Repenser la défense face aux crises du 21e siècle
Although this report by the Institut Montaigne focuses on the future of French defence, it also stresses the extent to which defence must be conceived in future within a European dimension and it is this that earned it a mention in this column.
“Since the late 2000s, France and Europe have faced a series of shocks and crises which make up the essence of the history of the 21st century: the financial crash of 2008, the euro crisis, terrorist attacks, the migratory wave, Russian expansionism in Ukraine and the Middle East, that of Turkey in Syria and the Mediterranean”, reads the introduction, which goes on to point out that the “Covid-19 pandemic has thrown into sharp relief the rise in global dangers and the vulnerability of our country and of the whole Union” (our translation throughout). It then lists various factors in the “rapid and irreversible degradation of the strategic environment”, such as jihadism, which is described as the “greatest threat”, and China, which has plans to “mobilise its ‘total-capitalist’ model.” “The result is a militarisation of the sea, of space, of the Poles and of the cyber-world as well as a new arms race, which saw 1920 billion dollars mobilised in 2019. It cannot be ruled out that the next major crisis will not be of a financial or public health nature, but a military and strategic one”, the authors argue, stressing that “France and Europe are in the frontline” and that “Europe has no alternative to affirming its autonomy”. The Trump administration’s attacks on NATO prompted awareness in the European states, but there is now a risk that “Joe Biden’s election will slow the efforts of the Europeans, even though the new President of the United States is planning to make a connection between the renewal of NATO and the re-engagement of the Europeans in the security of the continent”.
“The Europe of security (the choice of the ‘security’ is clearly neither random nor trivial), whatever the obstacles it comes up against, continues to be a vital gamble that France must carry on making and behind which it must rally. This, indeed, is the only possible response to the restructuring of globalisation around regional blocs, to the growing wave of threats and the fact that the United States is giving the priority to the Asia-Pacific region. The rebirth of NATO (…) and the gradual affirmation of European strategic autonomy go hand in hand with each other”, the authors continue, unable to refrain from parroting, at every opportunity, the old Parisian mantra that a “European preference in military procurement must be promoted in order to preserve the (French?) industrial base without which the EU will be unable to aspire to strategic autonomy”. How could anybody possibly argue the reverse? For the vast majority of Europeans, however, starting with those who lack their own defence industry, this mantra looks very much like the ultimate argument to buy French. It brings a smile or a grimace. And the banner of European preference always ends up looking like scaremongering. European preference cannot be enforced as a requirement. Ultimately, it will be the consequence of a European political awareness.
The report is entirely realistic when it points out that Europe is falling behind dramatically in areas such as space (the 2021-2027 envelope is just 13.2 billion euros, while the civilian and military budget of the United States for space was almost 60 billion for the year 2020 alone) and digital, a field in which “France and the European Union remain in a state technological vassalage to the American and Israeli players”. Although the digital shortfall “will no doubt be impossible to catch up in every area”, the report recommends a focus at European level on data storage (particularly the cloud) and encryption. The authors also highlight investment efforts in telecommunication satellites, such as GOVSATCOM, and the launch of the programme dedicated to a future broadband configuration.
The report is equally realistic where it makes the point that the number of people employed in the French industry fell from 23.7% to 12% of the active population between 1970 and 2014, with the contribution of the manufacturing industry to GDP of just 10% in 2016, pointing to a process of deindustrialisation that will increase vulnerability. As the public health crisis made abundantly clear, with the shortages of masks and other equipment, this vulnerability is widely shared at European level. “The European Union had a decisive role in preserving the euro and will no doubt have one likewise in the future responses to the economic fallout of the coronavirus”, the authors acknowledge, “but the Union showed itself in this crisis to be incapable of giving in support to its member states, which set out their response strategies in an almost exclusively national framework”. They did so with coherence and effectiveness that was greatly appreciated by the citizens! It is also worth reiterating that once again, the EU was able to take action only within the extremely narrow framework of the treaties, because the member states, including France, were so vehemently opposed to the idea of a proper European health policy, which was called for by representatives of civil society with the support of members of the European Parliament, most notably at the European Convention on the drafting of the constitutional treaty.
In terms of defence in the strictest sense, France, like Europe in general, still cruelly lacks capabilities in strategic transport, politicians, drones, etc. However, the report also stresses that “when it comes to top-tier frigates, the Navy is at the limit of its capabilities” (with just 15 units) and that for the army’s median tanks, “the target for 2030 has been set at 300 Jaguars, even though we had 452 vehicles in 2008”. “For the air force, the target for 2030 is 185 multi-purpose aircraft”, despite having had 420 fighters in 2008. “Turkey announces that it deployed around 80,000 troops for its operations in northern Syria in 2019. It is entirely credible that some 20 drones were in operation at the same time. This is more than the entire (French) operational land forces (77,000 troops) and the French fleet of drones”, the report stresses, going on to call for the budgetary effort to be continued, as well as for increased efforts in the fields of maintenance (MOC) and training.
The authors, who are keenly aware of the scale of the challenges and threats, but also of the inadequacy of French resources burdened by a public debt that is now in excess of 120% of GDP, implicitly acknowledge that the keys to most subjects are situated in Berlin: “France must take account of the particular sensitivities of Germany and its interests. Its political and industrial ambition in Europe in the field of defence and its relations with the Alliance often get in the way of joint projects. The fact that there is such a hold-up in drones is evidence of these difficulties. For these reasons, France must continue to open itself up, as it is already doing, to as many partners as possible. The fact is that only a joint Franco-German ambition will bring on board the rest of Europe and make it possible to fire the main building blocks of strategic autonomy”.
“A strengthened role for the EU in the fields of foreign affairs and defence is not in conflict with NATO – indeed, it is a condition of a reinforced transatlantic partnership by allowing the EU to make its voice heard as a strong and reliable partner for the United States, particularly against powers such as China, which was described as a ‘systemic rival’ in a European Commission communication in 2019. Increased spending in the field of defence by Europeans stems from the same logic and allows for a better division of the burden of collective defence”, the report argues.
Finally, the authors quite rightly point out that there is “currently a prevailing bipartisan consensus on the part of the American political classes in favour of prioritising actions to curb China’s rising power”. Some criticism even goes as far as to consider that this consensus extends to a devaluation of NATO and the transatlantic relationship. In any event, “the election of Joe Biden is unlikely to be enough to appease all sources of political disagreements between the Europeans and the United States, particularly over trade, taxing the digital giants (despite progress in negotiations at the OECD, an agreement is still a long way away), the extraterritoriality of American laws and sharing the burden of defence”. They conclude that the “one way or another, the relationship with the United States is reaching the end of a cycle and it is too soon to predict what it will be like in the future. Against this backdrop, France and Europe cannot afford to rely solely on their alliance with the United States to ensure their security”. (Olivier Jehin)
Erwin Bruder, Alain Quinet et al Repenser la défense face aux crises du 21e siècle (available in French only). Report by the Institut Montaigne (February 2021). 176 pages. The report can be downloaded free of charge from the website http://www.institutmontaigne.org
Suprémacistes
No doubt this book owes its title and, incidentally, its subtitle, to the publisher, which is clearly more interested in selling it than in ensuring that it is properly proofread. What the book deals with is by no means supremacists of the White Power, Ku Klux Klan type or other ultras, fascists and neo-Nazis. The transatlantic rather than “global” investigation, another abuse of language, concerns exclusively what is currently described as the “identitarian Right”. As for the “gurus”, these are a handful of ideologues and influences sharing ideas on the Internet, in the United States and Western Europe, based around the defence of white Europeans or whites of European origin whose identity, they argue, is under threat from the demographic growth of other population groups.
Although the author is to be credited with a general attempt to be objective in the treatment of the subject, it is nonetheless to be regretted that he suffers from a typically French tendency to favour the people as a nation at the expense of the concept, which he attributes to German Romanticism, of people as a cultural community. On the one hand, these communities are unquestionably real, as we are daily reminded by the Scots, Catalans, Flemish and Corsicans and, with less success or political will, the Bretons and the Alsatians. On the other, denying the existence of peoples and cultural differences or to attempt, as some in France have been doing for two centuries, to make them do a disappearing act, inevitably leads to all identitarian demands.
As a philosopher – he holds the Professorship in Rhetoric at the University of Cape Town in South Africa –Philippe-Joseph Salazar sets out here to follow Herodotus’s example with an intellectual field research exercise, interviewing those currently giving voice to this new form of right-wing mindset, which shares the protest of the traditional right and the classic far right, the rejection of elites and institutions, the fear of the “Great Replacement”. These movements, parties and organisations include the Alt-Right (Alt being short for Alternative), the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), PEGIDA, Génération Identitaire, which has just been broken up by decree in France, Identitäre Bewegung (IBÖ) in Austria and Scandza in Sweden. The exercise will take the philosopher and his readers from Washington to Leipzig via Long Island, Vienna, Copenhagen and Paris, among many other places. The work is possibly equally valuable for the care taken with the descriptions of the places and individuals encountered (Austria’s Martin Lichtmesz, Caroline Sommerfeld from Götz Kubitschek of Germany, Renaud Camus of France, among others) as for its unpicking of this embryonic ideology. The author predicts a great future for it, but this can be legitimately doubted, as I do, more than ever, since reading the book.
“Unlike previous ideologies (communism, capitalism, fascism, liberalism), this one does not aim to bring about a radical change in all political societies by setting in place a global and universal system (…). The return to race aims to restore a political and cultural society exclusively for the ‘white world’, formerly European, whilst leaving other cultures and political societies to fend for themselves, to go about their own business without interfering with what is hailed as a white and European Renaissance. It is the rejection of a common humanity. It is a new ideology of separatism by race which, in every case, collides with the ultra-liberal precepts of globalisation and those of anti-globalisation”, the author explains (our translation throughout). It feeds off fears and stokes the fears of the many people in our societies, including among the younger generations, who feel dispossessed by globalisation and experience, from many different angles, the erosion of public power, which is increasingly incapable of protecting them, and a loss of socio-cultural reference points in their everyday lives.
If there is any supremacism in this ideology, it seems to be limited to the belief in the superiority of the Western white civilisation. As the investigation stresses, the proponents of this ideology identify as “white nationalists”. “They claim to be European (often, even, in the United States), but certainly not, for most of them, ‘Indo-Europeans’. Southern Europe, which is too mixed, causes problems for them. They lay claim to the legacy of ancient Greece, not so much Rome, as the idea of an empire frequently revolts them”, Salazar observes, adding: “they do not want the white race to impose itself on other races, because a new domination effort, as previously with colonialism, that can only, in their view, lead once again to the current situation in which the white race, a minority at global level, is in immediate danger from migration, under threat of dissolution in the medium term in a mix of populations and condemned to extinction in the long term”.
The author argues that “this tectonic movement that is bringing about a resurgence of race, just as a push can cause a mountain to grow, is masked, hidden, disguised by a generalised narrative of ‘living together’, international cooperation, preventative human rights organisations, a global management of differences ‘without borders’”. “This tapestry of words hides the internal movements that are causing the walls of the European house to crack”, he adds, stating that a “white international is starting to take shape before our eyes”. He is undoubtedly correct to criticise complacent discourse that hides the reality and his work is a call for vigilance, which is always useful given the current resurgence of theories with racial connotations. And yet, although the Internet is a massive accelerator of the circulation of ideologies, doubt can be cast on the ability of their supporters who, as the book shows, differ on a great many points, to federate into a single “white international” movement. If it is to succeed, an ideology tends to need a conquering dimension, whereas the ideology dealt with here is more akin to defending a citadel under siege: you can be enthusiastic about it for a certain length of time, but a citadel invariably ends up being either captured or abandoned. (OJ)
Philippe-Joseph Salazar. Suprémacistes – L’enquête mondiale chez les gourous de la droite identitaire. Plon. ISBN: 978-22-592-7968-0. 281 pages. €21,00