If the government is to be believed, France is in a new era: that of the war effort. Alarmist speeches are multiplying, announcements of rearmament succeed one another, and billions are accumulating. The Russian threat is the ultimate argument justifying a massive redirecting of public money towards the defense industry.
But behind this martial rhetoric lies a more worrying reality: that of a country abandoning its priorities in favor of a logic of militarization for which the French will pay the price.
Sacrificed public services
Because money does not appear by miracle. Every billion dedicated to armaments is a billion missing elsewhere. In hospitals whose emergency rooms are closing due to lack of staff. In schools where teachers have been denouncing the degradation of learning conditions for years. In public transport, road infrastructure, the rail network, social housing, and the renovation of abandoned territories.
While the executive talks about tanks, ammunition, and military industrial production, everyday France is falling apart. Millions of citizens are witnessing the deterioration of the public services they finance with their taxes. Roads are degrading, trains are accumulating delays, city centers are becoming deserted, urban cleanliness is declining in many municipalities, and access to healthcare is an obstacle course.
A financial contradiction
Yet, the government persists. We are expected to accept these sacrifices in the name of a danger presented as imminent. We are expected to accept that debt explodes, that social spending is squeezed, and that public investment is postponed to finance a rearmament whose economic consequences no one can measure.
This headlong rush comes at the very moment when the country's financial situation is among the most worrying in its recent history. Public debt is reaching new heights, deficits are widening, and growth prospects remain fragile. Despite this, political leaders, who have been explaining for years that there is no more money for pensions, hospitals, or local authorities, find tens of billions when it comes to armaments.
Growing distrust
This contradiction fuels growing distrust in public opinion. How can we ask the French for efforts while committing to ever-larger military spending? How can we explain to a family struggling to find housing, heat their home, or commute that the national priority must be the production of shells?
Even more concerning, some are considering mobilizing popular savings to support the defense industry. The Livret A, historically intended for financing social housing and the general interest, could become a tool in the service of the military-industrial complex. A symbolic evolution of a profound change in model: citizens' money would no longer be used to build housing or public facilities, but to fuel a war economy.
Bernard Bertucco Van Damme