“I
see myself as no longer able to guarantee the robust defence force that I
believe is necessary to guarantee the protection of France and the French
people…and to sustain the aims of our country”.
Letter
of Resignation, General Pierre de Villiers, Chief of the French General Staff,
18 July, 2017
Alphen, Netherlands. 21
July. He might have been British! The resignation letter from General de
Villiers to President Macron captured succinctly the dilemma faced by almost
all of Europe’s serious defence powers – all six of them! Or, to put it another
way, it seems these days that Europeans can either have sound defence or sound
money, but not both. What happened, and what are the implications?
France, like Britain, is
a defence paradox. The French armed forces are not just central to the defence
of France, and the exercise of the very considerable influence Paris enjoys, they
are part of the very soul and identity of France. President Macron, who has
triggered what is a crisis in French military leadership unheard of since the
days of President de Gaulle and the Algerian crisis back in the early 1960s,
reflects this paradox. With a defence budget of some $35 billion France is a
leading world military power. President Macron says he wants to increase that
budget from the current 1.77% GDP to 2% GDP by 2025 to meet the NATO Defence
Investment Pledge. And yet General de
Villiers has resigned over a planned $900 million cut to the defence budget.
At the level of strategic
power and influence in what is a rapidly changing world France’s excellent armed forces
faces exactly the same problem Britain faces – an enforced retreat from
excellence because defence investment is arbitrary rather than strategic.
France has a force with a little bit of everything, not much of anything, doing
far too much of all things, pretty much everywhere, and pretty much all of the
time.
The cause of France’s
growing defence crisis is need of Paris to reduce its crippling annual deficit
and burgeoning national debt. This is partly due to the formal commitment made by
France to cut public expenditure by some $50bn to get the deficit within 3% GDP
demanded by the EU. And yet, France’s military commitments continue to grow.
These range from a long-term engagement to stabilise the Sahel, but also extend
across what is a broad military-strategic effort from counter-terrorism to
counter-Russia, including the maintenance of an expensive independent nuclear deterrent. Taken together, and the missions imposed on
the French force by the livre blanc de la
defense, and the military tasks it implies, are leading inexorable to a
breakdown between what the force can afford to do, and what the force must
critically be capable of doing. This tension is made daily more onerous by the
parallel need to understand and then invest in future war if deterrence is to
remain credible.
There is also a political
dimension to what is, in effect, a sacking by President Macron of his military
chief. “Jupiter” as Macron is now called in France, after the Roman king of the
gods and god of thunder and lightning, is about to attempt to face down the six
big ‘syndicats’ (trades unions) in an effort to reform France’s labour market.
Being seen to be tough with the military is one way to indicate to the
political Left that this non-aligned president is not only is tough, he is
prepared to be just as tough with the political Right.
Strategic implications? Here,
Macron’s appointment as defence minister might offer a clue. Florence Parly is
a class act. A socialist and graduate of
the elitist ENA, she is also an ardent pro-European. With France and Germany
about to announce a plan to construct a ‘7G’ fighter, and Berlin committed to
some form of EU-centric European Defence Union, could it be that Macron is
about to abandon France’s much cherished defence sovereignty to embed itself
within European defence? European Defence Community redux?
Which takes me back to
Suez. In the wake of the disastrous 1956 Anglo-French ‘adventure’ to seize back
the Canal Zone from President Nasser’s Egypt London and Paris went their
separate ways. After US President Eisenhower rightly out a stop to Britain’s
almost post-imperial adventurism Paris and London drew completely different
strategic conclusions. France vowed never again to be humiliated by the
Americans. Britain vowed never again to be on the wrong side of the Americans. Is
a similar strategic divergence again on the cards? After all, with Britain
leaving the EU London will naturally lean more towards the Anglosphere, not least because the US-led NATO will be the focus of
British defence efforts.
Not so fast. Whilst my
prescription has that nice neat strategy feel to it that in Europe is
invariably wrong, the simple facts of power and capability suggests something
else might happen. Indeed, in spite of
Brexit and Macron’s ‘more Europe’ posture Britain and France are actually very
close. Events will ensure they remain so because if Macron is no de Gaulle,
Theresa May is no Anthony Eden. Moreover, Florence Parly was a board member of
THALES, a French defence-industrial giant not only at the heart of European
defence, but central to the vitally-important Franco-British strategic
partnership.
Therefore, Macron is far
more likely to reinforce France’s traditional ‘cob-web’ foreign policy strategy
than ‘lose’ France’s distinctiveness in the German-led EU. Paris has
traditionally exerted influence by maintaining a series of bilateral strategic
relationships with key partners, most notably the US, Germany, and the UK. For Paris,
and for all the talk of more EU defence, relative power suggests that EU
Brussels will remain just one more strategic bilateral relationship through
which Paris exerts influence. However. The French armed forces are a key lever
of that influence and will remain so only if they are properly funded and that
funding is applied properly. Are you listening, Chancellor Hammond?
As I peer through the thick
fog of jaw jaw that so mires clear strategic analysis in Europe one thing is
clear; the Franco-British strategic defence partnership is, and will remain,
vital to the defence of Europe. This is because, as the General’s resignation
letter implies, France, unlike a lot of other Europeans, takes matters
strategic very seriously in what is going to be a very dangerous age. It is
precisely because of the reason General de Villiers resigned that Britain and
France need each other. Indeed, neither power these days is sufficient alone to
fulfil even its basic mission of defence in a world in which the one certainly
is uncertainty. In other words, France must lead, even as France reforms.
Britain?
Plus ca change, plus la
meme chose?
