The French Won’t Forget Being Snubbed Over Submarines
Australia, the U.S., and the U.K. cooked up a new security pact and served it to France cold.
French President Emmanuel Macron with former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and other Australian officials on the submarine HMAS Waller in Sydney on May 2, 2018.
Photographer: Brendan Esposito/Getty Images
The way the French tell it, they never saw it coming. The first hint of the impending slight dropped on Sept. 15, when officials in Paris and the media got a whiff of the new security partnership on a late European afternoon.
The pact announced that day, known as Aukus, will see the U.K. and the U.S. share classified military capabilities with Australia to develop more nuclear-powered submarines in the Pacific. It’s a coup for the U.K., which has been on a quest to assert itself on the global stage after leaving the European Union.