[R-G] French shifting strategic policy

[Anthony Fenton]

French shifting strategic policy
By Steven Erlanger and Katrin Bennhold
Monday, June 16, 2008
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/16/europe/paris.php

PARIS: In its first new national strategic policy in 14 years, France  
has decided that its security is best guaranteed within Europe and the  
NATO alliance, marking a significant shift away from French  
exceptionalism.

The new military and security strategy, which President Nicolas  
Sarkozy will present in public Tuesday after months of internal  
debate, calls for a smaller, more mobile army, with savings spent on  
better intelligence and modern equipment.

Building a credible European defense is a French priority, the  
strategy says. But French plans were damaged by the Irish rejection of  
a new set of rules for the 27-nation European Union that would have  
made it easier for members to cooperate on defense.

In fact, publication of the French white paper was delayed until after  
the Irish referendum last week on the so-called Lisbon Treaty, to  
avoid providing the neutral Irish with another reason to vote no.

The new defense doctrine seeks to prepare France and Europe for a post- 
Soviet world in which conventional military threats are downgraded  
compared to a multitude of complex, globalized risks, ranging from  
epidemics to terrorism and cyberwar.

Jobs in defense will be cut, with estimates of 54,000 over the next  
six to seven years out of a current total of some 330,000. Most of the  
reductions will come from the standing army and its noncombatant  
support services, with the intention of reversing the current 60-40  
ratio of support to combat personnel.

The cuts are politically sensitive, given local and political  
interests, but a reduction in personnel is the only way to provide  
more financial room for maneuver for acquisitions and training  
intended to create a more modern army, where threats are more likely  
to come from terrorism, cyberwarfare or missile attack than from a  
traditional invasion.

The plan foresees raising the budget for military acquisition, for  
example, by more than 16 percent, without immediately raising defense  
spending, and spending twice as much on space, with the intention of  
creating a space-based early warning system against missile attack. A  
decision to build another aircraft carrier will be postponed and  
spending on intelligence, which is to be reorganized under a single  
chief, is expected to double.

France's defense budget is about $57.3 billion a year. The plan  
foresees an increase of one percent over the rate of inflation  
beginning in 2012. France currently spends about 2.3 percent of its  
gross domestic product on defense; that will drop to 2 percent over  
the next 12 years.

The plan also sets a new requirement of at least 30,000 French  
soldiers able to be deployed in combat within six months, with 5,000  
soldiers on permanent operational alert, part of the larger goal of  
helping to make a European defense capability both credible and  
functional. Europe's goal, far from being realized, is to have 60,000  
soldiers able to be deployed.

Addressing force reductions, Defense Minister Hervé Morin wrote in the  
newspaper Le Monde on Monday: "To get going, to adapt, that's the  
price to pay; it's the price to pay for the defense personnel who have  
the feeling of having already given a lot compared to other  
administrations. But it's the price to pay to stay credible."

If France and Europe are capable of acting on their own, a senior  
French official said, the United States will take them more seriously.

A copy of the plan was provided in a briefing by senior French  
officials who would not allow their names to be used before Sarkozy's  
speech.

The officials emphasized that France's operational needs had changed  
since the last such white paper, in 1994, and that France would  
concentrate less on bilateral military actions in Africa, for  
instance, than in joint operations with the European Union, NATO or  
regional groups like the Organization of African Unity.

Asked if this finally meant the end of French colonialism, one  
official said: "It's the end of decolonization."

Sarkozy created political waves here when he announced that France  
would reintegrate into the military wing of NATO, so long as there was  
"parallel progress" in developing a European defense and security  
policy that could carry out European Union missions outside the  
American-led NATO alliance.

It was a rejection not only of an older Gaullism but also of the  
generally anti-interventionist and anti-Bush policies of the  
opposition Socialist Party.

In 1966, angry with American and British domination of NATO, President  
Charles de Gaulle said that the world situation "stripped of  
justification" French military integration in NATO and he ordered all  
foreign forces out of France. Today, with the Soviet Union gone and  
the European Union more fully established, Sarkozy has decided that  
France is best served by participating fully with Washington and NATO,  
in part because the vast majority of members of the European Union are  
also members of NATO.

"Today there's no longer a raison d'être" to remain outside NATO, an  
official said. "It's not just about integrating France into NATO, but  
NATO into Europe."

The alliance had changed considerably with new members in the last  
decade, the official said, and new peace-keeping missions in places  
like Afghanistan and Kosovo.

"We see the trans-Atlantic relationship as a key to European security  
and French security," he said, emphasizing that the EU and NATO are  
now seen as "complementary," not as rivals.

Still, officials made it clear that France would preserve its  
independent nuclear deterrent outside any alliance structure and that  
France would not allow its troops to serve permanently under any  
foreign officer, even in peacetime.

The Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty will create significant  
difficulties for France, which takes over the revolving presidency of  
the EU on July 1 and wants to reintegrate into NATO next year. In the  
Lisbon Treaty itself is a tool known as "permanent structured  
cooperation," which would lay down binding commitments for EU members  
willing to contribute to Europe's defense.

"It's delicate to go full speed to implement it now since we don't  
know if the Lisbon Treaty will ever exist," said Justin Vaisse, a  
former adviser to the French Foreign Ministry and a senior fellow at  
the Brookings Institution in Washington. The prospect that the Irish  
may be asked to vote again on the treaty means that France's whole  
presidency "is somehow under the spell of a possible new vote," he said.
The New York Times