The Sentinel Weekly: Right all along?
Plus Ajax fallout, SAFE spending plans, the cost of rearmament and more
Credit where it’s due, the French haven’t gloated too much about how recent events have vindicated their longstanding calls for strategic autonomy. Even Emmanuel Macron’s indoor sunglasses at Davos had a perfectly sound medical explanation.
There is much to be said for the French view of transatlantic relations, which has understood the US to be as much a competitor as an ally since the time of Charles de Gaulle. France is the only European country with a truly independent nuclear deterrent – the UK’s has a significant US dependency – alongside strong conventional forces.
But the newly fashionable view that the French were right all along is too glib. Understanding the need to break free from the US is only part of the puzzle, and other elements of French policy may stand in the way of Europe becoming militarily self-sufficient.
The EU is a confederation of small and medium countries that pool some elements of their sovereignty to achieve greater prosperity – and lately, as Mark Carney pointed out last week, to ensure their survival. Crucially, while some countries are larger and thus more influential than others, none has a special constitutional status.
This is something that former great powers, with an institutional memory of bossing others around, have struggled with. Britain’s post-imperial delusions had the most dramatic consequences with Brexit; but France also has a strong strain of exceptionalism that could, if not tempered, derail its own aim of achieving European autonomy.
All roads leads to Paris
To put it simply, when French officials talk about strategic autonomy, other Europeans often perceive an unspoken coda: “led by France”. Fairly or unfairly, many in Brussels feel that France demands special treatment within the EU, from its refusal to acknowledge English as the common language to its assumption of seniority in joint defence projects.
The FCAS joint fighter jet program, which appears close to collapse, is a case in point. With the project already well underway, Dassault CEO Eric Trappier demanded a reallocation of the work share with a haughty dismissal of his partners’ capabilities: “The Germans may complain, but here [in France] we know how to do this.” As is typical for a large French company, he was swiftly backed up by the government.
For inward investment, too, Sifted this week reported that European defence startups find it prohibitively difficult to access government contracts in France, with some perceiving a bias towards established national firms.
Relations with the UK, whose military is roughly on par with France’s, have also been strained. The Telegraph reported this week that France is trying to block funds from the EU Ukraine Support Loan being spent on Storm Shadow missiles from the UK. That may be legally legitimate if a production line within the EU can meet the same demand, but the episode reinforces the impression of France prioritising its own industry ahead of – and possibly to the detriment of – Europe’s broader mission to arm Ukraine.
Similarly, the UK last year withdrew from talks to join the EU’s SAFE defence funding program after being told the price of admission was €2 billion. By contrast, Canada was allowed in for €10 million. Even adjusting for the size of the UK’s economy, which is a little less than double Canada’s, that makes the UK’s price 100 times higher than that offered to another non-EU ally.
To be clear, there is no indication that France was responsible for the inflated sum presented to the UK. But most people I speak to instinctively think it was France, which suggests a reputational problem at the very least. This diminishes France’s ability to play a leading role in an integrated European rearmament. A potential reopening of EU-UK talks on SAFE, which has been rumoured for the past few weeks, will give France a chance to change this impression.
United in imperfection
France is not alone in having some but not all the answers. Poland has been warning for years about the threat from Russian imperialism, and was shamefully ignored by Western Europe. But its traditional solution, to huddle ever tighter under the US umbrella, now looks short-sighted. Britain has been among Ukraine’s most steadfast allies but its anti-European reflex and the imagined ‘special relationship’ with the US have limited its continental influence.
And there are signs of France’s culture starting to shift. In a New Year address to the armed forces earlier this month, Macron told the country’s defence industry that it should not expect preferential access and that he would “seek European solutions if they are faster or more effective”.
So this is not to single France out for criticism, but to recognise it as one imperfect country among many. If Europe is to meet the challenge of becoming truly independent, its leaders must take ideas from everywhere without imagining that one country has been right all along.
In the news
The UK is making a renewed attempt to join the EU’s SAFE defence funding program, the FT reported, after walking away from an earlier round of talks over an excessively high joining fee.
The FCAS joint fighter jet program could end up with France and Germany each developing their own plane, Airbus Defence and Space CEO Michael Schöllhorn told Euractiv. In some scenarios, separate jets could still be interoperable on a shared ‘combat cloud’.
A UK junior defence minister has reassigned a senior civil servant in charge of the Ajax infantry fighting vehicle program, which has been plagued by safety defects, the Times reported.
Sweden is in talks with France and the UK on nuclear deterrence, following speculation that it might lead the development of an independent Nordic capability.
The European Commission has approved another eight member states’ SAFE spending plans, leaving just Czechia, France and Hungary waiting for approval. Hungary’s request is under particular scrutiny due to longstanding rule of law concerns.
Czechoslovak Group began trading on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange last Friday.
Further reading
Europe must implement the ‘28th regime’ for cross-border incorporation and ease the regulatory burden on venture capital to unlock the full potential of its defence startups, Miguel López Crego wrote in an op-ed for The Sentinel.
Duncan Weldon takes a sober look at the economic cost of rearmament with reference to Britain in the 1930s, in this essay for Engelsberg Ideas.
Donald Trump’s tendency to bluster and then back down gives Europe an excuse not to take him seriously – ultimately making it harder to break its dependency on the US, Janan Ganesh wrote for the FT.
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