Opinion: The fall of the fragile third French method | Globalism

A long strategy that the French diplomacy patiently put in place in a region dear to its interests has retreated with it, since 2016, under the government of François Hollande. In 2018, standing atop a massive warship at the Garden Island military base in Sydney, then-new President Emmanuel Macron wanted to solemnly believe that “a new era of French engagement, in the name of military balance” in those waters, had finally begun.

Bigger than the bewilderment in withdrawing the Australian purchase was the sense of humiliation that reached the top of the French government, because of the way it was done: only on Wednesday morning (15), a few hours before the announcement made by Joe Biden at the White House, informed the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison Emmanuel Macron that Australia has replaced the French purchase with a more beneficial and comprehensive “package” where British and US technology transfers severely impact new submarines – no more than conventional, but nuclear propulsion – which will now be developed on national soil.

The humiliation is even greater given the months in which the agreement was made without France noticing. Two weeks earlier, on August 30, the Australian defense and foreign ministers were in Paris to discuss issues of mutual interest, and although this was not relevant to the meeting, they even included a sentence in the closing statement. From the submarine program. Senior members of the government unanimously felt “deceived”, “disloyal”, “diminished” and “out of the game”: Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian described the behavior of his partners as “brutal and unpredictable”. “Blow back, Donald Trump style,” he said.

One wonders if there is still any doubt that indifference and a lack of morality have been intertwined in American foreign policy no matter who presides over the United States of America, given China’s uncontrollable growth and its skilful movement to cut across the world’s geopolitical plate and especially in the sea that is flooding south of this vast country. Moreover, in the vast Asia-Pacific region, which includes two-thirds of the world’s population and generates 60% of the planet’s economy, China has implemented the “string of pearls” strategy, a vital route for the flow of Chinese imports and exports, where 14 military bases have already been deployed, and since January, It was guarded by the powerful Coast Guard, which was created by decree.

Tensions caused by the new alliance that It eventually prompted France to recall its ambassadors in the United States and Australia to Paris, we put into question the French so-called “third way,” the middle way option that is defended in the name of supposed political, economic and strategic independence in the service of nuclear deterrence and a European self-defense regime that fails to take off.

In a video conference on Wednesday, Joe Biden referred to the “shoulder-to-shoulder” coalition recall of the US, UK and Australia in Iraq, a war declared on the basis of false news of chemical weapons of destruction that France refused to undertake. on aboard of the plane. Interestingly, this was the last sign of rebellion by French diplomacy, in 2003: since then, in the name of the position of “loyal ally” in that period that turned into a secondary role on the international stage, France seems to have lost its role. muscle mass. He will have to get it back quickly, because if the foolishness and lack of morality in Paris really begins to be recognized as signs of the disintegration of American hegemony, then the Chinese newspapers already dare to call Biden a “street gang leader” and nothing seems worse and more threatening to humanity than nuclearization On the waters of the Indian and Pacific oceans.

Elizabeth Carvalho is a Paris correspondent for GloboNews and TV Globo