PARIS: A giant submarine deal between France and Australia is the latest sign of deepening relations between the two countries, which are being driven together by mutual concern about China and Britain’s changing role in the world, analysts say.
Australia announced last week that it had finalised a Aus$50 billion deal to buy 12 attack-class submarines from the Naval Group consortium, partly owned by the French state.
The contract had been under discussion for years -- a preliminary deal was signed in 2016 -- but the final signature capped a period of intense diplomatic activity propelled by French President Emmanuel Macron.
"France and Australia have entered a completely new phase. We’ve never been this close," Australia’s ambassador to France, Brendan Berne, told AFP.
"It’s more than a contract; it’s a partnership based on trust. Through this project the French are entrusting us with key elements of sovereignty."
Although ties between Paris and Canberra were improving even before Macron’s election in 2017, Berne said the 41-year-old leader "sees Australia through new eyes".
Macron made his first official visit to Australia in May last year, when he proposed strengthening the axis of democracies between India, Australia and France in what was billed as a major foreign policy speech.
Underpinning the relationship is a concern about the future of the Indo-Pacific region which stretches from the east coast of Africa to the west coast of the Americas, and includes the disputed territories of the East and South China Seas.
As Admiral Phil Davidson, commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, said in January during a speech in India, "the future for prosperity -- not only for the United States, but all nations of the region -- is resident in the Indo-Pacific."
It hosts vital international trade routes and abundant natural resources, which many nations have an interest in claiming -- above all regional superpower China.
France has a major stake through its colonial-era Pacific territories -- French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Reunion, Mayotte, and Wallis and Futuna -- which are home to more than 1.6 million citizens.
Because of the scattered territories, France possesses the world’s largest Exclusive Economic Zone (EZZ) of nearly nine million square kilometres.