As the war in Ukraine rages on and Europeans scramble to boost their defense spending in response to the new reality of a high-intensity conflict on the continent, France is on track to approve its biggest military budget in over half a century. But critics say the extra cash will do little to make the EU’s most capable army better suited to the dangerous world that has emerged from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The government-sponsored bill, which received a first green light by the French National Assembly on Wednesday and is expected to get its final approval by mid-July, would bring military spending over the next seven years to 413 billion euros, an increase of about 100 billion over the previous period. The goal by 2027 is to reach 2 percent of GDP spent on defense—the target demanded by NATO, which France has long promised and failed to meet, like the vast majority of the other members of the alliance.
But, in an echo that would not be unfamiliar inside the Beltway, some worry that the money is being squandered on too many projects, rather than being concentrated on the hard equipment like tanks, jets, and helicopters that can make the difference on the battlefields of Ukraine. It’s a sign, critics say, that the government hasn’t drawn the right lessons from the conflict, a conventional war dominated by armored formations and artillery, and one in which European countries can’t serve as an arsenal of democracy because they emptied their own warehouses after decades of budget cuts.
“The war in Ukraine has shown once and for all that wars are won on the ground. Technology is important, but at the end of the day it’s about men fighting other men,” said Vincent Desportes, a retired French general and now a professor at Sciences Po university. The French bill “is totally insufficient to build up a high-volume army,” he said. “Not making a substantial effort to increase our stocks of conventional weapons means taking a big risk.”
France isn’t the only country playing catch up. Britain and Germany, two other middling powers, are also both trying to put resources into their long-neglected defense establishments. Nordic countries like Finland (which just joined NATO) and Sweden (which still hopes to) have also made big investments in advanced gear.
But the way the French Armed Forces will be shaped in the near future matters well beyond France, which is the EU’s only nuclear power and sends its military to fight abroad more than anyone else in the bloc. Over the last 60 years, French troops have taken part in more than 30 major interventions around the world, including, most recently, the deployment of thousands of soldiers against jihadist movements in the Sahel region and the participation in the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
The government’s spending plans include some 268 billion euros to modernize and beef up military equipment, and 16 billion euros to replenish France’s dwindling ammunition stockpiles. The number of reservists ready to be called to arms will be doubled. But there are billions more earmarked for the nuclear deterrent, a new aircraft carrier, cyberdefense, space operations, and infrastructure building in French overseas territories; inflation alone will devour some 30 billion euros. That means the country’s aging tanks and aircraft will be modernized at a slower pace than what had been planned in the previous multi-year budget. By 2030, France will have a total of 160 top-end tanks instead of 200, 178 Rafale fighter jets instead of 225, and only 20 of the 169 new Guépard helicopters ordered in 2021. The country will continue to be able to deploy a maximum of 15,000 troops abroad, a far cry from the 60,000 available in the mid-1990s, according to Michel Goya, a military historian and former colonel in the French marines.
Supporters argue that the bill strikes just the right balance between quantity and quality, gradually beefing up the ranks but also making sure the equipment works and the personnel know how to use it properly. “The goal is not for the new material to be simply put on display, but for it to have a real operational impact,” said Thomas Gassilloud, a parliamentary deputy with French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party and the chair of the National Assembly’s defense commission. Funding for training and military exercises, for example, will be increased by 20 billion euros compared to the previous budget.
But gaps remain—it’s not clear how much doubling the reserves will cost, for starters. And the fact that almost half of the spending is planned for after 2027, after the end of Macron’s second and final term, raises eyebrows.
“We have visibility until 2027 and the end of Macron’s presidency. After that, we simply have no idea what’s going to happen,” Goya said. “What’s the point of planning expenses for some 200 billion euros for a period over which they have no control?” he said.
Although French defense budgets have been on the rise since a series of deadly terror attacks in 2015, the French Armed Forces, like most of their EU counterparts, are still paying the price of a quarter-century of belt-tightening that began in the early 1990s, with the end of the Cold War, and accelerated following the 2007-08 financial crisis. By 2015, France’s defense spending had fallen from almost 3 percent of GDP to just under 2 percent. The country was left with one-third of the troops, one-quarter of the artillery pieces, and one-tenth of the tanks. “We are still making up for this collapse,” Goya said.
Now, with Ukraine gobbling up huge quantities of Western-supplied weapons and ammo, the need for larger, more battle-ready armies has become a mantra across much of Europe. But the French government is hardly the only one that’s struggling to live up to its own rhetoric.
In Britain, the government has promised the armed forces an extra 5 billion pounds, but the cash infusion will be used almost entirely to pay for new nuclear-powered submarines that aren’t expected to be delivered before the 2040s and to replace the munitions sent to Ukraine. Meanwhile, a cut of some 10,000 service members is apparently going ahead.
“The country is bankrupt,” said Nick Witney, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “We are not in the position of spending the kind of money [that’s being discussed in France],” he said.
In Germany, more than one year after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s “Zeitenwende” speech about adapting to the “turning point” represented by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, only 30 billion of the 100 billion euros promised at the time to turn around the battered German armed forces have been committed, and none have actually been spent. Meanwhile, Germany’s high inflation rate is already eating away at the fund.
“Things go slowly in Germany, which is not helped by an indecisive chancellor, a fractious coalition, and a very legalistic and bureaucratic procurement apparatus,” Witney said. “The strategic direction is still there and sincerely meant, but I think it’s just taking a hell of a long time to actually manifest itself,” he said.
For now, it’s the countries on the EU’s eastern flank that are really putting their money where their mouths are. Poland, in particular, is on track to spend 4 percent of its GDP on its military this year, more than any other NATO member. As part of its spending spree, Warsaw is purchasing 100 HIMARS rocket launchers and well over 1,000 heavy tanks, said Peer de Jong, vice president of Themiis, a security consultancy. “Poland will clearly become Europe’s largest conventional army,” he said.
But Poland’s entire defense policy revolves around deterring Russia, with Washington’s help. France, which still has a strong influence on many of its former African colonies, continues to think of itself as a global power with strategic autonomy from the United States—which means keeping its fingers in many pies.
“France has global responsibilities,” Gassilloud said. “This bill gives our country the means to remain present in multiple fields and in multiple regions,” he said.
But with a new hot war on the EU’s doorstep, for France, mustering the resources to live up to its own ambitions has become even harder than before. “We feel obliged to participate in the affairs of the whole world, for which we need top-notch equipment,” Goya said. “But behind the showing off, we often find ourselves unable to do things on a big scale.”
Or, as another French defense expert put it, the French army “is like the American Army, but the bonsai version.”
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