Assuming the price tag remains the same as it was for the Aussies, I see no way Vietnam could ever afford to pay $60 billion for twelve French submarines. Even if America and Britain subsidized half off the price, it would still be far beyond any ability by Hanoi to pay.
Vietnam’s entire annual defense budget is less than $6 billion.
Yeah, I know… But it could also be pretty much gifted to them as foreign aid along with loans. If France, the UK and the U.S. all kicked in, it could be done.
I highly doubt something like this would happen, but it’s certainly an interesting geopolitical move.
I’m not sure I’d do it right now, though. China is facing some tough times, IMO. They are almost certainly lying about how much impact Covid has had on their country, they are facing a 300 billion dollar default from their largest real-estate company, they are now dynamiting dozens of high rises they built which no one wanted, etc. Xi has been cracking down on the business sector and shaking down the rich for money which will hurt investment and confidence.
If China stops growing at the rate it has, it will call into question the legitimacy of the Communist party and risks dissatisfaction with the regime at home. IMO, that makes China more dangerous, not less. So this may mot be the right time to poke the dragon, so to speak.
I generally like the idea as I think we should cooperate more with Vietnam across the board. But that level of military outlay to a country like Vietnam probably is too ambitious. I’m not even sure Vietnam could man and command that many submarines or if it would even have the resources to keep them deployed. Not even sure they have the officer and seaman pipeline to train that many submariners in reasonable time, especially to operate ships of that complexity.
Well, given that they’d be coming from the French, they’ll undoubtedly have a lot of time to prepare…
But yeah, I agree. It’s highly unlikely.
Sorry again for the hijack, but as the resident China expat (actually I’m currently in the UK but was there until a few weeks ago), it’s on me to respond to this stuff:
There is not really any doubt remaining among international epidemiologists that China has had very few cases since the initial outbreak. And even the US news agencies, that for long teased that there would be a story about how China was “obviously” lying about its cases could not find even one case of community spread to refute the overall narrative.
Instead, CNN recently did a story about the first cases in Beijing for 14 months (IIRC), and at no point challenged the premise.
They’ll never be a story about “We were wrong about the number of cases” just as they’ll never be a story about “We were wrong about people just dropping dead in the street” as “everyone knows” every CT about China is always true.
Indeed a property bubble remains the biggest risk for the Chinese economy right now, I’d agree with that.
But let’s be clear about the status quo: I know that “ghost towns” get a lot of coverage in the media, as the scale of waste is breathtaking (although note in most cases such towns get settled eventually). It gives people the mistaken impression that they could get a Chinese property virtually for free.
In fact, the industry has been in rude health for many years. In Shanghai, the average price per square foot is close to $400, and the typical downpayment for a home is 40%, such is the demand. Yes, a relatively small apartment can be worth more than $1 million, and you need to find a good chunk of that cash up front, in a city with a fraction of the average salary in the US.
So, I *hope* the bubble burts, but hopefully in some controlled fashion.
Nothing new there.
Maybe they could sell them one or two subs? Don’t know why it has to be an all or nothing deal. After that they could sell the rest to other militaries the same way.
Having just one or two subs of a different type would be a big maintenance headache for the Vietnamese. It would require an entirely different logistics-support chain than the 6 Kilo-class subs they already have.
And again, even just one of these submarines would be equal to nearly the entire annual defense budget of Vietnam.
The US and Australia and Britain backroomed a negotiation for nuclear subs which was actively kept hidden from the French, where the French weren’t allowed to bid on a new tender with Australia’s discovered-underway requirements for nuclear subs instead of diesel, and which they found out about at a fucking press conference along with everyone else on the planet. They had won the previous tender fair and square over Germany and Japan. The Barracudas can be converted from diesel to nuclear. The French were reassured less than three weeks before the announcement.
Apparently the contract wasn’t working for the Australian government. There were delays and budget overruns and they’d decided that nukes would be palatable to a domestic audience suddenly… Boohoo. Bad public projects are a dime a dozen, and military procurement twice that. (Looking at you, F35s, 8 years and $165b late) If you need to get out, you do it above the board, politically and in the open and then you put out a new tender.
Australia’s behaviour was appalling and Biden is, at best, complicit. Great way to treat your ally.
This is pretty much business as usual in international arms trade, I’m afraid. Unsurprisingly, it’s not a very nice business.
Granted.
But I don’t think the French (or the rest of the EU) is wrong in interpreting this (alongside Afghanistan) as a sign that the US is, in fact, not back and that the US is still in US-first mode with a side helping of Anglosphere-too.
What mode is France in? It looks like a pretty France-first mode to me.
It’s in the respecting signed contracts won for tenders mode?
The contracts had phases, the Australians are not continuing on with the rest of it. That has nothing to do with the United States.
The Aussies did respect the contract. They paid the buyout/cancellation fee. Just as you’re supposed to.
Funny for the French to find that out at a press conference after having been told everything was fine. And there is a 12-24 month mandatory arbitration clause in the contract if the process breaks down, which will now be a sham during which the US will pretend to be doing paperwork on the “possibility” of sharing nuclear tech with Australia. Wanna guess if there’s going to be another round of tenders in which anyone else gets to compete?
I maintain that Australia’s behaviour was appalling and the US is complicit to that. I’m not saying this is as bad as the Kurds or anything.
The United States was not party to the contract, and has no obligation to involve itself in disputes over the contract. That is between Australia and France. You’re essentially saying the U.S. should feel bad because an economic deal between two parties ended badly, and one of those parties then came to us looking to make a deal. That’s silly. We owe some things to allied nations, “spite” on their behalf, isn’t one of them, which would be the only justification for denying Australia a deal with us.
No, I think that the US should have respected the signed contract enough to wait for a tactful period after the Australians announced the dissolution of the partnership, before making their bid. Not doing so is what has implicated Biden in this. Couping a contract is business; throwing it in the face of an allied national leader like they were the Soviets is graceless and insulting.
Again, what you’re complaining about is business as usual. What happens if the US “waits for a tactful period” is that someone else swoops in and steals the lucrative arms deal.
In some senses, I think the US has done France a favour here.
The French have lost billions of euros of long-term investment in a strategic industry. That’s boatyards full of skilled workers, it’s all the ancillary trades, it’s services and management, it’s the maintenance and improvement of vital capabilities - all up in smoke. It’s an embarrassment and a failure.
Imagine if Australia had cancelled the contract without signing a new deal with the US or anyone else. What could Macron say then? “My compatriots, we brought this on ourselves. Let’s face it, this is our fuck up, you lazy swine” Hardly, but the stark fact that the French didn’t do their job would be hard to ignore.
In reality, however, Macron has an out. And he needs one, because this is an international embarrassment for France. But now it’s not France’s fault, it’s the perfidious Americans. They don’t respect allies. They undermined us. Betrayed, betrayed, et tu, Biden. Etc. etc. Foreign policy is often domestic policy in disguise, and a lot of France’s outrage is I think very much for home consumption.
Actually, the reality is no one could take the arms deal from us–but the strategic realities mean Australia needed to get this started sooner rather than later. These subs aren’t going to be hitting the waters anytime soon. France simply cannot offer nuclear sub technology on terms that we can, so once Australia determined its decisions to go with diesel-electric subs was a mistake, we were the only serious option.
FWIW, there was actually a lot of debate within Australian politics when the decisions was made to buy the diesel subs. Several Australian politicians questioned if, given the operating parameters Australia is in where it potentially has to cover lots of ocean and etc, if nuclear subs are a better fit. The defense officials largely hewed to the party line given down from the government, and said the diesel subs could do “whatever we need them to do.” But the reality is nuclear subs absolutely outperform diesel subs in the parameters that are important to Australia, it’s just there was not a political consensus where they were willing to consider going nuclear, but that shifted.