France eyes billion-dollar warplane deals in new strategic partnership with India, UAE
- 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
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.
“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.
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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.
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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.
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India is also trialling the Rafale’s naval variant against Boeing’s F/A-18F Super Hornet amid plans to acquire 30 planes for deployment on its first indigenously made aircraft carrier INS Vikrant, which was commissioned in August.
Pant of King’s College said France, India and the UAE would place “a great deal of emphasis” on the co-development of their Rafale programmes.
He said France is a “much less complicated choice” for India than the US, but America’s range of defence manufacturing far outstrips it.
“So wherever possible, India will go to France, but the US will also remain a key player,” Pant said.
France operates a naval base in Abu Dhabi, from where an EU task force patrols shipping lanes that carry the majority of the world’s oil exports and trade between Asia and Europe.
France is also the only Western power that conducts joint naval patrols with India.
The US has acted as the fulcrum for multilateral partnerships formed in recent years in the Indo-Pacific and Middle East regions.
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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.”