The French approach to foreign affairs can be cold, one-eyed, chauvinist — and right. De Gaulle’s blackballing of Britain from the European project turned out to be prescient. Opposition to the Iraq war has aged even better in far less time. Before the fall of Kabul, few nations were as quick as France to read the sad runes, and to warn its people there accordingly.
In the shape of the US defence deal with Australia and Britain, France is enduring as cruel a snub as one democracy has dealt another for some time. If nothing else, though, its unsentimental view of the US — as Europe’s friend, not its eternal benefactor — stands enhanced. It has been a good summer for the cause of “strategic autonomy” from America.
The US was willing to bruise France to sign Aukus for the same reason it was willing to upset much of Europe to leave Afghanistan. The priority is China. It is impossible for the EU to match and perhaps even to understand the all-consuming nature of this fixation. It is not defending a position as the world’s number one power. It does not — with respect to French Polynesia — have a Pacific coast. It has neither a reflex aversion to “communism”, nor mental scars from “losing” China to that creed in 1949.