiter wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France can do nuclear subs, Australia explicitly wanted diesel, until they suddenly didn't want diesel anymore. Arms deals are a joke always, they don't make sense, its basically all corruption fraud and lies.

France refuses to sell nuclear submarines.

Didn't know that, thanks for the correction.

Re: France Recalls Its Ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia over a Submarine Deal

#107

Post by Leparamour »

Dobbs wrote: post #40
dougmwne wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that the user base here has been deteriorating and the focus has been drifting away from the SV startup scene. I've also been noticing a growing political atmosphere that is in opposition to SV norms. A sign of the times probably, but I also suspect that HN's usefulness to Ycombinator is fading.

Totally agree, if you want proof of the paradox of tolerance look around HN. In the sake of being tolerant to misogynistic, homophobic, racist, and transphobic posts and comments it has chased away many people leaving more and more the ugliness behind. Most women, and trans people I know despise and avoid the site at this point. All you have to do is look at the comments any time something even tangentially related t…

Interestingly I have the opposite impression: How political activists from the US American SJW spectrum are trying to politicize HN by pushing Critical Race Theory and leftist political pieces from Axios, the NYT or NPR to the frontpage and then using downvoting to silence criticism.

Re: France Recalls Its Ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia over a Submarine Deal

#108

Post by systemvoltage »

markus_zhang wrote: post #82

My observation: 1- US probably predicts that China is gonna breakthrough the first island chain in the next 10 years. 2- France needs to reconsider her Indo-Pacific stratrgy because Aussi explicitly shows that it's going all in with US instead of trying to follow some sort of independent strategy. 3- Win for whoever in EU who supports self defense and a more consolidated Europe. 4- First time a non nuclear country (A…

Point #4. Distinction we need to make is that Australia will obtain Nuclear-powered subs, not nuclear weapons. I haven’t seen what “Nuclear Sub” entails with regards to this contract anywhere so please correct me if I am wrong. It’s not breaking the non-proliferation treaty.

Re: France Recalls Its Ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia over a Submarine Deal

#109

Post by yyyk »

The issue is not the submarine deal, but frustrations lasting for months over other issues, in particular the travel ban. The US has had an EU travel ban for over 18 months, despite the EU having more vaccination and less covid than the US[0]. Which country's citizen are not banned from traveling to the US? Russia! Despite a soaring epidemic and very low vaccination rates.

Biden told the world that 'America is back'. Yet most of his foreign policy is similar to Trump's, the difference is being in practice more abrasive to allies and more conciliatory with rivals. If this continues, the US will simply have less allies. Perhaps it's more profitable to be a rival - the US will treat you better.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/16/biden-travel...

[1] https://www.nafsa.org/regulatory-information/covid-19-restri...

(Note that the EU travel ban was about to be lifted in January, the President reinstated it for no reason I can fathom.)

Re: France Recalls Its Ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia over a Submarine Deal

#110

Post by Rebelgecko »

tomohawk wrote: post #68
droopyEyelids wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is Australia's largest trade partner, and China owns tons of Australian real estate (residential and industrial), and one out of 20 Australians considers themselves of Chinese ancestry. It doesn't seem to make much sense to conceive of Australia and China as submarine warfare opponents.

France was Germany's largest trading partner prior to WWI

The US was also Japan's top trading partner a decade before Pearl Harbor
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