NOURNEWS - The leaders of the United States, Britain and Australia signed a diplomatic, security and military co-operation agreement last Thursday across the Indo-Pacific region known as AUKUS, effectively removing France from the balance of power in the region.
This tripartite agreement, regardless of the political and strategic implications for the new power-building in the international system, which is clearly aimed at curbing China, dealt a severe economic blow to the fragile body of the French economy, to the point that the Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian referred to it as a "dagger from behind."
Under the agreement, a number of US-made nuclear-powered submarines are to be sold to Australia, leading to the cancellation of a previous contract to build and sell the submarine from Paris to Canberra.
In 2016, France signed a contract worth approximately 56 billion euros with Australia to design and build 12 huge diesel-powered submarines in that country within a few years.
An important and worrying point in this agreement for countries such as China and Russia is the complete hiding of nuclear submarines compared to diesel submarines, which can even be hidden for months, without the need for repeated refueling, move deep into the water and secretly carry out their missions.
In addition to France's sharp response, which prompted Paris to recall its ambassadors from Canberra and Washington and cancel its defense talks with Britain, the AUKUS deal also provoked a backlash from China, Russia and the European Union.
The Chinese embassy in the United States stated that such actions should not "target and harm the interests of third countries." Russia's representative to international organizations also called the sale of US nuclear submarines to Australia a "very bad example" for non-nuclear countries.
The president of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in an interview with CNN on Monday, called the treatment of France "unacceptable" and said: "One of the EU member states has been treated in an unacceptable way. We want to find out what happened and why it happened."
On the other hand; US President Joe Biden, called Paris a "key ally" with which the United States wants to "cooperate directly" in this area. The Prime Minister of Australia also stated that the reason for his country's action was not a "change of opinion" but a "change of need".
According to what has been said; Although some analysts see the AUKUS pact as reminiscent of the Cold War and a "five-eyed" security-intelligence pact called ECHELON, signed 75 years ago between the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, in addition to being anti-Chinese, but the story seems to be broader than the information that has been published so far.
The issue there is to show that France in the recent period, and especially after the decline of the personal power of "Angela Merkel" and the Germans on the Green Continent, is trying to be the banner of European political independence and maintain accurate and complete borders with the United States, also did not support the United States in the Washington-Beijing dispute.
To describe precisely; If Trump's full support for the election has long led everyone to believe that the US strategy towards Europe has shifted from a strong strategic partner in a multilateral approach to a weakly fragmented actor in a unilateralist approach, today France is not going to Against the will of the White House, the dream of a united Europe continues to be nurtured in the new blockade of power in the international system, with an effective position alongside London and Washington.
In fact, Europe's extreme weakness in front of the United States over the years, which had virtually no will of its own, has practically reached the point where today the White House, in the interests of Europe, is recruiting like-minded members of the new international order.
The United States, with its recent $ 56 billion strikes on France in the case of submarines, has shown some determination to implement its new strategy, as it did earlier with the $ 5.5 billion sale of US F-35A Lightning-2 fighter jets of Lockheed Martin to Switzerland had blocked a deal between Bern and Paris to sell the products of the French company Dassault to that country.
The turmoil in Europe over the years has been a clear example of the fate of the UN Security Council and other international treaties, as well as their humiliating expulsion from the West Asian region following the US decision.
France, meanwhile, has tried to somehow regain its position and regain its status by being active in international affairs, but if it shows the inability of "Emmanuel Macron" in the Lebanese project, it is unlikely to be able to do so. Macron's presence at a recent meeting in Baghdad at the invitation of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi is being assessed in this light.
The point is that; The French, who even along with the United States no longer had the ability to play an effective role in foreign affairs, especially in West Asia, naturally do not have enough power to play such a role alone, and as many French politicians and experts critical of Macron have repeatedly warned, it would be better, It is more concerned with solving internal economic and social problems.
Accordingly, it is necessary to warn the countries of the region that the promises of Paris have more of a propaganda and practical aspect for Macron than an operational and practical aspect, so they should not turn themselves into tools of countries with disabilities such as France.
BY: Pooya Mirzaei
NOURNEWS