“Furious.” France withdraws their American ambassadors HotAir

I m far from the first person to point out that when it comes to foreign policy, Joe Biden has managed to get nearly everything he s put his fingers on wrong over the long course of his political career. His actions as President show that not much has changed. This was an entirely preventable foreign policy debacle that has surfaced because of the ham-handed way all of this was handled. France has traditionally been one of our closest and longest-standing allies. (Dating back to the Revolutionary war.) If a secret deal with Australia that was going to crush an anticipated windfall for France was in the works, how on Earth did not a single person in the Biden administration not insist on bringing the French into the negotiations? A skilled diplomatic team could have worked out some alternative opportunity to offer the French as a replacement for the lost revenue and then they would have been ready to endorse the deal and stress the need for all of us to work together against a common adversary. Instead, the French had to learn about it by seeing it announced on CNN. No wonder they re furious.

via hotair.com

While I hate to defend the Biden administration about anything, I’m sympathetic to them on this AUKUS deal. “Doing things diplomatically” is often code for not doing them at all. France was going to be furious however this deal came about, whenever it came about. It’s not just the loss of money to them; it’s the loss of prestige, and the loss of selling the Aussies a lot of frankly second-rate subs (at least that’s what the propaganda I’m reading says) and a chance to suck up the the Chinese. As penetrated as our foreign policy establishment is by PRC money, the French are more so. It would have taken a genius to pull off this change in course in American policy smoothly, and Biden administration is short of geniuses. But that doesn’t mean that the ship isn’t being turned starboard because it seems to be, with much luffing of sails, having to come about, and various other exhibits of naval incompetence, but turning to starboard it seems to be. And none of this compares to Afghanistan, except as more evidence of incompetence at the highest level, because no one is dying here — it’s just that a bunch of French defense contractors won’t get to line their pockets and refresh their wine cellars. In the end, it sends an exceptionally clear message of UK-Australia-US solidarity, standing up to what is, after all, the most sinister threat to liberty we have seen in a long time. Could it have been done better? Bien sur que oui. But it has been done and that’s no small thing.