France’s huge defence industry is acutely vulnerable after Australia’s submarine decision and the UK must take advantage of its plight
This article by Matthew Lynn for the Telegraph commences with these words:
One of its biggest orders of the decade has been cancelled. Recriminations are flying. Ambassadors are being recalled, and its government is lashing out with allegations of “betrayals” and talk of “stabs in the back”.
France's row with Australia over a cancelled submarine contract, and the creation of Aukus, a three-way alliance with the United Stated and the UK, may be primarily a geopolitical argument. But it is also a crisis for the vast French defence industry – and an opportunity for its British rivals.
France is a huge weapons exporter, by some measure the third largest in the world after the US and Russia. And yet, the cancelled contract has exposed its manufacturers as expensive and inefficient.
Even worse, it has placed itself in a strategic bind, determined to build a European army, but with precious little sign of it ever happening. It is hard to imagine Australia, or anyone else for that matter, will ever want to depend on “Europe” for military assistance.
For the full article, please click here:
Here is another article in pdf on the same subject for the Telegraph by Jeremy Hunt a former foreign secretary entitled: "The French can’t have their cake and eat it":
and finally here is an article in pdf by Brian Monteith for the Scotsman entitled: "Why the UK's AUKUS deal is a success and shows the folly of the SNP’s Brexit resistance".
Emmanuel Macron with then Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull on the deck of HMAS Waller in Sydney in May 2018
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