Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 299 posts

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

#251

Post by BrandoElFollito »

Renaud wrote: post #180
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…

The upset is not just about the loss of a commercial deal, I'm sure there will be some contractual compensations. The issue is about the manner in which the deal was announced. Newspapers describe the urgent calls from the AU officials to their French counterparts hours before the very public announcement by the US, UK and AU. Diplomatically, that's a pretty callous thing to do to a partner. The ballooning costs may…

As a French, this is very much the feeling here. We do not talk much about the financial impact (though Naval Group is obviously not happy) but indeed rather the way it was announced.

As for the trust part, I would say that this is more being naive, which is always a surprise to me.

We dealt with the British during Brexit and the overall feeling is that we lost the deal (fishing, British disregard of the deal, Irelands as an open entry point, ...). This is probably just a gut feeling, but we tend as a nation to wake up the hard way - surprised that others are not friendly.

It is time to acknowledge that we are a small fish compared to the US, China and we need to find a way to deal with that, and not still live in the idea that the world is looking at is.

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

#252

Post by BrandoElFollito »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #140
gdy wrote: post #28

I wonder what French think now about their cancelling of the Mistral deal with Russia [0] under American pressure [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistral-class_amphibious_assau... [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-russia-mistral-idU...

A complete and shameful shit show. This wasn't even a warship. Yes, it made the French look like fools and untrustworthy and they had to dump that ship to another nation for a huge discount. A complete failure. Merci Hollande! /s USA is nobody"s ally when it's about business. USA only has interests.

One can have various views on Hollande, but this one was the evidence that we are vassals to the US.

I did not like him much, he had ups and downs but he ridiculized France in that one.

I do not know what other presidents would have done, though. They announce a lot, and usually do not deliver much in average (nothing special with France here, usual politics)

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

#253

Post by BrandoElFollito »

A similar case is with Iran. France was bullied into leaving Iran and breaking our contracts there because the US do not like Iran.

France and style other countries tried to ask EU to weight it, but it was busy with doing nothing (and since it has zero influence anyway wild not have helped).

The US is a bully. We are the 1st grade kid being beaten up for fun and profit, and told to smile.

International politics is ugly and hypocrisy, in the name of Diplomacy.

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

#254

Post by akmarinov »

yyyk wrote: post #109

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'.…

Technically they only banned the Schengen area countries, not the EU.

You can still travel to the US freely from Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Cyprus, if you can find a flight.

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

#255

Post by sam_lowry_ »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #219
cedricgle wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing how the Afghanistan war ended I don't think so. The last time the USA properly won a war was when they nuked cities and civilians, whereas China and Russia never went this far. Now given that USA is definitely the more belligerent of the 3, it might happen again.

Untrue, USA won the Gulf War.

David against Goliath? IRL, Goliath wins.

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

#256

Post by selivanovp »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #151
throw_m239339 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A complete and shameful shit show. This wasn't even a warship. Yes, it made the French look like fools and untrustworthy and they had to dump that ship to another nation for a huge discount. A complete failure. Merci Hollande! /s USA is nobody"s ally when it's about business. USA only has interests.

> This wasn't even a warship. It's an helicopter carrier with advanced air space control and telecommunication capacities. That's definitely a warship.

France was providing the hull. Electronics etc was all Russian. So technically France product was not a warship.

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

#257

Post by i_am_proteus »

edrxty wrote: post #166
i_am_proteus wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most recent submarine program (Virginia class) was effectively on-budget.

Probably due to its predecessor, the Seawolf, from which it was derived ended up being wildly cost ineffective.

That is not correct.

Seawolf was cancelled and only three units were built, causing R&D costs to be spread across those three units, raising unit price.

It was cancelled because it was expensive, but it was ordered during the end of the cold war and was radically more capable than the class it was meant to replace. This cost was acceptable at time of order, but then subject to budget cuts after the USSR collapsed. This raised the per-unit cost, but lowered the overall cost.

The eventual replacement (Virginia) ended up being more evolutionary from the previous class (not from Seawolf) than revolutionary, but much cheaper.

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

#258

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

ericmay wrote: post #197
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> France has 0 ability to protect those territories France has nuclear-powered submarines carrying nuclear ICBMs. Of course they can defend their islands. > Sure France could sail the Charles de Gualle to the Pacific France has a permanent navy presence in the Pacific. They don't need to get an aircraft carrier there. Aircraft carriers are useless against a modern army anyway. It's all about submarines. > because Fra…

> France has nuclear-powered submarines carrying nuclear ICBMs. Of course they can defend their islands. Let's not pretend that France is going to go to nuclear war to over these territories. > France has a permanent navy presence in the Pacific. They don't need to get an aircraft carrier there. I mean so does the Philippines. The question is what are they going to do with it? > Aircraft carriers are useless against…

> Let's not pretend that France is going to go to nuclear war to over these territories.

Why wouldn't they? Nuclear retaliation is their whole defense doctrine. They probably won't need to because they maintain adequate diplomatic relationships with all of the different powers in the Pacific.

> I'm not really sure that's true. And why would it be less true with better detection technology now than it would have been in World War II where aircraft carriers were what mattered?

Carrier groups are too slow and carry too little protection to actually resist an attack from a military of an equivalent technological level nowadays. Anti-ballistic ship missiles and supersonic missiles fired from high altitude are a pain to detect and fly too fast to be reliably stopped. The US has been trying to develop counter-measures but their actual capabilities are unproved and they remain vulnerable to saturation. You will not be able to operate carriers close to China or Russia if they want them out of the picture.

> Sure I can. What exactly are they going to do?

Cripple your navy? Nuck you? Geopardize your economic blocus with China and provide them with the mineral they need? They could do all of these things.

Step out of your bubble. You don't understand the actual position of the USA in the modern world. You can't just dismiss countries. That's not how diplomacy works.

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

#259

Post by gdy »

lvs wrote: post #87
tmilard wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... I feel we got screwed twice !

Does a NATO county selling weapons to a NATO strategic adversary not seem mildly questionable on its own?

"NATO strategic adversary"

That's not what NATO had been telling Russia when expanding into Eastern European and ex-USSR countries.

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

#260

Post by gdy »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #131
lvs wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does a NATO county selling weapons to a NATO strategic adversary not seem mildly questionable on its own?

The Euro strategy is to make themselves vassals of Russia to appear less threatening. Look at how Germany walked away from nuclear and made themselves dependent on Russian natural gas.

Apparently Germany sees Russia a smaller threat than the possibility of a nuclear incident at its aging nuclear plants.
Post reply on HN