PARIS — France reacted with fury on Thursday to President Biden’s announcement of a deal to help Australia deploy nuclear-powered submarines, calling it a “unilateral, brutal, unpredictable decision” that resembled the rash and sudden policy shifts common during the Trump administration.

His indignation reflected the fact that France had its own deal with Australia, reached in 2016, to provide it with conventional, less technologically sophisticated submarines.

Le Drian said of the Australian decision, noting that Australia was rejecting a deal for a strategic partnership that involved “a lot of technological transfers and a contract for a 50-year period.”.

Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, during which the deal was announced Wednesday.

Biden said the deal was “about investing in our source of strength, our alliances, and updating them.” At least with respect to France, one of America’s oldest allies, that claim appeared to have backfired.

You know, as the key project under AUKUS, we are launching consultations with Australia’s acquisition of conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines for its navy.

Britain is the American partner in the deal, another irritant to France after the British exit from the European Union and Mr.

At a deeper level, the deal challenged Emmanuel Macron, the French president, in some of his central strategic choices.

Such comments have been an irritant — if no more than that given how far Europe stands militarily from such autonomy — to the Biden Administration.

President Biden is particularly sensitive on the question of American 20th-century sacrifice for France in two world wars and French prickliness over its independence within the alliance.

The document did not mention the American and British deal with Australia that will allow Australian submarines, potentially armed with cruise missiles, to become a potent player in the Pacific in a way that may alter the naval balance of power in an area where China has been extending its influence

foreign policy chief, said in Brussels that the submarine deal reinforced the bloc’s need for more strategic autonomy