For anyone still naive enough to think that the war in Afghanistan was to save a few peasant women from having to wear the burkha rather than to put a ring of steel around Chine I would let you know this. Biden has announced that the US and their pucky little lapdog, The UK, are to supply Australia with nuke subs. Fresh off their ignominious defeat in Afghanistan they are moving to a different tack. Keep the "3 eyes" on China and control the Pacific.
and an impending presidential election, where standing up to the Americans is always a good political move domestically.
Yes, it's not the actual loss of the contract so much that is bothering the French. It's more the way the US and Australia went about things, effectively lying to them and stringing them along, something that has left them taken aback.
That's the point that some people are missing, this isn't mostly about a poorly communicated contract termination from Australia. Its a new military alliance between allies that excludes the French.
The way I see it there are 2 likely outcomes:
I' sure the Argentinians would love them, as long as the French don't charge more than about 50 quid per sub.
While the lost of the sub contract will hurt the French, i sense the big issue is the exclusion from the new AUKUS security pact and more generally from any pacific security arrangement. France has been pushed aside as either 'not needed' or as' un-trustworthy'.
It is clear that there is genuine fury in Paris and while tempers will eventually cool, it is not clear how this might ever be repaired. Following on from the Afghanistan withdrawal mess, it indicates that Biden's foreign policy needs a reset.
Opinion piece in the SMH are pretty much a textbook example of "commentary in Australia".
There are separate but overlapping discussions to be had about (a) whether the decision to call off the French project and start again with a nuclear submarine project is the right choice for Australia, and (b) whether the decision has been well-executed. Most of the discussion in Australia so far is about question (a), but I think there's a growing sense that on question (b) the government's performance has been poor.
What I'm hearing is that the Aussies approached the UK about getting nuclear subs based on the UK's; the UK said the US would have to be involved so they were brought into the loop; the US said that the Aussies should talk to the French; the Aussies told the US that the French new the existing project wasn't working and would be read for the fact that it would be terminated; the Americans believed this; it turns out not to be true. The French are now spitting; the US are very ticked off about this — they have no reason to pick and unnecessary fight with the French — and they blame the Aussies.
Can you link anything to support this statement? The odd opinion piece in the SMH is not 'commentary in Australia'.
No one has of course offered an alternative.
Things escalating, maybe a new sausage war is on the horizon 😂😂😂
If they sold them to Argentina I think I might make a special pee in my undies.
The Sydney Morning Herald were definitely hugely critical :
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-s-foreign-policy-is-getting-clumsy-and-arrogant-20210918-p58ssr.html
We've all been there with plumbers, mechanics, building contractors. There is something satisfying about seeing them tell the french builders that their services are no longer required.
You can be sure they will pursue the de facto existence of one.
Commentary in Australia tends to agree with the opinion of France24. Morrison has acted beyond his office by not getting parliamentary ascent for many aspects of the announcement this week. I remain convinced American built or supplied as technology submarines will never operate with the RAN.
Have seen mention of contract and compensation a few times, according to the French Ambassador there was no contract:
And with 5 years of nothing to show for the order of now old tech, you can see why the Aussies moved on to something bigger and better.
Compensation will depend on the terms of the contract. The French seem to have been stuffing Australia around by prioritising work on their own subs rather than doing the work on the Australian ones. The program is years behind schedule and way over budget. 5 years since the contract signing and they haven't welded two pieces of steel together yet.
There is a bit of a history of European sub companies taking the piss with Australia. When the Collins boats were being built, the first bits were done by the designers Kokums in their Swedish ship yards. Some of the deep welds were found to be defective and had to be re-done by Australian welders. There were also significant shortcomings in the design that proved extremely costly to remedy and resulted in big delays and the final product did not perform as promised.
Australia has been having issues with non-performance by the French contractor as well as failure to deliver on things like subcontract work being given to French companies instead of Australian ones.
That said, I think Morrison is a national embarrasment. A third rate intellect and a political dog that should never have made it into the job. Howard even sacked him as tourism minister. His sucking up to the US is appalling, even by Australian standards. The whole thing has gotten far too expensive and I think they should buy subs off the shelf and stop pork barreling liberal seats. It's an absolute nonsense to talk about a necessity for independence and domestic capability on things that take a decade or more to build. They are happy to buy F35s off the shelf with no domestic capacity to make them.
The power and threat of the soviet Union was exaggerated, the power and threat posed by China is underestimated
China is not that far off as wealthy as the USA, the soviet Union was never close to America economically
The soviets should never have trusted their top secret caterpillar drive sub to a Scotsman to captain.
'Australian media coverage' ? Care to actually name what media outlets (plural) are reporting this.
The French, don't hold sway over the EU?
Riiiiight.
The French will get over it and they don't hold sway over the EU either. Forget their dramatics
Marko, the Aus-EU trade deal is a treaty. The French don't need to "hold sway" over the EU. All they need do is exercise their Veto at council.
I would disagree. Even Labour support this deal so it has cross-party support and in the main, both sets of media (News Corp/Fairfax) are supportive of this deal as a whole. Again, what's the alternative? Stick with diesel subs from the French? Some other deal, with who?
I cannot see a situation where this deal doesn't progress. As I mentioned, only once before in the US military history did they agree to share their secrets in Nuclear powered subs, which is one of the crown jewels of the US Military, that was with the UK back in the 1950s. I cannot see any situation that Australia turns that opportunity down.
The French will get over it and they don't hold sway over the EU either. Forget their dramatics.
I see you avoided the fact that I stated that the Han Chinese are engaged in active colonialism in Tibet and Xinjang.
But but but.... America seems to be the stock reply.
The Australian media coverage makes interesting reading.
Commentators characterise Scott Morisson as a flim flam man, a shallow operator lacking any strategy for this subject area and really for the Country as a whole. Former Government figures and trade experts are aghast that he has done this and possible imperiled a EU/Aus trade deal worth 500 billion dollars, which seeing how incandescent Macron is, is not beyond the bounds of possibility.
Long way to go in this yet.
They are years off actually being built, and there are other orders on the books from India and the Netherlands, so there aren't physical boats idle on a dock somewhere. Others may end up ordering the design, but the subs that the French were to build for Australia, in Australia, will just never be built. And that is going to cost Australia an eye watering amount of compensation.
Going cheap with a promo code
Australia going gung ho with Americas great reset, now being rewarded with nuclear subs.
Yep, like those life saving vaccines that were blocked from being sent to Papua New Guinea that Australia ordered for them.
So, politically its a nightmare, environmentally, it will be opposed massively because the navy yard they have want to handle nuclear reactors is in the middle of Adelaide and militarily it means they won't have nearly the coverage the 8 subs they cancelled would have provided and also New Zealand won't let them transit their waters.
Oh don't worry.....the Aussies have a plan to overcome that 'transiting' issue.
So those this mean there are a few french submarines now looking for new homes?
Macron not happy.
I find if you want some balance in the news from the US then watching channels in equal parts of CNN and fox and a dose of RT does the trick.
CNN will ignore anything Biden does wrong, and keep talking about Trumps failings, FOX will tell you everything Biden is doing is wrong and RT will subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) point out what a kip America is.
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