What's with the Gallic ire?
France is hopping mad that the US, UK and Australia have announced a new three-way defence alliance. The subtext was obvious: Australia gets to share America’s highly sensitive nuclear submarine, something to which only Britain hitherto had access.
It’s an anti-China move but someone other than China is annoyed. France is hopping mad at the so-called AUKUS agreement. The ostensible reason is that Australia walked away from a deal it awarded to French bidders in 2016 to build a new fleet of diesel-powered submarines. France may yet try and recover the billions it has lost by Australia breaking the contract.
But there is a lot more to the Gallic ire. The French don’t like the way the three ‘Anglo’ powers allegedly sneaked around to set up a cliquey club of their own. “It’s a stab in the back,” France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told French radio. “We had established a trusting relationship with Australia, and this trust was betrayed.”
Mr Le Dr…
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