{"id":142221,"date":"2014-11-26T00:40:55","date_gmt":"2014-11-26T00:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=142221"},"modified":"2014-11-26T17:03:43","modified_gmt":"2014-11-26T17:03:43","slug":"france-will-renege-russian-contract-says-pres-francois-hollande","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/france-will-renege-russian-contract-says-pres-francois-hollande\/","title":{"rendered":"France Will Renege on Russian Contract, Says Pres. Francois Hollande"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

On November 25th, French President Francois Hollande announced<\/span><\/a> that France, which has already missed two deadlines to deliver to Russia two completed Mistral helicopter-carriers to Russia, won\u2019t deliver either ship until Washington has no further complaints about Russia\u2019s support of breakaway rebels in Ukraine\u2019s southeast. Russia had already \u201cmostly paid for\u201d<\/span><\/a> both of these ships, though details of the deal and prepayment have not been made public. Only the delivery is at issue here. Non-delivery by France would also raise a possible charge of theft against France, because, according to Russia\u2019s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin<\/span><\/a>, one-third of the ship is Russian-made, and, \u201cThe stern section of Mistral was made at Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg. That is why if they want to keep the ship, we will have to tear away its stern section and get it back to use it in other ships,\u201d and that scenario is out of the question. Yet some in the U.S. Congress are demanding it, and suggest that \u201cNATO could buy or lease them as a shared alliance asset,\u201d<\/span><\/a> though the ships were made according to Russian specifications and don\u2019t meet NATO\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Russian Government says that if the matter extends beyond a third deadline at the end of this month, and the first ship is still not delivered, then Russia will activate the non-delivery penalty for that ship, which, according to the BBC<\/span><\/a>, would be around a billion dollars.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hollande has been under terrific pressure from President Obama to renege on the contract<\/span><\/a>, but French shipyard workers and others have held public demonstrations for France to honor the contract, because of the extensive harm to French shipbuilding and other industry that would result from France\u2019s reneging on an international contract: it would hurt all of French industry if the French Government were to prohibit contract-fulfillment over political differences.<\/span><\/p>\n

The French President has, evidently, chosen the American President over his own country, but the penalty lawsuit from Russia will probably drag on for a long time, because Hollande used careful terminology in his renege-statement: he has \u201cindefinitely suspended\u201d delivery, not \u201ccancelled\u201d it. Consequently, the question as to precisely when France would \u201crenege,\u201d and would consequently be in technical default on the deal, would need to be adjudicated.<\/span><\/p>\n

Russia says that they don\u2019t urgently need these ships, and can continue on for a few more years with their existing carrier-set-up while they build their own ships to replace the two made-to-order Mistrals. In that eventuality, France\u2019s penalties on both ships could amount to nearly enough to pay Russia to build their own carriers, so that Russia could end up getting both new ships, of Russia\u2019s own manufacture, at little or no cost. This might be a French gift to Russia, but it would hurt France\u2019s commercial reputation even more than the penalties would be costing France.<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. news media have widely condemned France for not having earlier said that they would renege on this deal. For example, a Republican, anti-Obama, columnist for the Washington Post said that \u201cFrance\u2019s attempt to sell warships to Russia is both a \u2018sell the rope to hang themselves\u2019 moment and a comment on U.S. stature these days.\u201d<\/span><\/a> (She didn\u2019t notice that the ships had already been sold and paid-for.) If President Hollande goes through with his stated intention to \u201cindefinitely suspend\u201d delivery, then perhaps he will win some new fans in the United States, but it probably wouldn\u2019t do anything to win President Obama any new Republican friends. Nothing that Obama has done thus far has won him support from Republicans. France\u2019s President isn\u2019t likely to win their support, either; but, like Obama, Hollande seems to be trying hard to win it, no matter what French laborites and industrialists might wish.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obama doesn\u2019t possess much clout among Republicans, but he still has lots of clout among some other world-leaders, for reasons which aren\u2019t entirely clear, but for which France, in particular, could pay dear.<\/span><\/p>\n

———-<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse On November 25th, French President Francois Hollande announced that France, which has already missed two deadlines to deliver to Russia two completed Mistral helicopter-carriers to Russia, won\u2019t deliver either ship until Washington has no further complaints about Russia\u2019s support of breakaway rebels in Ukraine\u2019s southeast. Russia had already \u201cmostly paid for\u201d both of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":139900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[115,32,535,59,524,523,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-142221","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-cia","10":"tag-global-news","11":"tag-military","12":"tag-russia","13":"tag-ukraine","14":"tag-warfare","15":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}