Australien wählt Mitsubishi über den deutschen Konkurrenten Thyssenkrupp für 6,5 Mrd. USD Verteidigungsabkommen aus

Could you post the text of the article?
It looks like the article is paywalled.

Considering there’s a decent chance Australia and Japan would be fighting on the same side in a Pacific war it makes sense for commonality purposes to acquire weapons and equipment from countries Australia would likely be fighting beside.

Wonder if this current HMAS Canberra ever sailed to the Savo island.

The reality of it is that Australia is in the Asia-Pacific neighbourhood and Japan is a key alley, facing very similar challenges. Japan is also a country that Europe is building a lot more connections with, including a rather comprehensive trade deal, and it has a lot of common ground with the EU too in many areas. Those interconnections are likely to grow, particularly with the changes in American engagement with the world.

It’s unfortunate for ThyssenKrupp that they didn’t win a contract for this, but it’s a competitive market and Mitsubishi just had an ability to provide what the tender was looking for. European bidders win plenty of big Australian contracts too and have long been key suppliers in infrastructure etc too.

However, at the end of the day I think we should be seeing Australia, NZ, Japan, Canada, South Korea and many other likeminded countries as key partners in trying to retain a stable democratic, liberal, and rules based trade world with a sense of an optimistic outlook.

I’d rather see deeper collaboration with all of these countries – you’re going to win and lose some bids and contracts – but on balance deeper collaboration is likely to be far better for the whole lot of us, particularly with the chaos in the U.S.