Today France is outraged. First, explicitly because Australia has broken a large contract to have a French company design their submarines and for that contract to be switched to a US-UK substitute. Secondly, sotto voce, because Emmanuel Macron’s Indo-Pacific strategy has been shaken by an Australian, American and British strategic agreement entitled Aukus, to which France has not been invited.
What are the facts of the matter? In 2016 Australia signed a contract with France to buy 12 conventional French-designed diesel-electric submarines for the Australian navy. The contract worth €35 billion was badged by the French as ‘the contract of the century’. In reality, only €8 billion was to go to the 60 per cent state-owned French company Naval Group. Most of the cost was to go on the build-in Australian shipyards to enable Australia to acquire technological skills for the future. A large tranche was to go to the American company Lockheed Martin for the defence systems.
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