[HN Gopher] France Recalls Its Ambassadors to the U.S. and Austr...
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France Recalls Its Ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia over a
Submarine Deal
Author : rastafang
Score : 54 points
Date : 2021-09-17 21:50 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| pm90 wrote:
| This is getting pretty ridiculous. Almost like a child throwing a
| tantrum. How does France expect to be taken seriously if it acts
| like a petulant child?
| blibble wrote:
| France _always_ reacts like this
| Dobbs wrote:
| Well I mean Australia and the USA could not go behind Frances
| back to strike a deal which apparently causes Australia to back
| out of a deal it has with France?
| briane80 wrote:
| They are after all _French_
| aphroz wrote:
| The contracts were signed and it is perceived as a betrayal
| from the US which French thought were their allies. The
| ministry of defense of France called it a "stab in the back".
| trynumber9 wrote:
| It seems like a bit of an overreaction. Is shipbuilding that
| important to France?
| manacit wrote:
| That's part of it, but it's mostly a larger political play
| around France and Europe being less dependent on the USA as a
| partner around the world. France has been pushing on 'strategic
| autonomy' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_autonomy)
| for quite some time now, and this played right into their hands
| as an opportunity of the USA not being reliable.
|
| Whether or not it's true, or if this will work, will take a lot
| more time to figure out.
| elefanten wrote:
| Also genuinely curious. With no judgment, I want to understand
| the French perspective here.
|
| And can anyone weigh in on whether these deals getting scuttled
| is so rare. Esp for advanced military equipment, I'd think that
| it's quite common.
| conradfr wrote:
| EUR50B over 50 years, dubbed "the contract of the century".
| chrisseaton wrote:
| The French were messing up the contract all on their own.
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-20/australia-attack-
| clas...
| allemagne wrote:
| It's always about domestic politics. Macron doesn't want to
| look weak in the leadup to the 2022 election, and it's not hard
| to see why France would be upset here.
| ekabod wrote:
| When Merkel decided to welcome one million refugees on german
| soil, it was about domestic politics?
| skissane wrote:
| It isn't just that Australia cancelled the deal and made a new
| one with someone else. It is they kept their plans secret from
| France instead of letting them know about it and giving them a
| chance to make a counter-offer or save some face.
|
| France has nuclear submarines too, so maybe France could still
| have played some role? Maybe AUKUS could have been AFUKUS? They
| didn't allow France into the negotiation room, and they told
| France "everything is fine, we are sticking with your
| submarines" even while secretly negotiating with the US and UK.
|
| I think being excluded and lied to upsets Macron far more than
| the submarines themselves do.
| xyk2 wrote:
| Is it just me or are there more off-topic political posts on HN
| lately?
| cryptoz wrote:
| This isn't off-topic for HN. We've always had 1) submarine
| posts (aha, I mean both meanings here haha), 2) military
| strategy posts, 3) $40B deal-falling-apart posts, and even 4)
| war escalation posts. There's even a prized technical angle
| about the development of high-tech nuclear submarines.
|
| On-topic.
| RobRivera wrote:
| geopolitical topics != politics
|
| impact of nation-state relations have a very real impact on the
| world commerce
| math wrote:
| Disturbing observation: 5 years ago, the trends that seemed
| most important to me were all technical - I really paid no
| attention to politics. Today, they are mostly geo-political.
| dougmwne wrote:
| It seems that the user base here has been deteriorating and the
| focus has been drifting away from the SV startup scene. I've
| also been noticing a growing political atmosphere that is in
| opposition to SV norms. A sign of the times probably, but I
| also suspect that HN's usefulness to Ycombinator is fading.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Massive technical military contracts seems extremely SV to
| me? Isn't that where it all started?
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| Presumably "SV norms" here refers to the expectation that
| one does not ever explicitly acknowledge this element in
| Silicon Valley's history, lest it undermine the "plucky
| dudes in a garage" mystique.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into
| Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Zababa wrote:
| > I've also been noticing a growing political atmosphere that
| is in opposition to SV norms
|
| Genuinly curious, what are "SV norms"? I think most of the
| people here don't come from SV, and I think this has been the
| case for a large part of HN existance, but I have nothing to
| prove it.
| Dobbs wrote:
| Totally agree, if you want proof of the paradox of tolerance
| look around HN. In the sake of being tolerant to
| misogynistic, homophobic, racist, and transphobic posts and
| comments it has chased away many people leaving more and more
| the ugliness behind.
|
| Most women, and trans people I know despise and avoid the
| site at this point. All you have to do is look at the
| comments any time something even tangentially related to
| women's experiences in tech or when tech impacts women to see
| it.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Politics is a human system. Systems analysis and nudging
| systems is of interest to hackers, no?
|
| Humans are the infrastructure on top of which technology runs.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Hey now, lots of startup hackers are interested in geopolitics
| jonshariat wrote:
| No downvote on posts, I wish this were implemented but I also
| know the implications are many
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| You can flag posts, even if you can't downvote them.
| Zababa wrote:
| I think the COVID slowed down the open source development
| scene. For example, we didn't see many JavaScript frameworks
| these last two years.
| olalonde wrote:
| This trend started years ago. My opinion is that politics
| should be off topic on HN but the "everything is political"
| crowd doesn't seem to agree.
| VictorPath wrote:
| I've been busy today, didn't see if the daily yellow peril
| story hit the front page (China's about to invade Taiwan, China
| should respect British sovereignty in Hong Kong, China should
| treat Uighur terrorists nice like the US did in Afghanistan
| etc.)
| rmk wrote:
| It looks like the vaunted experience of Biden and his team has
| _not_ translated into any sort of deft policymaking, particularly
| in foreign policy. The messy pullout out of Afghanistan, followed
| by this scuttling of the deal in progress between Australia and
| France have reinforced the notion that Uncle Sam _can not_ be
| relied upon, even by his closest allies. Pretty surefire way of
| helping fence-sitters become client states of China.
| torstenvl wrote:
| Derna forever!
| rmk wrote:
| Huh? What does this mean?
| Dobbs wrote:
| You do know the messy pull out of Afghanistan was a peace deal
| agreed to by prior governments (without the consent of the
| Aphgani government no less) could they have done better,
| absolutely but the way you are framing it is hardly unbiased.
|
| As for countries deciding to not rely upon America, that has
| long been a desire, but the previous administration drove it
| home like a stake through the heart. Having lived outside of
| the US for most of the last five years I can't fully express
| how far the US has fallen in the eyes of the world, and just
| how much of a joke we are these days.
| tmilard wrote:
| Because I am french I will not say anything too dark.
|
| But yes, this SUB contract was big. Giant.And Naval Group is
| partially a state company.
|
| The Worth for french community is this : 1) French just hatted
| Trump. Deeply. His sense of hatting his allies ( Germany...)
| and loving his foes ( North Corea, ect).
|
| 2) As opposed, French loved Biden. More rounded, multi
| cultural, more social like in Europe. I would say french people
| felt Biden was a friend.
|
| So With this SUB commercial stab in the back, the feeling of a
| friend that betrays us french is palpable.
|
| It feels as if Biden just behaved like Trump.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| If they think the US is bad seems like an even worse idea to go
| buddy up with China imo. You know, the country on a more
| egregious economic imperialism kick for the last 15-25 years.
| tkojames wrote:
| It is super laughable because the nuclear powered version that
| they are building for themselves was a fixed bid contract for
| something like 10 billion for 8 subs.. and the Australian
| contract keeps going up and up something like 35 billion for ten
| subs. The diesel sub for Australia is based on the nuclear sub
| that they signed the fixed bid contract for. Anybody with half
| brain can tell they are making up the lost of fixed bid contract
| by charging the Australia more.. and then they act surprised when
| Australia pulls out when they can get nuclear subs for cheaper.
| When nuclear subs usually cost 2.5* the cost. These people do
| great reporting on all of this. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-
| zone
| mahkeiro wrote:
| French contract took 4 years to be negotiated, the US one less
| than 6 months, in total secret with no public check... expect
| big surprises at the end, US weapons program are not known to
| never overrun their costs
| tkojames wrote:
| For sure all that is right as well. But if I was in the
| Australian shoes this is just to good of deal from US and UK
| to turn down.
| gdy wrote:
| I wonder what French think now about their cancelling of the
| Mistral deal with Russia [0] under American pressure [1].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistral-
| class_amphibious_assau...
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-russia-mistral-
| idU...
| ldargin wrote:
| There's no question that nuclear subs are more appropriate for
| Australia, especially against a sophisticated opponent like
| China. Hopefully USA and Australia can compensate France in some
| way to maintain their prestige.
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(page generated 2021-09-17 23:00 UTC)