No one does pique quite like the French. And this great nation — or rather its government — has thrown a monumental fit of pique over the Australian government's decision to scrap its $90 billion agreement to buy French diesel-powered submarines, and instead order nuclear-fuelled ones in a deal with the U.S. and the UK.
This was announced last Thursday in an unprecedented three-way presentation by President Biden, Boris Johnson and the Aussie PM Scott Morrison: they declared it to be the foundation of a new defence pact, AUKUS (against an unspecified threat, but obviously China).
Not only was Paris completely blindsided by this démarche, which was set up by the three leaders' teams at the G7 summit in Cornwall, even as President Macron was pictured walking arm in arm with his supposed new best friend Joe Biden: this Anglo-American torpedoing of France's Pacific alliance with the Aussies came on the eve of a gala dinner in Washington at the French Embassy to celebrate the 240th anniversary of the Battle of the Chesapeake.
A new defence pact was revealed by Boris Johnson, Scott Morrison and Joe Biden (pictured) this week in an unprecedented announcement which blindsided the French Government
The new defence pact was set up by the three leaders' teams at the G7 summit in Cornwall, even as President Macron was photographed walking arm in arm with Joe Biden (pictured)
Humiliation
This was the naval engagement of September 1781 in which the French fleet's victory over the British prevented the reinforcement of the besieged forces of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, leading directly to the triumph of the rebels — and American independence.
King George III was not happy: 'After the knowledge of the defeat of our fleet, I nearly think the empire ruined.'
Even the Anglophile President Trump referred to this when he held a press conference in Paris with Macron in 2017: 'France is America's first and oldest ally, ever since General Lafayette joined the American fight for independence.'
Doubtless France anticipated more along those lines at its embassy in Washington, at which the head of its navy was among the French dignitaries expected to drink toasts with their U.S. opposite numbers.
No wonder Paris abruptly cancelled last Friday's gala dinner — and followed up by withdrawing its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra.
They did not withdraw their ambassador from London, ostensibly because we were too insignificant in this matter (Britain was the 'fifth wheel on the wagon', sneered the French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian).
Pictured: US President Joe Biden and France's President Emmanuel Macron shake hands as they attend a bilateral meeting during the G7 summit in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, in June 2021
The AUKUS new pact will be a boost to companies who are most likely to provide much of the technology, based on the Astute class of British nuclear-powered submarines (pictured)
I think London can cope with that cattiness, especially as Australia's switcheroo — as bamboozling to Paris as a Shane Warne googly — is a boost to such companies as BAE and Rolls-Royce, in pole position to provide much of the technology, based on the Astute class of British nuclear-powered submarines.
Besides, the humiliation is not ours. It is, though, not just France's, but also that of all those who said that the vision of 'Global Britain', as a fully independent state post-Brexit, was fantasy.
Lord (Peter) Ricketts, the ferociously anti-Brexit former British ambassador to Paris, who recently wrote an article for the New Statesman describing Boris Johnson's 'Global Britain' mantra as 'delusions of grandeur', admitted that the AUKUS deal was 'a godsend' for the Prime Minister.
No such concession is likely from the French EU commissioner Thierry Breton, who a few months ago said Brexit had been 'supposed to boost Britain's global standing. What we see is pretty much the opposite.'
Admittedly, the UK could have done this deal while still a member of the EU. Whether it would have done is another matter.
As the French newspaper Le Monde observed: 'French frustration is all the greater as the UK is doing well. Since Brexit, Paris tended to consider the British ambitions with regard to the Indo-Pacific basin to be illusory. AUKUS puts
