France recalled its ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia on Friday, a move intended to emphasize its fury over a lost submarine contract with Sydney that the French foreign minister said was like being “stabbed in the back.”

While France and the U.S. have often been at odds in global affairs, including over the Iraq War in 2003, Paris has never gone so far as to remove its envoy to Washington, according to a senior French official.

The stunning decision comes two days after Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison joined with U.S. President Joe Biden and the U.K.’s Boris Johnson to announce a new security partnership that will allow Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines. The new partnership effectively scuppered Australia’s 2016 deal with French shipbuilder Naval Group to build up to 12 submarines, a project that had blown out to an estimated A$90 billion ($66 billion).

“At the request of the president of the Republic, I have decided to immediately recall our two ambassadors to the United States and Australia to Paris for consultations,” Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a statement.

He called the deal between the U.S. and Australia “unacceptable behavior between allies and partners, the consequences of which affect the very conception we have of our alliances, our partnerships and the importance of the Indo-Pacific for Europe.”

A White House official said in a statement that the U.S. regrets the recall of the ambassador, but that the Biden administration would try to work out with the French government the two countries’ differences. The official said France and the U.S. would continue to cooperate closely on issues including the pandemic and security, the official said.

The loss of the Australian submarine deal is a personal blow for French President Emmanuel Macron. In June, Macron invited Morrison to Paris after the G-7 summit, and the two discussed the contract with state-owned Naval Group, focusing on delays and pricing, two people familiar with the discussions said.

From the French perspective, the leaders’ discussion never suggested that Australia was about to ditch the contract, that it would look for other partners or had second thoughts. Rather, the people said, there were typical discussions for such a massive deal, and Macron felt that he had responded to Morrison’s queries, two French officials said.

Macron and Biden have previously had a warm relationship. The French president publicly rejoiced at the G-7 summit in June that America was “back” and ready to work with European partners, after difficult years under former U.S. President Donald Trump.

If France had any suspicion the submarine deal was in danger, one senior French official said, it would never have signed a bilateral roadmap with Australia only two weeks ago, in which the two countries “committed to deepen defense industry cooperation” and “underlined the importance of the future submarine program.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that high-level U.S. officials had discussed the Australia partnership with French counterparts before its public announcement.

Australia justified the cancellation of the French contract by its need for nuclear-powered rather than diesel submarines. But French officials are especially bitter because they say France could have been involved in the deal, including by providing nuclear subs. (Source: Bloomberg)

Story Date: September 18, 2021