President Joe Biden apologized to his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron last Friday for the U.S. nuclear submarine contract with Australia. That contract blindsided Paris and led Canberra to cancel a $66 billion diesel submarine deal with France. “What we did was clumsy,” Biden said. “It was not done with a lot of grace.”
That Biden feels he must apologize shows he is unfit to lead the free world. U.S. technology is better than French to meet Australia’s needs in countering China. That U.S. businesses get the boost rather than French companies should be cause for celebration at the White House. There is nothing wrong with capitalist competition. The broader problem, however, was not Biden’s apology. It was the way in which the White House allowed Macron’s manufactured grievance to undercut broader U.S. national security.
Consider the Eastern Mediterranean, which is increasingly in play with a resurgent Russia, an aggressive Turkey, and empowered Hezbollah and Hamas. Throughout September, the United States and Greece worked to negotiate the Mutual Defense and Cooperation Agreement. The new agreement not only extends the existing one-year agreement to five years, but it could also make it permanent unless either side explicitly revokes it. The provisions also increase opportunities for joint training and ensure a broader U.S presence in Greece.
As the U.S. was negotiating its new defense agreement with Greece, France pushed ahead with a $5 billion deal to sell Greece new warships. Certainly, Greece needs the ships. Turkey challenges Greek waters and territory as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seeks to rewrite century-old treaties. That Biden declined an offer to co-locate U.S. forces at the Hellenic Air Force base on the Aegean island of Skyros was strategic malpractice.
Biden’s acquiescence to the $5 billion deal as a consolation prize for Macron undermines far broader strategic objectives. Shipbuilding is not a capability that the U.S. can flip on and off upon the whims of budgetary debates. As the White House and Congress reduce military spending and delay platform purchases, they can leave workers idle. When shipyard workers have no work, they leave their jobs for other opportunities. What Biden and national security adviser Jake Sullivan turned down behind the scenes were proposals that Greece might buy American frigates and that, concurrently, the U.S. might invest in a shipyard in Greece. This would have not only provided a profit for U.S. shipbuilders, logistical companies, and engineering firms but increased Greece’s capabilities to repair American ships for decades into the future. It would not simply be a military deal but, more importantly, a commercial and civilian one.
As Erdogan’s volatility increases, the Eastern Mediterranean today has the potential to become as hot to international shipping as the Persian Gulf was in the 1980s. When reflagged tankers and U.S. escorts hit mines then, they could sail or be towed to the United Arab Emirates, which had the facilities to accommodate them and perform needed repairs.
Biden just turned down a similar deal so he could assuage Macron’s calculated and melodramatic tantrum. Biden may feel that the crisis with France is over. Behind the scenes, however, Macron is likely joking about how easy it was to pull a fast one over on Biden and trick his ambitious but wet-behind-the-ears national security adviser.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
