With this deal, Biden is upsetting the Europeans

World | What the U.S., U.K. and Australia unveiled Wednesday was more than just an announcement that the Australian Navy will get state-of-the-art, nuclear-powered submarine technology from the U.S. in the future. In fact, it was a strategic upgrade of Australia to a partner of the U.S. on the same level as the U.K., the only country that has so far been given access to this U.S. technology. WELT author Clemens Wergin Source: Martin U.K. Lengemann/ WELT© Martin U.K. Lengemann/ WELT WELT author Clemens Wergin Source: Martin U.K. Lengemann/ WELT And it was a message from the Americans toward China that was overdue after the Afghanistan debacle: We stand by our allies in the Indo-Pacific region, and Chinese bullying against Western allies in the region will be met with firmness. Indeed, Australia has been the victim of extreme Chinese intimidation for some time, designed to bring Australia in line with Chinese interests. Joe Biden is now backing the Australian government - and also integrating the country more closely into the containment strategy against the increasingly aggressive regime in Beijing. Transatlantic front against China Such a signal of resolve toward China's rulers can only be welcomed - if it were not for the considerable collateral damage that the new alliance has unleashed. France's Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian speaks of a "knife in the back"; after all, Paris had negotiated a contract to supply submarines to Australia five years ago and saw the country as the cornerstone of its own strategy in the Indo-Pacific. Paris is correspondingly miffed. "It is significant that the Biden administration has done nothing to cushion this blow it has willingly inflicted on France," says Gérard Araud, former French ambassador to Washington, for example. "No consultation, no involvement, no compensation." France's foreign minister, then, accused Washington of a lack of strategic coherence because Paris was simply excluded from the new alliance. Indeed, this cannot be dismissed out of hand. One cannot, on the one hand, press the Europeans for a joint containment strategy against Beijing - and then throw important European partners like France under the bus at the first opportunity. In a way that thwarts the strategic effects the deal with Australia was supposed to have, because it makes a united transatlantic front against Beijing more difficult. Biden had promised a new era of cooperation in the transatlantic relationship in lofty terms after the tumultuous Trump presidency. His actions speak a different language, whether on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, now with the new defense deal with Australia or even with the continuing restrictions on Europeans entering the United States. Biden is thus gambling away much of the credit that the Europeans had granted him after his election