In responding to the secretive U.S.-British move to sell nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, a decision that the Australians used to nix the prior French deal, Mr. Macron could choose to escalate. One idea doing the rounds in France is for the country to withdraw from NATO’s integrated military command structure, which it rejoined in 2009 after a 43-year absence.
NYT
For Mr. Macron, the submarine debacle demonstrates that the NATO alliance is debilitated to the point of dysfunction through lack of trust. The glue has gone. Without transparency — and in the submarine deal there was none — alliance, in the French view, becomes an empty word.
NYT
The “glue” that held NATO together was the Soviet bear. But that once formidable bruin is now mangy and supplanted by the much more formidable CCP dragon threat. The decline of European alliances reflects the strategic primacy of Asia.
The interesting byplay is Boris Johnson’s. By joining, perhaps even midwifing, AUKUS, the UK remains a “global Britain” — a world power — while France shrinks to a regional one. The ghost of the British empire lives on in the Quad and AUKUS.
The irony was that up until Kevin Rudd Australia actually wanted to become part of Asia. But Chinese expansionism changed all that and stirred in the Aussie breast the old but not wholly forgotten memories of the English speaking world.
The great rule of the post WW2 peace is that you are only allowed to invade other countries with music, hamburgers and pizza. Japan learned this and so did Germany. For a while after Deng, China swept the world with instant noodles until the old Communist ambitions fatally returned.
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