Submarine crisis: can France get angry with the United States? – LCI

Canberra’s decision to cancel the € 56 billion purchase contract for the supply to Australia of 12 diesel-electric powered submarines for the benefit of US nuclear powered submarines prompted the indignation of Paris. French President Emmanuel Macron recalled his ambassadors to the United States and Australia on Friday. If he stayed behind, he let his anger express itself through the voice of his Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs. “There was a lie, there was duplicity, there was a major breach of trust. There was contempt, so it’s not right between us ”, said Jean-Yves Le Drian. What to ask questions about the future.

NO. In the Sahel, for example, American drones constantly fly over the desert. A few days ago, the elimination of the jihadist leader Al-Sahrawi in Mali would not have been possible without American surveillance.“We need American logistics, we need part of American transport”, estimates the geopolitologist Frédéric Encel. “The Americans also deliver kerogen to France. All this is not negligible. It is obvious that in that region, without American logistics, things would be much more complicated ”.

YES. Because, in the UN Security Council, France is one of the five permanent members alongside the United States. There is of course NATO which still defends the borders of Eastern Europe. A presence intended to calm Russian and Belarusian appetites. Another key area is the Pacific. With its two million inhabitants and its seven thousand soldiers there, France is the only European country present in the area. “France is patrolling these territorial waters. It is part of the device to contain the Chinese advance in international waters ”, explains Nicole Bacharan, Franco-American political scientist.

A show of force in Polynesia took place last June. Paris managed to send three Rafales to Tahiti in less than 40 hours. France may no longer be a great power, but it does not give up its global ambitions for all that. And the United States cannot do without it altogether.