Secret Talks and a Hidden Agenda: Behind the U.S. Defense Deal That France Called a ‘Betrayal’

In meeting after meeting with their French counterparts, U.S. officials gave no heads-up about their plans to upend France’s largest defense contract.

The United States and Australia went to extraordinary lengths to keep Paris in the dark as they secretly negotiated a plan to build nuclear submarines, scuttling France’s largest defense contract and so enraging President Emmanuel Macron that on Friday he ordered the withdrawal of France’s ambassadors to both nations.

Mr. Macron’s decision was a stunning and unexpected escalation of the breach between Washington and Paris, on a day that the two countries had planned to celebrate an alliance that goes back to the defeat of Britain in the Revolutionary War.

… the Australians approached the new administration soon after President Biden’s inauguration and said they had concluded that they had to get out of a $60 billion agreement with France to supply them with a dozen attack submarines.The conventionally powered French subs, the Australians feared, would be obsolete by the time they were delivered. They expressed interest in seeking a fleet of quieter nuclear-powered submarines based on American and British designs that could patrol areas of the South China Sea with less risk of detection.

But it was unclear how they would terminate the agreement with France, which was already over budget and running behind schedule.

“They told us they would take care of dealing with the French,” one senior U.S. official said.

[Thus we see here a repeating facet of Biden incompetence. He gets the underlying substantive point right, but he does not follow through on implementation. He does not communicate. He leaves communication to subordinates, Blinken, Milley and Austin on Afghanistan, Walensky and Fauci on COVID-19, Australia here.]

…
“Military resources are finite. Doing more in one area means doing less in others.”-Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security

It also apparently means hiding negotiations from some of your closest allies.

By the time the Biden administration began engaging Australia and Britain seriously about its emerging strategy to counter China, a three-year-old contract worth $60 billion or more for a dozen submarines, to be constructed largely by the French, was already teetering, American officials said. The submarines were based on a propulsion technology that was so limited in range, and so easy for the Chinese to detect, that it would be obsolete by the time the first submarines were put in the water, perhaps as long as 15 years from now.

There was an obvious alternative: the kind of nuclear-powered submarines deployed by the Americans and the British. But American and Australian officials agreed that if the French caught wind of the fact that the plug was going to be pulled on one of the biggest defense contracts in their history, they almost certainly would try to sabotage the alternative plan, according to officials who were familiar with the discussions between Washington and Canberra.

[That could be justification for the secrecy but just throwing out “sabotage” without particulars is too facile. If Wash-Aus want that to float they better demonstrate its seaworthiness first.]

So they decided to keep the work to a very small group of officials, and made no mention of it to the French, even when Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken met their French counterparts in June.

Mr. Biden made no mention of the plans during a chummy chat with Mr. Macron at a summit meeting in June in Cornwall, where they sat in lawn chairs by the sea and talked about the future of the Atlantic alliance.

[Friends just don’t play friends like that.]

…

 According to French officials, Mr. Blinken also stayed silent on June 25 when his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, welcomed him back to Paris — where Mr. Blinken spent his high school years — and extolled the importance of the French submarine deal.

And as recently as Aug. 30, when the French and Australian defense and foreign ministers held their annual “consultation,” they issued a joint communiqué that said the two countries were committed to deepening cooperation in the defense industry and “underlined the importance of the Future Submarine program.”

[Argh. That’s awful.]

And as recently as Aug. 30, when the French and Australian defense and foreign ministers held their annual “consultation,” they issued a joint communiqué that said the two countries were committed to deepening cooperation in the defense industry and “underlined the importance of the Future Submarine program.”

[Ditto]

By that time, the Australians not only knew the program was dead, they had nearly sealed the agreement in principle with Washington and London.

American officials insist it was not their place to talk to the French about their business deal with Australia. But now, in light of the blowup, some officials say they regret they did not insist that the Australians level with the French about their intentions earlier.

[Not our place *eye roll*. We were party to the deal, were we not? Gimme a break.]