Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

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> France has nuclear-powered submarines carrying nuclear ICBMs. Of course they can defend their islands.

Let's not pretend that France is going to go to nuclear war to over these territories.

> France has a permanent navy presence in the Pacific. They don't need to get an aircraft carrier there.

I mean so does the Philippines. The question is what are they going to do with it?

> Aircraft carriers are useless against a modern army anyway. It's all about submarines.

I'm not really sure that's true. And why would it be less true with better detection technology now than it would have been in World War II where aircraft carriers were what mattered?

A submarine will have to find the carrier fleet and evade defenses. No easy feat. Navies have been battling submarines for decades so it's not like it's some big secret weapon.

> That's the second economic block in the world. There is plenty they can do to piss off America if they want to.

I think this is wishful thinking. The US is far stronger than the EU is economically, and any sort of actions harms the EU too. So there isn't really much they can do.

> They could think it's in their best interest to be more concilient with China for example. That's how diplomacy works.

and that's why the US is going behind Frances back, creating and strengthening alliances with the Uk and Australia. The US has come to believe that the EU is more interested in playing both sides, which doesn't benefit the US.

> Russia is a nuclear power and one of the largest country on the planet, a country full of natural resources.

100%

> They are also quite close to China and an important link in the new silkroad which is an important part of China global strategy.

I wouldn't be so quick to toss Russia into China's lap. The silk road is mostly marketing. Some economic development but it's a ho-hum affair.

> You can't just dismiss Russia. It's foolish.

Sure I can. What exactly are they going to do? Bother Europe? It's not 1970 anymore. My point isn't that Russia doesn't have capabilities. My point is they don't really have much to do that they aren't already doing and most of it is targeted toward agitating Europe which, appears to not want the US's help with.

> Let's not pretend that France is going to go to nuclear war to over these territories.

Why wouldn't they? Nuclear retaliation is their whole defense doctrine. They probably won't need to because they maintain adequate diplomatic relationships with all of the different powers in the Pacific.

> I'm not really sure that's true. And why would it be less true with better detection technology now than it would have been in World War II where aircraft carriers were what mattered?

Carrier groups are too slow and carry too little protection to actually resist an attack from a military of an equivalent technological level nowadays. Anti-ballistic ship missiles and supersonic missiles fired from high altitude are a pain to detect and fly too fast to be reliably stopped. The US has been trying to develop counter-measures but their actual capabilities are unproved and they remain vulnerable to saturation. You will not be able to operate carriers close to China or Russia if they want them out of the picture.

> Sure I can. What exactly are they going to do?

Cripple your navy? Nuck you? Geopardize your economic blocus with China and provide them with the mineral they need? They could do all of these things.

Step out of your bubble. You don't understand the actual position of the USA in the modern world. You can't just dismiss countries. That's not how diplomacy works.

> Why wouldn't they? Nuclear retaliation is their whole defense doctrine. They probably won't need to because they maintain adequate diplomatic relationships with all of the different powers in the Pacific.

We’re at risk of losing any essence of what we were originally talking about. But I see no compelling reason that France would launch nuclear weapons for any reason other than a potential invasion of France or unless some other country launched nuclear weapons at it.

> Carrier groups are too slow and carry too little protection to actually resist an attack from a military of an equivalent technological level nowadays.

Not seeing any evidence of this whatsoever.

> Anti-ballistic ship missiles and supersonic missiles fired from high altitude are a pain to detect and fly too fast to be reliably stopped. The US has been trying to develop counter-measures but their actual capabilities are unproved and they remain vulnerable to saturation.

So nobody has a Navy then… and now the US just maintains the current advantages it has? And why develop hypersonic missiles (which the US has) and deploy them when your potential adversaries can’t stop cheaper cruise missiles either. Launched from, oh, idk, nuclear powered subs in the region that the US Navy also has and is increasing via allies such as Australia?

And not to mention, potential adversaries have to find US ships and overcome their defenses which, are pretty good though not perfect. Meanwhile those ships are probably out there doing things in places you don’t have reach to. If a war broke out with China, which is a country that is massively dependent on imports, you can just use your land based (Japan, Guam, Australia, etc.) and have the US Navy seize shipments coming to China. Now what? Transport resources from Central Asia to vulnerable factories and other facilities in the coast?

> You will not be able to operate carriers close to China or Russia if they want them out of the picture.

You’re assuming that it’s necessary to do so and that the US fleet is somehow just a passive recipient of attacks without countermeasures or the ability to initiate an offensive.

> Cripple your navy? Nuck you? Geopardize your economic blocus with China and provide them with the mineral they need? They could do all of these things.

Well jeez in that case the US can just nuke Russia! But we aren’t talking about unrealistic, world-ending scenarios. Russia can’t cripple the US Navy, won’t nuke it, and is already trading with China.

> Step out of your bubble. You don't understand the actual position of the USA in the modern world. You can't just dismiss countries. That's not how diplomacy works.

“Someone has a different opinion than me so they just live in a bubble”

c’mon.

> Let's not pretend that France is going to go to nuclear war to over these territories.

Who is going to conquer them?

And if someone tried, I think it is likely that other regional powers would help – Australia, New Zealand, the US – not for any great love of France, but rather because they'd see such a conquest as a threat to their own national security, so they'd want to help France out of self-interest.

Sure so that goes back to my point, why does the US exactly care about France in the region? France can’t stop China (which is who would conquer those islands if anyone) and the US would have to do it anyway. Oh and France is staying at arms length from both the US and China.

New Zealand is kind of eh too. They don’t contribute much to the alliance of the Anglosphere countries and have been (for their own export-oriented economic reasons) reluctant to anger China… an ally in the region? Sure. But it depends on how (from the perspective of the US) annoying they are. The whole “no nuclear on the island” thing basically forces the US to violate New Zealand sovereignty in the event of a war if they’re going to dock there at all. So what’s the US to do? New Zealand wants to have its cake and eat it too.

Again, not judging NZ or France here, just speaking to what I’m observing in the geopolitical sphere.

My point was that Australia/UK/US could have done this in a way which offended France less – invite them into the discussion, tell them that Australian wanted nuclear submarines, even tell them that the UK/US HEU-based submarines were more attractive than France's LEU-based ones – and offer them some consolation prizes such as engineering consulting, joint training and joint exercises, manufacturing of some parts. Maybe even officially bring France into AUKUS and make it AFUKUS.

Now, if they'd tried to do that, maybe it wouldn't have worked out – but it appears Australia/UK/US never tried, they did all of their negotiating completely behind closed doors, without telling France what they were doing, and then presented it to France as a fait accompli. If they tried to include France, and the discussions had broken down, France still would have taken it better than the current situation, where Australia/UK/US made no attempt to include them.

France is officially an important and long-standing formal ally to the US and the UK through NATO. Australia and France do not have a formal military alliance, but had been describing each other as "strategic partners". I think the way Australia/UK/US went about this has caused unnecessary damage to their relationship with France. They could had arrived at essentially the same outcome in a way which caused far less damage to that relationship. Viewed in that light, I don't think geopolitics is very relevant – whatever the value of France as an ally or partner, needlessly offending them is just stupid.

Your premise is that the US, UK, and Australia just went about this as though they didn’t know exactly how France would react and that what they did was stupid and unintentional, and that they believe that France or the EU are important strategic partners.

What I would say is that I question this premise. It’s not Trump. I don’t doubt for a second that this reaction is something of a surprise for the allies we’re discussing. So the question is why? I don’t think incompetence is a compelling answer given the current administration.

> Viewed in that light, I don't think geopolitics is very relevant – whatever the value of France as an ally or partner, needlessly offending them is just stupid.

Right. I think the US, UK, and Australia simply don’t value the EU as a partner against China. Or maybe there’s another explanation. It would take a lot of convincing that this is just ignorance or stupidity on behalf of three different countries. They either don’t care, or there is something else at play.

> I don’t think incompetence is a compelling answer given the current administration.

Really? I see the debacle of Afghanistan as evidence that all recent US administrations are perfectly capable of incompetence – whether Bush or Obama or Trump or Biden. And Iraq before that. No denying that Trump took incompetence to worrying new heights, but I don't think we should therefore dismiss the idea that the other three administrations have also demonstrated it, even though not to quite such an exuberant degree.

And having witnessed the lack of urgency with which the Australian federal government pursued the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, the idea that the Australian government might be incompetent, not just at fighting a pandemic, but also at managing international relations, does not seem implausible. Likewise, many Brits question the competence of the Johnson government – COVID vaccination rollout is one area in which they have done well, but in many other areas (including other aspects of COVID response) their competence is widely questioned.

France is actually the least upset at the UK, because they expect this kind of behaviour from them, especially under Boris Johnson – there is a reason why the phrase "perfidious Albion" is centuries old – but they expected better from Australia and the US.

In other words, everybody is incompetent except the country completely caught off guard in this situation?

Sorry I just don’t buy the incompetence argument.

What is going on here is geopolitical calculus. The US doesn’t care about France that much anymore. I think we all want to cling to the past, but the world is changing. Alliances come and go, things change. France and the EU have lost a lot of status with the US and I don’t think the US views them as willing partners in the US’s approach to contain China.

The world is changing, but not the US.

In what way is the world changing but the US isn't changing?

This deal was initiated during the trump administration.

The sub deal with Australia? I mean it's not like the U.S. had to do it and Biden and his diplomats didn't have to not tell France and just keep on with it lol...

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