US, Uk and Australia announce new defence partnership, technology sharing

[Low Hanging Fruit]

It seems the French are mostly pissed at Morrison.

It makes sense. Ultimately it was their choice. But instead we are sitting around whining about the US should have sent an email. Emails.. its always emails this or emails that.

[Crispin]

F35 is an excellent plane, we operate it successfully. Pricey but worth the $$.

Other than that, I'd be careful taking overly one-sided stance. For all you may know, the call might have happened and maybe even much earlier than we think. It's just France lost $30 billions USD contract there, it's not an issue of call or not there. It's clear France wants some compensation there.

- - - Updated - - -



*chuckle* "America is back!!"

He never said the F.-35 is shit, but it went way over budget, and was delayed. No different than what the French subs were, the US does not have a rep for delivering on time or within budget either.

That doesnt even touch the fact, that the Australians wanted French nuclear subs as diesel subs, are surprised when it does cause some technical challenges, and then asks the US for nuclear subs.

France is pissed, because their friends, whom they are allies in war with, blindsided them on a deal. The 30 billions is the least of this issue.

[Gaidax]

France is pissed, because their friends, whom they are allies in war with, blindsided them on a deal. The 30 billions is the least of this issue.

Haha "friends"... no 30bn is THE issue and the whole posturing is so they can claw out some compensation out of it.

Like lets be real there.

[Crispin]

Haha "friends"... no 30bn is THE issue and the whole posturing is so they can claw out some compensation out of it.

Like lets be real there.

You really think this is because of 30bn dollars? The compensation will be sought by other means, other than pulling their Ambassedor from the US. If only international politics was as simple as you seem to think.

[Gaidax]

You really think this is because of 30bn dollars? The compensation will be sought by other means, other than pulling their Ambassedor from the US. If only international politics was as simple as you seem to think.

Sometimes it's that simple. It's a combination of lost $$, lost jobs and Macron getting the boot soon (-er now). So he and his team do some posturing there to try to appear more assertive than they really are and somehow salvage this big upset.

Ambassador will be back before long and US will toss them some bone there, but the deal happens and France will suck it up.

[Draco-Onis]

F35 is an excellent plane, we operate it successfully. Pricey but worth the $$.

Other than that, I'd be careful taking overly one-sided stance. For all you may know, the call might have happened and maybe even much earlier than we think. It's just France lost $30 billions USD contract there, it's not an issue of call or not there. It's clear France wants some compensation there.

I highly suggest you look up the what the F-35 original contract and budget, it's a historical example of American defense contractors being godawful at their jobs. Maybe France is pissed about the money but it seems they wanted to be in the loop, I mean why would you give them that excuse when it was so easy to avoid.

The US confirmed they didn't keep them in the loop until after the deal was done but just before the announcement so not sure why we would lie about fucking up.

[zealo]

I highly suggest you look up the what the F-35 original contract and budget, it's a historical example of American defense contractors being godawful at their jobs. Maybe France is pissed about the money but it seems they wanted to be in the loop, I mean why would you give them that excuse when it was so easy to avoid.

The US confirmed they didn't keep them in the loop until after the deal was done but just before the announcement so not sure why we would lie about fucking up.

The money specifically is a piss in the ocean for France. That's just how media in anglosphere countries is trying to spin this that some are swallowing up, because of some bizarre unwillingness to engage with the actual reasons for why France is so pissed about these developments.

Alongside the general bungling of keeping France in the loop about the submarine contract, the core of the matter is more that France has strategic interests in operating in that region of the world, they have territorial possessions there and sizeable naval assets in the region, and were deliberately excluded from a new strategic partnership being drawn up, alongside countries in it hiding it from France until the ones in AUKUS were ready to announce it's existence, while they were viewing the contract that's being cancelled as a stepping stone in developing a security partnership in the region.

There's some wider implications being lost if it's pretended like the money is all France cared about.

[Shadowferal]

Hmf... Need to pay attention to the results of the Biden/Macron chat happening later. Some of Macron's outrage is genuine...some.

[Crispin]

Sometimes it's that simple. It's a combination of lost $$, lost jobs and Macron getting the boot soon (-er now). So he and his team do some posturing there to try to appear more assertive than they really are and somehow salvage this big upset.

Ambassador will be back before long and US will toss them some bone there, but the deal happens and France will suck it up.

It's far from that simple.

https://formiche.net/2021/09/aukus-macron-biden-seul/

This source is in Italian, here's a translation

After Aukus, the French ambassador to South Korea anticipates Macron's counter-move: tripping Joe Biden with a military agreement with Seoul. The bar of confrontation is being raised. And Paris is ready to relaunch in Africa

The French ambassador to South Korea has made it clear that the French government is serious about sharing aircraft carrier and nuclear submarine technology with South Korea. This is the shockwave, a violent one, provoked by the Aukus agreement, i.e. the programmatic (strategic) understanding between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia that will lead Canberra to receive technology for nuclear submarines and to the establishment of an alliance that will become the backbone of the American presence in the Indo-Pacific - the geopolitical quadrant that Washington identifies as the primary basin for the global containment of China. The agreement sends a clear message: "America is back", as President Joe Biden says, just a few weeks after the disastrous Afghan withdrawal - in terms of international image, much less in terms of weight on US electoral consensus and according to strategic interests.

The declaration of the French felucca, during an hour-long press conference, comes at a time when the tripartite agreement that deprived Paris of a military order - the French were in agreement with the Australians precisely for a batch of submarines - has brought with it heavy diplomatic fallout. On Friday evening, France announced that it had recalled its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra for consultations. The withdrawal of ambassadors is a very unusual protest among allies and normally reserved states that have taken actions deemed hostile or unacceptable.

The French government is furious about the Aukus deal and is now trying to lure South Korea, a key US ally in the Pacific as much as (and perhaps more than) Australia.ì The French ambassador said France has a ready-made aircraft carrier and nuclear submarine technology such that South Korea may no longer have to rely on the US for certain military purchases.

While developments on the South Korean front are awaited, the confrontation remains open. At the end of August, President Emmanuel Macron himself was the protagonist of a similar dynamic. Speaking at the Baghdad Summit (the only Westerner present), he reassured the Iraqi Prime Minister that if the Americans decided to leave the country, France would still keep troops in Iraq to help the local armed forces in security and anti-terrorism operations.

Iraq could be "the next Afghanistan" and the French sought to mark their presence as an influence. In Baghdad, Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhimi is building a role as a dialogue actor in the region, and France does not want to be left behind.

In order to do so, it is reassuring him on the crucial security cooperation, and it is doing so by using the spaces created by the American withdrawal from the Middle East - connected to the need to concentrate on the Indo-Pacific (as witnessed by the dynamics of military orders between Israel and Saudi Arabia). Paris has been critical of the American decision on Afghanistan: too hasty, too little shared in terms of methodology and timing - to this are linked the vitriolic remarks of French diplomacy on the Americans' mistakes made to the media.

"Sharing" is also the key word behind the Aukus. EU foreign policy High Representative Josep Borrell stated that Europe had not been alerted to the ongoing agreement between Canberra and Washington (and London). A position similar to the one taken on Afghanistan, but without the rancour shown by the French government. France feels like a regional power in the Indo-Pacific, claiming a presence in the territories under the influence of the Elysée (the Overseas Territories such as Polynesia or New Caledonia). This is why it suffers from exclusion from the military pact in the Indo-Pacific. Thus it claims and relaunches the need to pursue a European strategic autonomy and raises the bar of confrontation (as the agreement with Seoul would demonstrate, if confirmed).

But the backlash can also be felt in other quadrants. In the last few days the French have made a political spin on the elimination of the leader of the Islamic State in the Great Sahara and used their air assets to assist the Haftaran forces of Cyrenaica against the Chadian rebels of the Fact: two missions that serve the narrative with which the Elysée Palace wants to portray itself as an alternative force (to the United States, China and Russia, and to the Europeans). Among other things, the objective is to do so in an area where France has already announced - without too much consultation with its previously involved allies - a reduction in the forces deployed.

Macron now wants to make Washington pay a cost in terms of image. It is a way for FrancIa to try to steal space within certain contexts. The criticism of the Aukus is a message to Brussels, the moves in the Sahel are a signal to Françafrique, the statements in Baghdad an input to our Middle Eastern friends (including Beirut and Abu Dhabi).

In the meantime, however, the central aim is to regain ground in order to be re-integrated into the Indo-Pacific strategy by the United States, which instead would like the Europeans to be more involved in the real quadrants of geopolitical proximity. Speaking at the Limes festival, Italian Defence Minister Lorenzo Guerini denied sending a tricolour frigate to the Indo-Pacific.

Italian assets, Guerini explained, are concentrated in the most sensitive areas of national interest: the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Guinea and anti-piracy in the Indian Ocean. The Indo-Pacific, he concluded, has nothing to do with "our strategic interests".

And another article regarding this

https://www.analisidifesa.it/2021/09...i-per-leuropa/

Translation

There are at least three elements of evaluation emerging from the crisis between France and the Anglo-Saxon powers that gave birth to the AUKUS alliance with the announcement of the Australian renunciation of the 12 French Barracuda-type submarines (conventional) provided for in the 2016 contract, to which nuclear-powered boats to be built with the Anglo-Americans have now been preferred.

The first concerns the strengthening of the strategic axis between the Anglo-Saxon powers evident in every corner of the world. In the Pacific, the AUKUS re-proposes the bloc of the Western powers that won the Second World War, which, enlarged to include India and Japan within the framework of QUAD, acts as a barrier to China's growing power.

This is a sign that adds up to those, by now very evident in the NATO sphere, of an Anglo-American-Canadian line that now presents itself as the Atlantic Alliance's driving force with regard to thorny issues such as the crisis with Russia and the military aid that the Anglo-Saxon powers provide to Ukraine, a non-NATO member state, fuelling tensions with Moscow.

Moreover, beyond the official declarations, many military personnel and several European governments have expressed their discontent with the way the Anglo-Saxon allies have managed the airlift from Kabul that ended their involvement in the Afghan conflict.

The second element, which remains partly unnoticed, is that France's surprise exclusion from the multi-billion dollar order for Australian submarines is a serious slap in the face for Paris and its role as a nuclear power, which is also well represented with troops and overseas territories in the Indian and Pacific oceans.

The Anglo-Saxon powers not only avoided involving France in the Indo-Pacific alliance, but used the surprise announcement of the birth of the AUKUS to brutally inform Paris that they were halting a military supply that was certainly not progressing in the best direction (but even the supply of British frigates to the Australian Navy is proceeding with significant delays and cost increases), but which should have been negotiated, discussed and announced using very different methods. Especially between allies, if that term still has any meaning today.

In fact, the three Anglo-Saxon powers have developed in secret, even from their Western allies (and in fact the exclusion of Canada from the agreement is costing Prime Minister Trudeau harsh criticism), the constitution of the AUKUS and the "torpedo" to French submarines: a programme that had long seemed doomed to failure due to the technical and financial difficulties involved in transforming a submarine designed for nuclear propulsion into a conventional one, the problems in making American combat systems and electronics compatible on French vessels, and the basic inadequacy of the Australian defence industry with respect to such ambitious programmes.

This inadequacy will be even more evident with the programme to build at least eight nuclear-powered submarines with technology supplied by Britain and the United States.

The humiliation that London, Canberra and Washington wanted to inflict on France explains the reaction of Paris (which we have recounted in detail) where there is even talk of questioning internal NATO relations.

With its harsh response, Paris proudly underlines its role as an independent power and responds without reverential fear to those who threaten its national and industrial interests, and with arrogance and bad manners at that.

On the contrary, Paris is hitting back in the military procurement sector, "invading" a defence market that has always been almost exclusively American, such as that of South Korea, as reported by the website Formiche.net.

The French ambassador in Seoul said at a press conference that Paris intends to share the technology of aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered submarines with South Korea, technologies that would give Seoul greater strategic autonomy from the United States and balance the growing presence in the Pacific of vessels of this type from China, Russia, soon Australia and in the future also India and probably Japan.

The AUKUS has certainly opened up the race for nuclear attack submarines (SSN), whose strategic value is combined with a formidable financial business: a context in which all the powers that are competitive in terms of products and technologies will try to acquire market shares.

Finally, the proud French reaction against the Anglo-Saxon axis, well represented by the fiery declarations of Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian (pictured above), could perhaps shake up the European partners, who in recent weeks have been dusting off the "ever-green" theme of the so-called "European army".

The temptation to side with the Anglo-American axis, marginalising France, which can be perceived in several European nations including Italy, would not help the design of a Europe of Defence and would confirm the desire not to emancipate ourselves from the role of mere gregariousness.

Of course, France has always done everything in its power to hinder 'Made in Italy', especially in the defence sector, but they are certainly not the only ones to do so. It is worth remembering, to stay in Australia, that in the order for the new frigates, the tender was won in 2016 by the British Type 26 (pictured below), which only exists on paper and is already behind schedule, despite the fact that the Royal Australian Navy had expressed a preference for Fincantieri's Fremm.

As far as Europe is concerned, it is hard not to notice that the announcement of the constitution of the AUKUS came at the same time as the definition of the European Union's strategic commitment in the Indo-Pacific region where, in addition to economic and commercial cooperation with regional partners, the EU's High Representative Josep Borrell announced that the European Commission intends to "explore ways" for an "enhanced" deployment of naval forces by EU member states.

The AUKUS affair thus seems to confirm how the Anglo-Saxon powers conceive of themselves as the sole strategic engine of the West, considering the European and NATO allies as useful gregarious, buyers of their defence products, but to be kept well away from the centres and decision-making processes as well as from the largest military contracts that have obvious industrial and geopolitical repercussions.

This is a bitter reality that it is right to criticise without deluding ourselves that we can change it, and which Europeans must now necessarily accept and digest, but which should then lead them to look beyond.

[Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang]

It's far from that simple.

https://formiche.net/2021/09/aukus-macron-biden-seul/

This source is in Italian, here's a translation



And another article regarding this

https://www.analisidifesa.it/2021/09...i-per-leuropa/

Translation

Thanks for sharing. Interesting how the French are quickly moving.

[Strear]

It's far from that simple.

https://formiche.net/2021/09/aukus-macron-biden-seul/

This source is in Italian, here's a translation



And another article regarding this

https://www.analisidifesa.it/2021/09...i-per-leuropa/

Translation

It was very interesting, thank you

[Fuiking]

French are now bullying the netherlands into buying there nuclear subs.. lol.. Netherlands always expressed a disinterest in using those... as they prefer smaller, brown water subs over larger nuclear subs. Hope they dont fold for French pressure.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

French are now bullying the netherlands into buying there nuclear subs.. lol.. Netherlands always expressed a disinterest in using those... as they prefer smaller, brown water subs over larger nuclear subs. Hope they dont fold for French pressure.

Got to have someone to drag along and pretend like your building subs for them while charging them an arm and a leg.

[Kotuthan]

I read a interesting German Opinion Piece on the Nuclear Submarine deal today.

Original
https://www.welt.de/debatte/kommenta...hina-Coup.html

Translation
https://translate.google.com/transla...hina-Coup.html

The Author believes the sudden American withdraw from Afghanistan without giving enough warning to European Nations and the takeover of the Submarine deal is a act of retaliation after the French and Germans used the Americans Military Power to their advantage, while at the same time advancing the Economic Power of the Americans rivals.

[PC2]

I read a interesting German Opinion Piece on the Nuclear Submarine deal today.

Original
https://www.welt.de/debatte/kommenta...hina-Coup.html

Translation
https://translate.google.com/transla...hina-Coup.html

The Author believes the sudden American withdraw from Afghanistan without giving enough warning to European Nations and the takeover of the Submarine deal is a act of retaliation after the French and Germans used the Americans Military Power to their advantage, while at the same time advancing the Economic Power of the Americans rivals.

There might be some good logic there but claims of that nature are so speculative that you could never actually rely on it to make any important decisions, impo.

[Elegiac]

Speaking of opinion pieces, former Prime Minister Paul Keating authored a fairly pointed criticism of both the Morrison government for antagonizing China without sufficient reason as well as shackling Australian foreign interests to that of not one but two declining empires. Said criticism also extended to the Labor Party for failing to present themselves as a viable opposition party.

Morrison is making an enemy of China, and Labor is helping him.

The Liberals, having no faith in the capacity of Australians and all we have created here, could not resist falling back, yet again, to do the bidding of another great power, the United States of America.

Menzies, even after World War II, did Britain’s bidding against the international community in attempting to wrest the Suez Canal from Egypt just as he deceptively committed Australian troops to Vietnam to appease the United States. Howard, another US appeaser extraordinaire, committed us to an illegal war in Iraq with tragic consequences. And now, Morrison, a younger throwback to the Liberals’ Anglosphere, shops Australia’s sovereignty by locking the country and its military forces into the force structure of the United States by acquiring US submarines.

And all in the claim of a so-called “changed security environment”. That change is China’s more aggressive international posture – the posture of now, the world’s largest emerging economy. This change in China’s domestic and foreign posture is labelled by Morrison and his government not as the shifting posture of a re-emerging great power, but as “the China threat”. As though China, through its more abrupt and ruder foreign policy, has also presented a military threat in its dealings with Australia.

A threat that, in fact, has never been made and that has never materialised. The word “threat” explicitly connotes military aggression or invasion, a threat China has never made against Australia or even implied making. Chinese tariffs on wine or seafood do not constitute a military threat any more than does China’s intolerance of Hong Kong domestic political management. Hong Kong and its affairs do not and cannot be represented as some military threat to Australia – an event that requires from us consideration of a military response. Even Chinese island-pumping in the South China Sea does not represent a military threat to Australia, unwise on China’s part, as I believe it to be. But this is the construction Scott Morrison and his government have placed on China and its relationship with Australia. It is a “threat”, implying by use of the word, that it is a military one.

This false representation of China’s foreign policy has also been condoned by the Labor Party, if not explicitly. In her five years as Labor’s opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman, Penny Wong, by her muted complicity with the government’s foreign policy and posture, has neutered Labor’s traditional stance as to Australia’s right to strategic autonomy – an autonomy unconstrained by any power, including, that of the United States.

Instead, Wong went along with the stance of Julie Bishop and Marise Payne – calculatedly, with not a cigarette paper of difference between her and them. And did it with licence provided by Bill Shorten as leader and, now, Anthony Albanese.

Now that long policy void is being exploited by Scott Morrison. At Morrison’s instigation, Australia turns its back on the 21st century, the century of Asia, for the jaded and faded Anglosphere – the domain of the Atlantic – a world away.

--

The notion that Australia is in a state of military apprehension about China, or needs to be, is a distortion and lie of the worst and most grievous proportions. By its propagation, Australia is determinedly casting China as an enemy – and in the doing of it, actually creating an enemy where none exists.

So poisonous are the Liberals towards China they are prepared for Australia to lose its way in the neighbourhood of Asia, in search of Australia’s security from Asia, by submission to yet another strategic guarantor – 240 years into our history.

This strategy amounts to a massive bet on the United States and its staying power in Asia. Rather than Australia finding its own way around the region, including with China, as we have done so well in the past, Morrison and Labor have tied us to the unknown endurance of the United States and the pain it is prepared to wear in defence of what it believes are its core Asian interests.

[PC2]

Speaking of opinion pieces, former Prime Minister Paul Keating authored a fairly pointed criticism of both the Morrison government for antagonizing China without sufficient reason as well as shackling Australian foreign interests to that of not one but two declining empires. Said criticism also extended to the Labor Party for failing to present themselves as a viable opposition party.

[url=https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/morrison-is-making-an-enemy-of-china-and-labor-is-helping-him-20210921-p58tek.html]Morrison is making an enemy of China, and Labor is helping him.[url]

For that article with the German author I think you should only view it as a potential explanation and not an opinion. It's a fact that US leaders were either (secretly) retaliating or they were not because it was just a matter of various circumstances. One of those possibilities is factual and you can't have an opinion on a factual issue in the same way you can't have an opinion about whether the Earth orbited the sun in the last year. If there's more than one explanation then somebody is factually wrong and can't have an opinion on that kind of issue.

[Corvus]

Paul Keating had (not sure if he still does) business interests with China so there is that to take into account as well

[Elegiac]

For that article with the German author

Paul Keating isn't German, he was Prime Minister of Australia from 1991 to '96.

I think you should only view it as a potential explanation and not an opinion. It's a fact that US leaders were either (secretly) retaliating or they were not because it was just a matter of various circumstances. One of those possibilities is factual and you can't have an opinion on a factual issue in the same way you can't have an opinion about whether the Earth orbited the sun in the last year. If there's more than one explanation then somebody is factually wrong and doesn't have an opinion.

This is just gibberish.

Apropos of nothing, have you ever heard the saying "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt"?

[PC2]

Paul Keating isn't German, he was Prime Minister of Australia from 1991 to '96.

Oh, I thought the author's name was "Claus" for some reason but thanks for clarifying.

This is just gibberish.

If you can't say anything about about the topic then it means you don't have a count-argument and you're just holding on to your prior belief for some irrational reason.