- France has already sold Rafale fighter jets to India and the UAE but proposed a joint programme for the aircraft under its new trilateral partnership
- The grouping comes as the countries seek to preserve their ‘strategic autonomy’ amid the US-China rivalry, and follows Australia’s snub of French submarines in favour of the Aukus deal
A French Rafale jet fighter takes off from France’s aircraft carrier Charles-de-Gaulle. Photo: AP
France could soon receive billions of dollars of new military orders from its recent formation of a trilateral strategic partnership with
India and the United Arab Emirates, analysts have said.
The three-way partnership between the long-standing allies, launched at a meeting of their foreign ministers in New York on September 20, aims to boost maritime security, blue economy and regional connectivity, and food and energy security in the Indian Ocean.
France, India and the UAE were motivated to join hands to preserve their “strategic autonomy” amid diplomatic pressure to side with the
US against
China, analysts said.
“These middle powers want to retain their own strategic space to manoeuvre amid sharpening great power contestation,” said Harsh V. Pant, a professor of international relations at King’s College London.
“They are reluctant to be part of any one bloc, so enhancing ties among themselves is a good option to retain their strategic autonomy,” he added.
Having already sold large numbers of advanced Rafale multirole fighters to India and the UAE, France proposed the formation of a joint programme for the warplane under their new trilateral partnership, India’s Economic Times newspaper reported after the three foreign ministers met last month.
The new trilateral partnership “certainly helped France’s chances with the Rafale with India”, said Jean-Loup Samaan, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute.
Previous Rafale sales to India and the UAE could “pave the way to closer trilateral cooperation in terms of training and joint air exercises”, he said.
Analysts said the trilateral partnership follows France’s lingering sense of betrayal at being unceremoniously
deprived in September 2021 of a €35 billion (US$34.3 billion) deal to supply submarines to
Australia. The deal went to the US and Britain as part of the trilateral
Aukus alliance among the
UK, US and Australia.
This persuaded French President
Emmanuel Macron to suddenly make concessions on the stalled sale of Rafales to the UAE, leading to the surprise signing of a €17 billion (US$16.6 billion) contract for 80 of the warplanes last December.
Days later, the UAE froze negotiations to buy the F-35 stealth fighters from the US, amid diplomatic tensions arising in part from American pressure on Abu Dhabi to scale back its relationship with China, its second-largest trading partner after India.
Emirati officials rejected Washington’s claims that it had forced the UAE to stop the construction of a suspected Chinese military facility at Port Khalifa.
“The Aukus crisis and the frozen F-35 negotiations gave credence to the initial argument that France, India and the UAE need to build their own foreign policy framework,” Samaan said.
India is evaluating Dassault Aviation’s Rafale, the F-21 variant of Lockheed Martin’s F16, and Sweden’s Saab FAS39 Gripen for a contract for 36 warplanes that would boost the size of its air force to 35 squadrons – still seven short of its targeted strength of 42.
India acquired 36 Rafales between
2019 and July 2022 under a €7.87 billion (US$7.7 billion) contract signed in 2016. The Rafales were deployed to Indian airbases near its disputed 3,488km border with China after their forces clashed in the Himalayan territory of Ladakh in mid-2020.
India and the UAE are both partners in the I2U2 partnership with Israel and the US.
France, India and the UAE will remain important partners of the US, but “a close partnership among themselves will help them in better managing their ties with Washington”, Pant said.
But France’s competitive edge in securing further military deals from India and the UAE may be fleeting, analysts said.
“Those types of sales can be extremely volatile,” Samaan said. “If tomorrow, tensions with China escalate, countries like the UAE and India may consider that for operational and diplomatic reasons, it’s better to be equipped with American platforms.”
.... remember 1 year before the General elections , everything big will freeze.
