France to Return to NATO Command, Restructure Military

One hopes that Senators Obama and McCain (and the other 98 US Senators) have been paying attention to the news out of France. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced that France needs to restructure its military because terrorism is the greatest threat to French security, not the Nazis nor the Soviets. He’s going to put France back into NATO’s command structure, from which de Gaulle withdrew in 1966. He’s also closing bases and reducing headcount to fight the next war, not the last one.

Mr. Sarkozy is the most Atlanticist president the Fifth Republic has ever had; indeed, in certain quarters, he’s known as “Sarko l’Americain.” In the first review of French military needs in 14 years (in a paper called "The White Book on Defense and Homeland Security"), the President of the Republic has put his own stamp on things, which includes a lack of Gaullist strutting born of insecurity. “We can renew our relations with NATO without fearing for our independence and without the risk of being unwillingly dragged into a war,” said Mr. Sarkozy.

Ironically, what he wants to do is what Field Marshall Donald von Rumsfeld wanted to do with America’s troops, make them more mobile and smaller to fight terrorism (sadly, the Field Marshall then decided to fight a conventional war in Mesopotamia with too few troops). President Sarkozy is cutting troop levels from 271,000 to 224,000; he’s reducing combat-ready troops from 50,000 to 30,000; he’s closing 50 bases including 4 permanent bases in Africa; and he’s going to double the intelligence budget for surveillance equipment.

Clearly, this is not Euro-pacifism, the unilateralist approach so rightly mocked in the 1980s. Rather, Mr. Sarkozy is putting the French military firmly in the 21st century. The French President noted, “Today, the most immediate threat is that of a terrorist attack. Thanks to the effectiveness of our security forces, France has not been attacked in recent years. But the threat is there, it is real and we know that it could tomorrow take on a new form, even more serious, by nuclear, chemical and biological means.” France’s traditional enemies/rivals are now far less dangerous. Defense minister, Herve Morin, echoed this, “There is no risk of an invasion today . . . but on the other hand we need to be able deploy forces to participate in the stabilization of regions or zones in crisis.”

This isn’t a done deal by any stretch of the imagination. The Fifth Republic remains a republic, so the legislature will have something to say about how all this shakes out. The French military will no doubt make its preference known as well. Nevertheless, France is going where America needs to go in its military evolution, and one wonders if Messrs. McCain and Obama have sufficient leadership skills to follow the French on this issue.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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