The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is struggling to assuage French anger over Australia’s surprise decision to abandon a multibillion-dollar submarine contract with France in favor of U.S. technology, a move viewed in Paris as a betrayal that seriously damaged trans-Atlantic ties.
"We had no heads up,” said Pascal Confavreux, the French Embassy spokesman in Washington. "We learned it when U.S. media broke the news, and at that time we made a demarche to get more information about what we had learned,” he added, referring to a diplomatic meeting often undertaken during a dispute.
The French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, was more blunt, saying his nation, whose friendship with the U.S. dates to the American Revolutionary War, felt "stabbed in the back.” Officials then promptly canceled a gala in Washington and Baltimore, Maryland, this week that was to celebrate close Franco-American ties.