AUX ARMES, CITOYENS!
Diana Geddes explains why
the French are spending more, not less, on defence
Paris WHILE everyone else is talking of dis- armament, reducing defence spending, and remodelling their defence policies in the light of the new world order which is now emerging, France continues to move in exactly the opposite direction, developing new and ever more devastating nuclear weapons, increasing defence spending, and clinging to the same doctrine of nuclear deterrence which has served as the basis for its national defence for the past 30 years.
The almost total absence of any public debate on defence matters at such a time is disconcerting. It is as if the powers that be dare not call into question France's de- fence policy either because they fear it might be found wanting if examined too closely, or because they have nothing with which to replace it. Either way, it would mean the end of France's much-envied national consensus on defence matters.
So the government has adopted the seemingly hypocritical position of support- ing disarmament (by others), and the abandonment of modernisation program- mes such as the replacement of the Lance missile, while insisting on the need to maintain and improve its own defence capacity on the ground that while the threat from the Soviet bloc appears to have diminished, its military potential is still there, and that anything could happen in this highly unstable period. The high priest of this argument is Jean-Pierre Chevenement, the Socialist defence minister with very Gaullist views on defence and national soverignty. Asked recently whether he believed we were entering a new era of peace, he replied: 'In the short and medium term, I'm not worried; I'm even reasonably optimistic. But in the longer term, France's interests require vigilance . . . . Ten years from now, the horizon remains obscure. Yet ten years is the horizon for our main defence programmes . . . The present climate does not diminish the necessity to provide for our security and to have good arms at our disposal.' Chevenement tends to regard disarma- ment as simply a process of replacing the least effective weapons — an exchange of quality for quality. The description of disarmanent as 'qualitative re-armament' is 'not far from the truth', he says. Hence the need to keep up France's research and development in the military field; not least, he adds, with an eye to financial practicali- ties, because a reduction in the Americans' arsenal is sure to lead to greater American competition in foreign arms markets! (We have come a long way from the time when Mitterrand, newly installed as President, felt so squeamish about the whole idea of weapons and war that he refused to visit the Le Bourget air show until the exhibits had been 'disarmed'. Arms sales are now one of France's biggest foreign currency earners.) In absolute terms, France already spends 'They've put their prices up from an arm and a leg.' more on its defence than any other Nato country save the United States. At a time when Britain, Germany, the United States and others are making big inroads in their defence spending, France has decided to maintain its planned 4 per cent increase (in real terms) in spending on military equip- ment next year, bringing it to a total of 107 billion francs, one third of which will go on nuclear weapons. Total defence spending (including running costs) is due to go up by 2.8 per cent. All the main arms program- mes are to be maintained, including the replacement of the so-called 'pre-strategic' or tactical Pluton missile (the virtual twin of Lance) by the longer-range (300 miles) Hades missile, which is just as likely to fall on German soil as the Nato missile which was to have replaced the Lance, but has now been abandoned.
France's policy of nuclear deterrence is based on the concept of a final nuclear warning at sub-strategic or tactical level, which would be automatically triggered by any attack on France's 'vital interests' (left undefined), leading (if unheeded) directly to the unleashing of France's strategic force de frappe. Targeted unashamedly on (Soviet) centres of population, this force de frappe is designed to cause such appalling destruction (there is talk of 70 million Russians being killed in a matter of hours) that the mere threat of its use would (in theory) be sufficient to deter any potential aggressor. As a former French foreign minister put it: 'The French doctrine of deterrence is based not on the use of nuclear force, but on its non-use.' France's doctrine is very similar to the original Nato doctrine known as Mutually Assured Des- truction or MAD, which Nato abandoned in the mid-Sixties in favour of a more flexible nuclear response which it believed would be a more credible deterrent.
The upheavals taking place in Eastern Europe have led to calls for a radical rethinking of the very policies of Nato, and this will be the main subject of discussion at the Nato summit in London next week (5-6 July). Some suggest that this could provide a good opportunity for France to be gently eased back into Nato's integrated military command which it left (under de Gaulle) in 1966, though it has remained a member of the Alliance. But France does not want to rejoin; that is to say, it insists that there is no question of its doing so. Apart from any other considerations, it believes that its re-integration would put new pressure on the inclusion of the French nuclear forces in the INF super- power talks — something it has until now always successfully resisted.
At the same time, however, France does want to be actively involved in any reform of Nato. It particularly wants to avoid a renovated. Nato from being given the kind of political role which could detract from Mitterrand's vision of a politically united Europe. 'We must not think that the military alliance should occupy itself with everything and anything,' Mitterrand said recently with just a hint of tetchiness, while Roland Dumas, his foreign minister, claimed to be 'perplexed' about the mean- ing of calls by the Americans, British and others for Nato to expand its role so as to `build peace' as much as it used to 'keep peace'.
However, some French politicians, in- cluding certain members of the present government, would like to get back into the centre of Western defence planning after, as they see it, being hamstrung for so long by de Gaulle's 'go-it-alone' legacy. But it is a highly sensitive issue. 'The day we put France back into Nato, our national consensus will be gone,' one Gaullist de- fence expert explained. Even if Mitterrand secretly wanted to become, as Douglas Hurd delicately put it, a partner on an equal footing with the other Nato partners, it would be a particularly bad time for him to be seen to be failing French patriotic interests when Le Pen and his extreme- right National Front party are riding so high in the opinion polls. Any closer French involvement with Nato would at present require some form of fig-leaf.
Two-thirds of the French say they sup- port their country's independent nuclear deterrent. It is not just a question of defence, but also of national status. As a French general said: 'It is thanks to our policy of nuclear deterrence that France enjoys a place in the world far above what it should have politically and economical- ly.' Yet the findings of a recent (April) poll in Le Monde seem to suggest that many of the French might actually be ready to consider a reduction in their independence regarding defence policy. Asked if there were one day a European government, which areas should remain under the con- trol of the French government, only 33 per cent said defence.
Under the surface, cracks are beginning to appear in France's vaunted national consensus. The same Le Monde poll shows 59 per cent of the French in favour of big reductions in defence spending, for exam- ple. The Soviet Union is no longer seen as a threat by the great majority of the French people. Leading socialists, such as Laurent Fabius, former prime minister and now President of the National Assembly, are beginning to demand concrete evidence of the 'dividends of peace'. Defence experts, such as Francois Heisbourg, adviser to the former socialist French defence minister, Charles Hernu, and now head of the Institute of Strategic Studies in London, are calling for a complete revision of France's defence policy, coupled with big cuts in defence spending, including the abandonment of the Hades missile.
Although little is being said in public, a debate is clearly going on behind the scenes. The government has insisted that next year's planned defence spending, as laid down in the 1990-1993 defence prog- ramme, remains untouched, but has never- theless left the door open for a revision of the 1992 budget. The official word is still that all the main equipment programmes will be maintained, but hints have been dropped that the Hades missile might, after all, be abandoned, perhaps at a time when Mitterrand could expect to gain political capital out of such an announce- ment.
It might prove useful, for example, to help anchor a united Germany securely within Nato. Officially, France welcomes the re-unification of the two Germanys; unofficially, the prospect tends to make Frenchmen very nervous. The idea of a sovereign neutral Germany would be in- tolerable to them. France has built up very close defence ties with West Germany over the last five years, including a joint Franco- German brigade which Chevenement sometives holds up as a model for future possible multi-national forces in Europe. But who can guarantee that a united Germany will continue to have the same approach on defence matters?
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