United States, United Kingdom and Australia announce security partnership and provoke reaction from France and China

The United States, United Kingdom and Australia announced on Wednesday the creation of a new trilateral security association, and the initiative led to a complaint from France and China, which strained diplomatic relations between these countries.

United States President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, formalized the announcement of the agreement during a virtual meeting.

In a joint statement, the three governments affirmed that the partnership, dubbed “AUKUS”, will contribute to “considerably deepen cooperation in the fields of security and defense capabilities”.

However, the first initiative of the AUKUS agreement has already provoked a diplomatic incident. As part of the deal, Australia will receive a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.

The news was not well received in Paris, where Chancellor Jean-Yves Le Drian denounced on Thursday that President Biden’s announcement of an alliance with Australia meant breaking a major contract to sell sub- French sailors. And even the French minister compared the methodology of the Democratic government to the way Donald Trump acted.

“This decision one-sided, brutal, unpredictableIt’s very similar to what President Trump was doing, “said Le Drian, who insisted that” this is not done between allies “and will have consequences.

The anger of the French government was generated because of the agreement with the United States and the United Kingdom, Australia canceled a contract of around 56,000 million euros for the sale of nuclear submarines.

The head of French diplomacy said that “it is a blow in the back” of Australia which “betrayed” the “relationship of trust” which had been established between the two countries.

“This is not done between allies”, he stressed before warning that the Australians will have to specify how they intend to break the contracts which were the result of talks started in 2014 and which had set in 2019 the conditions and deadlines Delivery. of the first submarine in 2023.

In a joint declaration, the Chancellor and the Minister of Defense Florence Parly; they considered that the American commitment in this alliance “led to the dismissal of an ally and a European partner like France”.

According to the Australian government, its intention is to build the submarines in Adelaide, a coastal city in the south of the country, in cooperation with the United Kingdom and the United States.

“Australia is not seeking to acquire nuclear weapons or to establish a civilian nuclear capability,” he said, pledging to fulfill all of its nuclear non-proliferation obligations.

For his part, the British Minister of Defense, Ben Wallace, clarified on Thursday that the United Kingdom does not intend to arouse antagonism from France with the signing of this defense pact.

According to Biden and Johnson, the nuclear-powered submarines Australia wants to acquire are conventionally armed, and their countries will also be in full compliance with their non-proliferation obligations.

To all of this, China has defined the sale “extremely irresponsible” US nuclear submarines to Australia, as part of this new alliance in which the United Kingdom is also present.

“Cooperation between the United States, Great Britain and Australia on nuclear submarines seriously compromises regional peace and stability, intensifies the arms race and undermines international nuclear non-proliferation efforts, ”Chinese diplomatic spokesman Zhao Lijian said.

Faced with this statement, the Australian Prime Minister clarified that Chinese President Xi Jinping had an “open invitation” to discuss the new defense pact between Canberra, Washington and London.

Referring to the agreement he called an “eternal relationship”, Morrison explained that he hopes to share with Xi the common will to see an Indo-Pacific region that lives in peace and where the “sovereignty and independence of nations” are respected.

For her part, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that future nuclear submarines they will be banned in your country under the denuclearization laws of the 1980s which prevent the deployment, testing and storage of nuclear waste, as well as the scaling up of nuclear powered ships in your territory.

But this pact, which would give Canberra a more important role in the region in a context of geostrategic pulsation between Washington and Beijing in an area that stretches between the west coast of Africa and the eastern Pacific, may also further deteriorate tensions. diplomatic, political and political. trade relations between China and Australia.

With agency information

GRB