231–240 of 299 posts
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Then why is it the US's fault Australia changed its mind?
These nuclear subs run on highly enriched uranium. There is serious NPT issue involved that only the US has the power to ignore.
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Actually, as mentioned multiple times in the past couple of days by former French Ambassador to the US Gerard Araud, diesel was an Australia demand, which required France to modify its subs (all nuclear powered) and added complexity to the project. According to the former Ambassador, it would have been much easier and cheaper for France to supply Australia with nuclear subs.
Well I suspect the demand was at least partially due to budget, as opposed to philosophical or technological reasons for diesel over nuclear. Separately, I've got to think turnkey access to the tomahawk missiles has almost got to play a bigger role in this than the sub itself, other than being capable of carrying said missiles.
This may be a precursor to increased US naval presence/base in Australia.
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> Let's not pretend that France is going to go to nuclear war to over these territories. Who is going to conquer them? And if someone tried, I think it is likely that other regional powers would help – Australia, New Zealand, the US – not for any great love of France, but rather because they'd see such a conquest as a threat to their own national security, so they'd want to help France out of self-interest.
Sure so that goes back to my point, why does the US exactly care about France in the region? France can’t stop China (which is who would conquer those islands if anyone) and the US would have to do it anyway. Oh and France is staying at arms length from both the US and China. New Zealand is kind of eh too. They don’t contribute much to the alliance of the Anglosphere countries and have been (for their own export-orie…
Now, if they'd tried to do that, maybe it wouldn't have worked out – but it appears Australia/UK/US never tried, they did all of their negotiating completely behind closed doors, without telling France what they were doing, and then presented it to France as a fait accompli. If they tried to include France, and the discussions had broken down, France still would have taken it better than the current situation, where Australia/UK/US made no attempt to include them.
France is officially an important and long-standing formal ally to the US and the UK through NATO. Australia and France do not have a formal military alliance, but had been describing each other as "strategic partners". I think the way Australia/UK/US went about this has caused unnecessary damage to their relationship with France. They could had arrived at essentially the same outcome in a way which caused far less damage to that relationship. Viewed in that light, I don't think geopolitics is very relevant – whatever the value of France as an ally or partner, needlessly offending them is just stupid.
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This is all geopolitics. nothing about technology or specifics on anything interesting.
> nothing about technology Well the whole point is that they've switched technology from diesel to nuclear, based on changing user requirements. Agile, if you like!
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Sure so that goes back to my point, why does the US exactly care about France in the region? France can’t stop China (which is who would conquer those islands if anyone) and the US would have to do it anyway. Oh and France is staying at arms length from both the US and China. New Zealand is kind of eh too. They don’t contribute much to the alliance of the Anglosphere countries and have been (for their own export-orie…
My point was that Australia/UK/US could have done this in a way which offended France less – invite them into the discussion, tell them that Australian wanted nuclear submarines, even tell them that the UK/US HEU-based submarines were more attractive than France's LEU-based ones – and offer them some consolation prizes such as engineering consulting, joint training and joint exercises, manufacturing of some parts. Ma…
What I would say is that I question this premise. It’s not Trump. I don’t doubt for a second that this reaction is something of a surprise for the allies we’re discussing. So the question is why? I don’t think incompetence is a compelling answer given the current administration.
> Viewed in that light, I don't think geopolitics is very relevant – whatever the value of France as an ally or partner, needlessly offending them is just stupid.
Right. I think the US, UK, and Australia simply don’t value the EU as a partner against China. Or maybe there’s another explanation. It would take a lot of convincing that this is just ignorance or stupidity on behalf of three different countries. They either don’t care, or there is something else at play.
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…
I don't think that any of those are observations.. probably more like speculations.
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My point was that Australia/UK/US could have done this in a way which offended France less – invite them into the discussion, tell them that Australian wanted nuclear submarines, even tell them that the UK/US HEU-based submarines were more attractive than France's LEU-based ones – and offer them some consolation prizes such as engineering consulting, joint training and joint exercises, manufacturing of some parts. Ma…
Your premise is that the US, UK, and Australia just went about this as though they didn’t know exactly how France would react and that what they did was stupid and unintentional, and that they believe that France or the EU are important strategic partners. What I would say is that I question this premise. It’s not Trump. I don’t doubt for a second that this reaction is something of a surprise for the allies we’re dis…
Really? I see the debacle of Afghanistan as evidence that all recent US administrations are perfectly capable of incompetence – whether Bush or Obama or Trump or Biden. And Iraq before that. No denying that Trump took incompetence to worrying new heights, but I don't think we should therefore dismiss the idea that the other three administrations have also demonstrated it, even though not to quite such an exuberant degree.
And having witnessed the lack of urgency with which the Australian federal government pursued the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, the idea that the Australian government might be incompetent, not just at fighting a pandemic, but also at managing international relations, does not seem implausible. Likewise, many Brits question the competence of the Johnson government – COVID vaccination rollout is one area in which they have done well, but in many other areas (including other aspects of COVID response) their competence is widely questioned.
France is actually the least upset at the UK, because they expect this kind of behaviour from them, especially under Boris Johnson – there is a reason why the phrase "perfidious Albion" is centuries old – but they expected better from Australia and the US.
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Geopolitically Europe is much more important to the US than Australia ever will be. If US wants to contain China technologically European cooperation is a must. Maybe this is a sign that they are giving up on that. Or this is just a short sighted move.
From the perspective of the US , Europe is not committed to the degree the Uk and Australia are to China (I would say this is a fact really) so there isn’t really anything to lose by shifting away to more important regions. Trade stays the same, and then the US can focus attention elsewhere and let the EU deal with Russia if there is such a need. Australia is a big country, lots of resources, extremely important as a…
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My point was that Australia/UK/US could have done this in a way which offended France less – invite them into the discussion, tell them that Australian wanted nuclear submarines, even tell them that the UK/US HEU-based submarines were more attractive than France's LEU-based ones – and offer them some consolation prizes such as engineering consulting, joint training and joint exercises, manufacturing of some parts. Ma…
Your premise is that the US, UK, and Australia just went about this as though they didn’t know exactly how France would react and that what they did was stupid and unintentional, and that they believe that France or the EU are important strategic partners. What I would say is that I question this premise. It’s not Trump. I don’t doubt for a second that this reaction is something of a surprise for the allies we’re dis…
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…
Though downvotes I agree here - I would rather the US eschew the UK to have better relations with the EU, who seem to have a much better grasp on the challenges of today, while also providing for better quality of life for their citizens. Of course nothing is all roses but I’d find it hard to argue the average person in the (western) EU has a worse quality of life than in the US.
Honestly putting UK as an adversary to the EU is ridiculous. We are all allies. There should be no eschewing.