ANGELOS TZORTZINIS via Getty Images
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The “serious crisis” opened by Australia, with the cancellation of a 66 billion dollar contract for the purchase of French submarines in favor of US supplies, opens a “serious crisis” that “will affect the future of NATO”. The French Foreign Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, does not collect the olive branch brought from the United States, which expressed the “hope” of resolving the dispute next week, at the United Nations General Assembly. Indeed, interviewed by France 2, he uses very harsh tones and comes to define as “ex partners” the three newly signed countries of an anti-Chinese alliance, the so-called ‘Aukus’, of which Europe had been kept in the dark. For the third of them, Great Britain, vitriolic words are reserved.
Le Drian explains that he has recalled the ambassadors in Washington and Canberra but not the one in London as Johnson’s government is only “the spare wheel” of the new tripartite association and Paris is used to the “permanent opportunism” of the United Kingdom. Johnson’s promises of a “special friendship” between the United Kingdom thus turn out to be words to the wind for Paris.
“When we see the president of the United States together with the Australian prime minister announce a new agreement with Boris Johnson, the breach of trust is profound”, added the minister, “in a true alliance we talk to each other, we do not hide things, the other party is respected and this is the reason why this is a real crisis, a serious crisis, which NATO will have to take into account ”.
The method of US President Joe Biden “resembles that of President Trump, without the tweets.”
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