THE’“Incident” is closed: the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, on Friday, October 15 in Washington, displayed his desire to turn the page of the Franco-American crisis on the Aukus file, which had cooled relations between the United States and Brussels, welcoming enhanced transatlantic cooperation.
“We are not going to be masochistic and insist again and again on our problems, we must overcome them and look to the future”, he told reporters the day after his meeting with his American counterpart, Antony Blinken. “There was an incident, there were some misunderstandings, there was a lack of communication, all of this has already been said”, he noted. “It’s good, it’s over, let’s go ahead. Let’s start working together more closely ”, he added.
“Building a more balanced partnership”
In September, Josep Borrell expressed the “Solidarity” of the European Union with regard to France in the unprecedented crisis that opposed it to the United States. In question, the announcement by the American president, Joe Biden, of a new alliance in the Indo-Pacific region with Australia and the United Kingdom, which came to cancel an important contract of submarines concluded between Paris and Canberra. The French authorities denounced a “Blow in the back” and an “Breach of trust”.
President Biden and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, have finally come to an agreement to try to restore confidence. “It is clear that the will to cooperate and to build a more balanced partnership is, for both camps, the cornerstone of this new partnership”, estimated Friday Josep Borrell.
He welcomed the upcoming launch of a dialogue between the United States and the European Union on security and defense, but also the decision, announced Thursday with Antony Blinken, to hold at the end of the year “High-level consultations on the Indo-Pacific”. This forum will strengthen the discussions underway between the European Union and Washington on the posture to adopt vis-à-vis China, the continuation of which is scheduled for December.
Submarine crisis: a military-industrial failure
Australia’s turnaround on the “contract of the century” shows that sales of military equipment are a component of States’ strategic choices. And that’s nothing new …
- “The analysis of the relations between countries which buy and sell arms provides valuable information”, by Christian Schmidt, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Paris-Dauphine and former president of the International Defense Economic Association
- “Strategic, industrial and commercial logics become entangled”, interview with Laurence Badel, professor of the history of international relations at the University of Paris-I – Panthéon-Sorbonne
- “The arms industry remains largely under the control of the State”, by Hervé Joly, historian at the CNRS (Triangle laboratory, University of Lyon)
- “The secrecy surrounding the Aukus agreement is no surprise”, by Robert Bell is professor of management at Brooklyn College, City University of New York
- “It is not possible to estimate the value of the intangible capital developed and transmitted”, by Romaric Servajean-Hilst, professor at Kedge Business School and associate researcher at Ecole Polytechnique (i3-CRG)
- “The interweaving of the private and the public is intensified by the search for the reduction of production costs”, by Hubert Bonin, professor emeritus at Sciences Po Bordeaux and at GRETHA-Universite de Bordeaux