ROME — President Biden sought to smooth over relations with America’s oldest ally Friday, saying the United States had been “clumsy” in its handling of a weapons agreement with Australia that effectively led Canberra to cancel a multibillion-dollar contract with the French and give the business to Washington instead.
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“It was not done with a lot of grace,” Biden said, sitting beside French President Emmanuel Macron in their first face-to-face meeting since the deal provoked a rift between the United States and France.
Here’s what to know:
●Biden and Macron have spoken by phone several times, but they presented this face-to-face meeting as part of an ongoing effort to rebuild trust.
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●Earlier Friday, Biden, America’s second Catholic president, met with Pope Francis on the first day of a European trip.
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●On Saturday, Biden and Macron will join leaders of the Group of 20 nations for a summit focused on the coronavirus and climate change.
●Leaders will then travel to Glasgow, Scotland, for the COP26 climate conference.
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Biden suggested that he had not realized the French would be blindsided by the new arrangement. “I was under the impression that France had been informed long before that the deal was not coming through,” Biden said.
The U.S. president was technically on French territory as he met with Macron at the French Embassy to the Holy See in Rome, a move intended to elevate their meeting beyond the typical bilateral conversation that occurs during major summits. Both leaders are in Italy for a meeting of the Group of 20 major economic powers.
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The Biden administration provoked French anger last month when it agreed to share sensitive nuclear-powered-submarine technology with Australia, effectively canceling an earlier deal worth $66 billion for Australia to purchase diesel-powered submarines from France.
Macron’s government had said the move raised fundamental questions about the future of transatlantic security cooperation. France briefly recalled its ambassador from Washington.
Two subsequent phone calls between Macron and Biden appeared to calm tensions, and French officials have taken a more restrained stance. But the French presidential office has continued to emphasize that it expects concrete steps to rebuild trust between France and the United States.
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Asked after Friday’s meeting whether he was satisfied that relations with Washington had been repaired, Macron responded, “We clarified together what we had to clarify.”
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French officials in recent weeks have repeatedly voiced their frustration with Australia and Britain, which was also included as a party in the submarine deal that angered the French.
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After a phone call Thursday between Macron and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the élysée Palace released a statement saying that the derailment of the submarine deal “broke the relationship of trust between our two countries.”
“It is now up to the Australian Government to propose tangible actions that embody the political will of Australia’s highest authorities to redefine the basis of our bilateral relationship,” the statement from the French presidential palace added.
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The meeting between Biden and Macron on Friday comes less than six months before presidential elections in France that appear increasingly unpredictable. The rise of potential far-right candidate éric Zemmour has upended electoral calculations within campaign headquarters, as some polls now show him effectively tied behind Macron with long-standing far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
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A key theme of both Le Pen and Zemmour has been the supposed decline of the French nation under Macron and some of his predecessors.
In a speech last week, Zemmour suggested that France needed to escape “the shadow” of big powers, namely the United States. He cited the derailed Australian-French submarine deal as evidence of the flawed transatlantic relationship between the United States and the European Union, whose diplomacy he deemed to be “at best condemned to paralysis, at worst to submission to the United States.”
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Zemmour’s U.S. skepticism falls on fertile ground in France. A Pew Research Center survey this year found that only 31 percent of French respondents said the United States reliably considers the interests of countries like theirs in international policy decisions.
Macron has sought to balance French skepticism of the United States and the country’s reliance on it. In a speech last month, he urged Europeans to “come out of their naivete” on the world stage and assert their independence from the United States.
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But in the same speech, Macron acknowledged the United States as “a great historical ally and an ally in terms of values. And that’ll remain the case.”
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Macron’s balancing act may be a reflection of France’s capabilities as a military power that remains a leading force in some ways, including in West Africa, but relies heavily on alliances on other fronts.
Within Europe, France’s security strategy is largely based on its alliances within NATO and the E.U., but those alliances have long depended on the United States.
Neighboring Germany, for instance, has tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers stationed in the country. Other E.U. members spent a great deal of effort on trying to attract additional U.S. troops, with Poland in 2018 even offering to name a military base after President Donald Trump.
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