Dominic Green Dominic Green

Biden is losing Nato

America's scorn towards France will backfire

The forming of the Australia-UK-US (Aukus) military alliance in the Pacific shows how everything Trump can say, Biden can do. The problem is, Biden isn’t doing it very well.

Biden’s administration, like Trump’s, is committed to building its Pacific alliances while sustaining Nato. Yet on Australia as in Afghanistan, the Biden team are doing exactly what they accused Trump of: unpicking the frayed bonds of Nato without a clear idea of what might replace it.

The government has three tasks: to keep American workers at work, win contracts for American exports, and secure America’s interests overseas. Two cheers for Biden for getting the Trump memo on the first two points. But the Aukus deal is deaf to the third point, which is likely to harm America’s foreign interests.

When Tahiti goes nuclear, we can expect that French companies will win the contracts

Emanuel Macron has responded to Australia swapping French-made diesel submarines for American-made nuclear subs by treating the US like an enemy. The French ambassador to Washington has been ‘withdrawn for consultations’. The French foreign minister has accused the US of a ‘stab in the back’.

The French have a word for it: pique. Emanuel Macron is piqued as hell. Fair enough: France and Australia made a $90-billion deal in 2016. Then again, Naval Group, the French signatory, had fallen behind and costs had overrun. All is fair in the business of war.

Macron’s reaction suggests that the Australians were right to cancel their contract for French subs. For it confirms that France is as France does, which means that France is impelled to fall out with les Anglo-Saxons now and then. It’s not just pique or honour. It’s history and geography, two subjects which are out of favour in our digital world, but which remain at the heart of world affairs.

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