Chronic. It was fashionable to joke, in Paris, in 2020 during the American presidential campaign, on a second term of Donald Trump: undoubtedly, it would be a good thing for Europe! Never, in fact, has an American president been so successful in uniting Europeans – against him. Trump, his America First and its rudeness were, ultimately, the best selling point of the concept of strategic autonomy pushed by France for the European Union.
It was Joe Biden, crowned with the image of a Social Democrat on his return, who won and the Europeans heaved a huge sigh of relief. Including the French, who, despite the joke, understood that a more fluid and open transatlantic relationship served everyone’s interests. They even imagined that greater European autonomy could accommodate the new White House team, so busy on two priority fronts: rebuilding the United States and standing up to China.
Eight months later, it’s a cold shower. France takes a monumental slap on the news that Washington, Canberra and London have negotiated for six months a new security alliance behind its back. This trilateral device, which responds to the sweet name of Aukus, has a double consequence for France: the breach of the 2016 contract, under the terms of which it was to supply 12 submarines to Australia, but above all its exclusion of one. common strategy in the Indo-Pacific, crucial theater of the Sino-American confrontation. Australia was an important fulcrum of French strategy; he escapes him. Canberra places itself firmly in the fold of the United States, which will provide it with eight nuclear-powered submarines. And the European partner chosen by Washington to complete this Aukus trio is none other than Great Britain, that is to say a non-EU partner.
Macron loses Biden
It is therefore not only France which is excluded from this realignment of alliances in the Indo-Pacific to face China, it is also the EU. This is why Paris, past the moment of astonishment at the announcement of the Aukus on September 16, sought to rally European support in the crisis that erupted with Washington. First of all because we are stronger together than alone; but also because, beyond the dispute over a bilateral contract, in which a German firm was also in competition with the French Naval Group, the Europeans have a common interest in defending their position in the realignment that the United States is operating in Asia.
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