Comment by skissane | Hacker News Reader

Comment by skissane | Hacker News Reader

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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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