A necessary, but sufficient rearmament?
Our armies are not ready for the high-intensity warfare that President Macron imagines with other European leaders. They are not ready because our armies were already overheating and exceeding their operational contracts even before this war in Ukraine.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, our armies have suffered from a mismatch between the budget, resources, missions, and ambitions displayed by the government. One might have thought that with the emergence of Artificial Intelligence in particular, high technology would replace officers, soldiers, sailors, and aviators. This is a grave mistake because war relies on a sufficient number of men and women, and it is healthy that this is so.
French excellence cut to the bone
Granted, France has the only real operational army in Europe (along with Grande-Bretagne to a lesser extent). The French armies remain feared, dreaded, and respected. Their excellence is recognized as far as the États-Unis. But they are cut to the bone, working in discomfort and beyond their operational contracts.
To ensure the defense of France, we must have a sufficient number of military personnel. But the multiple recruitment campaigns are not enough to fill the barracks. Quite simply because millions of young French people no longer feel concerned about the defense of their country.
We do not make soldiers in a society marked by welfare dependency, on a drip-feed of government aid, without patriotic cement, without moral strength, without discipline, and without the unity of the nation.
And even more serious, the rulers of the last 30 years have strived to deconstruct the armies to reduce costs, and rationalize equipment and barracks. Only to settle in the end for a force meant for limited and short-term projections and expeditions.
In a society that no longer recognizes the values of social diversity and equality, that abandons respect for authority, and the recognition of effort, merit, courage, and excellence, it is difficult to train future soldiers. And how can we consider recruiting young people from the suburbs who shout, every day, their hatred of the police and of France. Some of these radicalized young people do not recognize French culture, oppose our history, burn our flag, and flout our values.
The Macron danger?
Faced with this situation, on March 16 in the tense international context surrounding the Ukrainian conflict, the President of the Republic called for a rearmament of the country and announced that in the coming weeks he would present a major overhaul of the Service national universel (SNU), a program set up in 2019, “which will correspond to the needs of the nation and the identified priorities” - without specifying the latter.
But, in reality, the greatest danger for France is Emmanuel Macron. The president wants to build a federalist Europe. He will remain until the end of his mandate with this sole objective. Because for him, France as a nation no longer exists.
Georges Cochet