Sir, – The French government’s withdrawal of its ambassadors from Washington and London over the loss of a lucrative submarine-building contract with Australia shows a fit of pique which is both hypocritical and ill-judged.
It is also deja-vu. Do they need to be reminded that it was France which abruptly withdrew its Atlantic and channel fleets from Nato command in June 1963 and whose president Charles de Gaulle also added insult to injury by announcing on March 10th, 1966, that he intended to withdraw France from Nato and who demanded the removal of all Nato facilities on French soil?
Ironically, that outburst by De Gaulle and subsequent French military withdrawal from the Nato integrated command structure was occasioned by a refusal by France to integrate its nuclear deterrent capability with those of other Nato powers, to the particular annoyance of the US and with a distinct cooling of diplomatic relations between Paris and Washington, and also London.
So, mes amis, there is a certain retributive justice in what the US and Britain have negotiated with Australia, the Aukus.
When defence minister Le Drian talked of back-stabbing, “one doesn’t do such things among allies...it is unbearable”, he should, perhaps, have remembered his own country’s relatively recent diplomatic history in this regard; unless, of course, he deliberately wishes to repeat it?
– Yours, etc,
DÓNAL DENHAM,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.