A US senator suggests creating a technology alliance between the USA, France and Canada inspired by AUKUS

The creation of the AUKUS alliance bringing together Australia, Great Britain and the United States a little more than a year ago, severely damaged relations between Paris and these three countries, especially since it involved the unilateral cancellation of the SEA 1000 contract to design and build 13 Attack-class submarines sold by France in 2015, to replace them with 8 American or British-made nuclear attack submarines. Beyond the difficulties encountered by Canberra in organizing the transition to such a fleet, as well as the additional costs and delays that such a decision generates, it took many months, and the change of two of the three heads of state (the British Boris Johnson and the Australian Scott Morrison), to normalize relations with France again. However, the switch from a propulsion submarine program to a nuclear propulsion program for the Royal Australian Navy, quickly highlighted the industrial difficulties encountered by the 3 countries to produce the 8 Australian submarines in due time. , especially since the country has little room for maneuver due to the obsolescence of its 6 Collins-class submarines.

Faced with a Chinese Navy in the midst of an explosion in capacity, hosting more than 30 leading naval units each year where American shipyards can only deliver a dozen, the United States is now struggling to support the rise in power of some of their allies, especially in the submarine domain, whereas Great Britain is, unfortunately, not in a position to provide an effective industrial solution in this domain. On the other hand, to respond to the challenge posed by China and its navy in the Pacific, but also to contain the modernization of the fleet of Russian submarines in the Atlantic and in the Arctic seas, it now seems certain, for the United States , that equipping some of its allies with nuclear-powered attack submarines is an effective alternative.

It is without a doubt on the basis of this observation that the Republican Senator of Idaho, James Risch, proposed at the Halifax International Security Forum, to create on the model of the AUKUS alliance, a military and technological alliance bringing together this time, around the United States, France and Canada. It would be, in fact, an architecture strictly identical to the Aukus alliance, with the United States, a nation having the technology and the capacity to produce nuclear-powered attack submarines, and a country which must replace, in the medium term, its fleet of conventional submarines made up of 4 Victoria class submarines. Furthermore, where Australia plays a strategic role in controlling the South Pacific, Canada is both an Atlantic and Pacific actor, and by virtue of its position, plays a crucial role in controlling Arctic waters, whether we know the preferred location for the deployment of Russian SSBNs.

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