Ghosts Are Haunting France’s Remilitarization |
Rarely have so few done so much to unsettle so many. Over the past few months, political and military leaders in France, with their eyes fastened on Russia, have declared that while their fellow citizens might not be interested in war, war is nevertheless interested in them. Not just any war, moreover, but one whose hybrid character—already apparent in Russia’s use of rogue drones and cyberattacks in NATO countries—will be unprecedented and whose timing, with the fraying of traditional alliances and weakening of national economies, could not be more unfortunate. Contrary to the old saw that generals always plan for the last war, the French military is now scrambling to plan for the next war.
Its efforts, however, have been haunted by ghosts of wars past.
Rarely have so few done so much to unsettle so many. Over the past few months, political and military leaders in France, with their eyes fastened on Russia, have declared that while their fellow citizens might not be interested in war, war is nevertheless interested in them. Not just any war, moreover, but one whose hybrid character—already apparent in Russia’s use of rogue drones and cyberattacks in NATO countries—will be unprecedented and whose timing, with the fraying of traditional alliances and weakening of national economies, could not be more unfortunate. Contrary to the old saw that generals always plan for the last war, the French military is now scrambling to plan for the next war.
Its efforts, however, have been haunted by ghosts of wars past.
Last November, France’s military chief of staff, Fabien Mandon, addressed the annual conference of mayors. Rather than the usual boilerplate, his speech had the impact of a bomb. The soft-spoken general warned that, given Russia’s actions since its 2008 invasion of Georgia, Europe’s flaccid responses have convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin that “Europeans are weak.” And Putin, Mandon continued, was right to come to this conclusion. “We live in a risky world and may have to use force to protect who we are,” he observed, yet the French refuse to acknowledge this reality. The subject of war has “completely disappeared from our family discussions,” he remarked, yet the near future portends the likelihood that his fellow citizens will “suffer economically because priorities will go to defense production.” After a pregnant pause, he concluded that the nation must be “ready to accept losing its children.”
Mandon’s speech sparked a firestorm of outrage. The leader of the far-left La France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, lambasted Mandon’s call for the French to accept........