Why France isn’t counting on Trump

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One of the things that sucks about election night coverage pretty much everywhere is this bit.

So we should be hearing from the Prime Minister pretty soon.

Obviously, we're still waiting to hear from Kamala Harris.

It's the bit where the result seems pretty clear, but you've got to wait around for ages until the leaders do their speeches.

And we're waiting to see Trump appear himself, and that's obviously what the crowd there are waiting to see.

Well, this bit doesn't happen in Germany.

All this waiting around is way too inefficient for the Germans.

They bring all the party leaders into one room at eight o'clock on election night and make them answer questions about the race.

Gutenberg, everyone.

When this chat was underway during the election just last month, it was pretty clear that opposition leader Friedrich Mertz was going to be the next chancellor, and he decided to start his transition into office with a bang.

He says, My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that step by step we we can really achieve independence from the USA.

It's clear that the Trump administration is largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.

People were stunned.

Usually a German leader needs to be at least three schnapps deep before they start heckling their most important security partner.

But Germany could no longer afford to ignore Trump's actions since taking office.

Forcing Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire, threatening to annex Greenland, and saying that US allies have to pay up if they want US protection.

No, I won't protect if you're not paying.

If you're delinquent or if the money isn't paid,

why would we do that?

One person who would not have been surprised at all by what Trump is doing is the French statesman Charles de Gaulle.

The dominant figure in 20th century French politics, de Gaulle thought it was only a matter of time before America would become, as the Chancellor says, indifferent to the fate of Europe.

Now, America's allies are calling France and asking two questions.

One, how did you see this coming?

And two, can you protect us from a rising Russia and China if America won't?

I'm Matt Bevan and this is If You're Listening.

This is the sound of desperation.

It was mid-1940 and German forces were at the gates of Paris and The French Prime Minister Paul Raynaud took to the airwaves to beg America for help.

He had already failed in his attempt to get the US to join the war against Germany, and now he was begging for a cloud of planes to be sent to stop the Nazis.

Planes had been promised, but they weren't ready in time.

America would not save France.

The following day, on the same frequency where the Prime Minister had begged for help, the French national anthem La Marseillaise played for the last time.

You can hear attempts by the Germans to block the frequency with their own broadcasts.

Paris had fallen.

France would surrender within days.

Shortly afterwards, though, there was a new French voice on the airwaves, broadcast from England.

The voice was unfamiliar,

even to most French people.

It belonged to General Charles de Gaulle, a minor cabinet official who had flown to London rather than surrender, declared, I am France, and urged people at at home to form a resistance against Nazi occupation.

Initially, the Americans ignored him, but he made that very difficult to do.

He was an imposing figure, six foot five with the physique of an asparagus, and he wouldn't take Nom for an answer.

General de Gaulle, leader of the Free French Forces, inspects French naval vessels now in English ports and soon to go into action against the Axis.

Eventually, he was accepted by the Allies as the leader of the French resistance and joined the Allies in liberating France.

I take this opportunity to thank the American people

for the wonderful effort

they have made to win this war.

Like many French people, de Gaulle did not like speaking English, but to rally support for France, he would do anything.

Today,

us

in 1918, your American boys are fighting side by side with the French soldiers.

This kind of speech makes you think that de Gaulle was a big fan of the Americans.

Together,

we are marching on the road.

to Berlin, to Tokyo, to a final victory.

But he wasn't.

It's not that he was anti-American, he just didn't trust them.

He never forgot their lack of response to the plea for help in 1940.

De Gaulle became a rallying point for Free Frenchmen, and he returned to France as a national hero.

21 years later, Paris looked very different, and America had a new president.

Paris in the spring of 1961, at the time of President Kennedy's visit, was as beautiful as ever.

De Gaulle was now President of France, but he hadn't changed at all.

He was still stubborn, proud, very tall, and skeptical of American leaders.

It was John F.

Kennedy's first overseas trip as president, and it was off to a great start.

The city of Paris lived up to its reputation for tradition and pageantry in its civic reception for the American visitors.

Two million people gathered on the streets of Paris, mainly to see the glamorous French-speaking American First Lady.

I do not think it

altogether inappropriate to introduce myself to this audience.

I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I've enjoyed it.

But it wasn't all fun and parades for President Kennedy.

He had seven hours of meetings scheduled with de Gaulle, and they were not expected to be easy.

After all, the two had many pressing issues to discuss.

The vibe wasn't like a visit from a daughter or an old friend, though.

It was more like Robert De Niro was de Gaulle and he was meeting his daughter's new boyfriend, Kennedy.

Kennedy was in awe of the legendary French war hero and knew that he could be a very tough cookie.

The president began to pursue a strongly independent line, often to the embarrassment of France's allies.

But instead of asking Kennedy what his intentions were with his daughter, he wanted to ask Kennedy what he was planning to do with the situation in Germany.

The attention of an ancient world is focused on East and West Germany and Berlin.

The Soviet Union was consolidating its military position in communist East Germany, and de Gaulle wanted to know what would happen if they sent their forces into democratic West Germany.

France, West Germany, and the US were all members of the NATO alliance, which meant that if one was attacked by the Russians, all of them would retaliate together.

But de Gaulle was skeptical.

Would Russian troops on Allied territory be enough to trigger a nuclear response from Washington?

If Soviet troops marched all the way up to the Rhine River, the border with France, would Moscow be flattened by an American bomb?

De Gaulle thought it should be.

He thought Soviet troops on the bank of the Rhine was an existential threat to France.

But he thought that at the critical moment, Kennedy would chicken out.

The Rhine is much narrower than the Atlantic, said de Gaulle.

This was basically de Gaulle's position on the entire Western Alliance.

The Americans talked a big game, but if push came to shove, they'd abandon Europe and focus on their own problems.

France has suggested that the U.S.

might no longer be willing to meet its commitments in Europe.

Mr.

Kennedy pledged that the U.S.

will remain in Europe as long as desired or required.

Kennedy assured de Gaulle that the U.S.

would always defend Europe as if it was part of America.

We cannot fail these commitments.

We cannot surrender the freedom of these people for whom we are responsible.

He went all the way to Germany and declared, all free men, wherever they may live,

are citizens of Berlin.

And therefore, as a free man,

I take pride in the words, Ich bin ein Bierlinen.

But de Gaulle was never convinced.

After all, he knew what happened last time the French begged for America's help.

When you're convinced that America is going to leave you high and dry again,

there's really only one thing you can do.

France developed atomic weapons under de Gaulle and he insisted on her right to be an independent nuclear power to build nuclear submarines and maintain a fleet of bombers.

While other European nations were reliant on the US for much of their military technology, France spent an enormous amount developing its own force de frappes, which is a military thing and not an iced coffee.

De Gaulle was so confident in France's military capacity that he demanded that all foreign troops, including Americans, leave French soil.

The U.S.

Secretary of State asked him if that included all the Americans buried in French military cemeteries after dying to liberate de Gaulle's country.

The Americans decided just to wait for de Gaulle to die, which he did in 1970.

President Pompidou eloquently expressed the sentiments of the nation.

De Gaulle is dead, he said.

France is a widow.

But if Americans were hoping his replacements would be less prickly and sceptical,

they were wrong.

In 2017, incoming French President Emmanuel Macron had his official portrait taken in his office.

As they prepared to take the photo, he turned to the desk and grabbed a book, opening it to a specific page and laying it on the desk so that it would be by his right hand in the picture.

The book was Charles de Gaulle's memoir and he was placing it on Charles de Gaulle's desk.

It's fair to say that Macron hasn't moved on from de Gaulle.

We want to be open, we want allies, we want good friends, we want partners, but we always want to be in a situation to choose them,

not to be 100%

dependent on them.

Macron wants to be able to choose France's partners, not be dependent on them.

Of all of America's partners, one country has an almost opposite approach to France.

America has no better friend anywhere in the world than Australia.

Australia signed up to the U.S.

Defense Subscription Service at the end of World War II and has never missed a payment, buying American weapons, helping their spy agencies, sending soldiers to fight alongside them in distant war zones.

But much like you used to only need one streaming subscription to watch everything and now you need like five, Australia started shopping around.

This is the largest and most ambitious military project in Australia's history.

And it is a matter of great moment.

A deal struck with France to provide Australia with a fleet of submarines.

A dozen submarines, known as the Attack Class, to be built over decades with a $50 billion price tag.

The deal made perfect logical sense if your aim was to buy submarines to protect the Australian coastline.

The submarines would be diesel-electric, meaning they run on batteries which are charged every few days by a diesel generator, which needs refueling every few months.

They are perfect for patrolling the continent that their home base is on, meaning they're perfect for defending Australia.

And yet two years after the contract was signed, the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was saying this to President Macron.

I made it very clear that a conventional diesel-powered submarine was not going to meet Australia's strategic requirements.

We discussed that candidly.

In 2021, Australia tore up the contract with the French government and announced that it would be entering a new one with the UK and the famously stable and reliable US as part of an alliance called AUKUS.

Thank you, Boris.

And I want to thank that fellow down under.

Thank you very much, Powell.

Appreciate it, Mr.

Prime Minister.

For the French, this was yet another betrayal by the Anglos.

President Macron accused that fellow down under of lying to him.

Do you think he lied to you?

I don't think.

I know.

Despite Australian claims that the submarines were no good or that they were going to go way over budget, there wasn't anything actually wrong with the French subs.

There was no cost blowout.

They have been terminated because our requirements have changed.

So Australia's requirements just changed.

Like when I bought a five-seat car before finding out that our third kid was twins and we would actually be needing six seats.

Ha ha!

So now instead of needing diesel-electric submarines to defend our coastline, we apparently now needed nuclear-powered submarines which are capable of operating anywhere in the world, staying underwater for months and only need refueling every 25 years.

Instead of paying $7 billion per sub, we were now going to be paying up to $46 billion per sub.

It's like replacing a ferry with an ocean liner.

It's massive overkill.

It makes no sense at all unless you look at it from an American perspective.

I think, particularly for the United States, their aim in making this really significant gesture from their point of view of giving us access to this very sensitive technology is to enhance our capacity to support them in a war with China.

This wasn't really about submarines at all.

It was about upgrading our standard US defense subscription to the premium package.

Someone threatens Australia?

Well, they're our AUKUS partner.

Saddle up, cowboys.

We're going to go and help them out.

We have now strategically moved firmly back to our traditional Western Alliance partners.

How do you like them, Poms de Gaulle?

Almost from the very beginning, though, there were some questions about whether or not this was a good idea.

But then...

Putting the AUCS in AUKUS.

We'll be discussing AUKUS with the Prime Minister, sir.

What does that mean?

AUKUS, the Australia-US Defence Alliance.

Yeah, well, we'll be discussing that.

As President Trump was making clear that he didn't know what our $300 billion AUKUS partnership was, the Chinese Navy started circumnavigating Australia, you know, just to show that they could.

They're testing us as U.S.

allies.

They're testing the Prime Minister.

And then, well, Trump abandoned Ukraine.

See our last episode.

What's that noise?

This is Charles de Gaulle singing, by the way.

The guy apparently loved a sing-along of La Marseille's.

Six decades after Charles de Gaulle was the thorn in America's side because he was convinced that they would abandon Europe, it now seems like America might be abandoning Europe.

While the U.S.

President hasn't officially torn up any global alliances yet, everyone who relies on the US is in a panic and looking for someone else to protect them.

In early March this year, Emmanuel Macron, who sadly does not love leading sing-alongs, addressed the French people.

He said that thanks to choices made by his predecessors, de Gaulle, France has a special status with Europe's most effective military and its own independent nuclear deterrent.

He said after a request from the incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz, he was opening a discussion about France protecting its European allies with its nuclear capabilities.

He said, I want to believe that the United States will remain at our side, but we must be ready if this is not the case.

Vivre République, vivre France.

And other European powers have followed suit, announcing that they will be dramatically increasing their defence spending.

Meanwhile, in Australia, defence and security experts are recommending that we might need to find alternative sources of submarines, because they're concerned those AUKUS subs may never arrive, much like the cloud of planes never arrived in France in 1940.

Even if Trump never officially abandons these defense arrangements, the ironclad confidence that America's friends had in their alliance with the US is gone, and it will take a long time to build back up.

In the meantime, the countries that currently rely on the American nuclear deterrent, like Japan, South Korea, and Germany, are seriously seriously considering acquiring their own nuclear weapons.

This is all while Donald Trump says that he wants to talk to Russia and China about decreasing the global number of nuclear weapons.

We were talking about denuking, denuclearize, denuking, and

President Putin and I agreed that we were going to do it in a very big way.

There's no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons.

We already have so many you could destroy destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over.

A lot of US allies are concerned that they've made a terrible mistake in putting their trust in America.

Does France think that we've made a mistake?

I don't think I know.

So, does anyone have the

number for that French submarine company?

If you're listening, is written by me, Matt Bevan.

Supervising producer is Cara Jensen-McKinnon.

Audio production is by Cinnamon Nipart.

Just a reminder that we're doing If You're Listening live at the Newcastle Writers Festival on the 6th of April.

Details are in the show notes.

Next week, the world is talking about rare earth minerals, like they are magic rings that unlock the power to world domination.

Donald Trump is looking for them in Canada, Ukraine and Greenland, but are they all there cracked up to be?

Or are we wasting a lot of time and energy on something that actually has a pretty simple solution?

That's next on If You're Listening.

Hi, I'm Jan Fran and if you're enjoying listening to If You're Listening, I have a feeling you're going to enjoy our podcast too.

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What led up to that moment?

Almost has to be heard to be believed.

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