The soul of the second coalition is, unsurprisingly, in Berlin itself. Continuing its policy of national champions (Diehl in missiles; OHB in space; Rheinmetall more than KMW, in armor; Hensoldt in defense electronics; TKMS in naval; Renk and MTU in propulsion) and recovery of skills that it still lacks (space propulsion, observation satellites and combat aeronautics and missiles), Germany has understood since the 1990s that it would obtain much more from a recalcitrant France by making reverse alliances than by direct negotiation.
In this sense, recent news is the reissue of the years 1997 to 2000, years when Berlin proposed large-scale mergers to London: Siemens with BNFL, Frankfurt stock exchange with that of London, DASA with British Aerospace. Each time, it was less a question of forging reverse alliances than of putting pressure on France. Too weak to see clearly into its interests and the game of its competitors, too altruistic to see the naivety and scope of its actions, the France of Lionel Jospin offered parity to Germany in the field of aeronautics, she who only asked for a third of it at best (which she weighed very fairly…).
Germany, the soul of reverse coalitions
With its alliances in Italy (in the field of armored vehicles) and in the United Kingdom (across all segments), Berlin is once again setting the same trap for Paris: “give in on the MGCS and the SCAF or we activate the reverse alliance”. The Europe of the arms industry which is being prepared is in reality only a coalition against the French theses in defense and its essential corollary, armaments. There is no surprise in this observation: dominating its military and industrial competitors thanks to the Gaullian heritage, possessing the nuclear scepter which gives it a special place in the concert of great nations, influential through its seat on the Security Council at the United Nations and its arms exports, France is the country to bring back into the ranks of the bitter and jealous mediocrities and the petty bourgeoisie of European defense.
Nothing new under the European sun since, if we are to believe Alain Peyrefitte, General De Gaulle was already making this analysis: “ To dominate it too, we insist on bringing it into a supranational machine under the orders of Washington. De Gaulle doesn't want that. So, we are not happy, and we say it all day long, we are putting France in quarantine. » (May 13, 1964).
The Rheinmetall threat
Marginalized since the creation of KANT then KNDSdespised or even sacrificed in France itself by the government of François Hollande in 2015 with the complicity of UMP deputies, the national land industry only lives on islands (cannons, turrets, shells), having abandoned tanks (without the DGA did not react in 2009 during the suppression of the Leclerc chain by Luc Vigneron), tracked armored vehicles (very questionable choice of all-wheels), long-range and saturating artillery; crushed by the rule of Frank Haun, now drowned in KNDS France without daring to defend itself, Nexter is threatened with disappearance by the double alliance KMW/Rheinmetall within the MGCS and Rheinmetall/Leonardo in all segments.
Blinded by the Franco-German couple, Paris did not pay enough attention to the rise of Rheinmetall, true champion of German land, who, through orders and acquisitions, finds himself rooted in the middle of the German game (as future shareholder of TKMS and armed arm of Berlin's Ukrainian policy), and of the European scene which he has not conquered step by step: in Hungary first, then in the United Kingdom, Lithuania, Romania, Ukraine, Croatia and now in Italy, without forgetting to establish the transatlantic relationship (with Lockheed Martin on the F-35with Textron on the Lynx competition and by purchasing the manufacturer Loc Performance Products). The web woven by Rheinmetall in Europe is a real coalition against French positions.
A division of Europe without France
The same false move is being prepared with the German-British agreement of Trinity House which, even if it will not achieve all its pretensions due to lack of skills and means, is establishing a sustainable and formidable competing axis in key areas for France: nuclear power, long-range missile systems, support drones future generation combat aircraft, land robotics, maritime patrol.
Faithful servants of NATO and Washington, driven by a desire to put France in a position of military and industrial inferiority, the coalitions divided Europe between them: to Germany, the defense of the northern flank of the NATO; to Italy, the defense of the southern flank joining the eastern Mediterranean theater to the Asia-Pacific; in the United Kingdom, Turkey, Poland and the Baltic countries in connection with Germany. Industrial contracts follow the diplomats, with a gigantic harvest of Leopard battle tanks, Boxer armored vehicles, artillery RCH-155Lynx armored infantry fighting vehicles and Panther tanks and ground-to-air systems (22 member countries of the German initiative THEY).
France nowhere in the Europe it claims to build
In summary, France is nowhere in this Europe that it claims to be building; it did not have the political courage to oppose the illegal excesses of the European Commission by practicing the empty chair policy; his government is an unstable mixture of asserted federalism, assumed Atlanticism and eclipsing Gaullism: how could he pursue a policy other than that ” of the dog dying on the run of water » (De Gaulle) consisting of flowing with ease and comfort into the mainstream NATO institution on behalf of Ukraine? As during the Fourth Republic, its political parties are busy with political turmoil and no longer think of the world according to national interests but according to the interests of NATO, Ukraine and Israel.
While France exhausts itself in sterile political debates in a regime that has become unstable (the two go hand in hand), its strategic positions in Europe are deteriorating:
- The coherence of its defense system based on national sovereignty and the defense of national interests, for the benefit of a European federalism under American supervision urgently decreed by the war in Ukraine and the Russian threat;
- Its nuclear deterrence, for the benefit of a very long-range conventional missile project and a German-American-Israeli anti-missile defense with a European vocation, two projects promoted, as if by chance, by Germany;
- Its model of national, monopolistic industries, the only ones capable of designing, developing, producing and maintaining sovereign weapons systems, for the benefit of European industrial mergers which will place the French armies and industry in a position of complete dependence on both Brussels ( NATO and European Union);
- The management of its armaments programs, carried out by its armaments engineers whose profession and vocation it is, for the benefit of European bureaucrats who know nothing about armaments but have legal and financial power;
- Its sovereign freedom to export arms to whomever it wishes and without restraint other than its own interests and morality, for the benefit of European regulations, specially enacted to restrict it, another project carried by Germany.
The worst is that these developments were carried out by the political class itself, which encouraged them with proposals for “dialogue on deterrence”, “European strategic autonomy” or poorly negotiated cooperative programs, putting aside embarrassing aspects such as differences in doctrine, technological level and analyzes on exports.
The worst thing is also that these developments are emerging at the very moment when France, failing to limit its government to sovereign domains and to create wealth instead of taxing and discouraging it, no longer has the means to defend itself: how could it in fact continue to resist the drift in public finances, the systematic underestimation of all its needs (from neglected capacities to neglected infrastructures including predictable but ignored cyclical additional costs) and poor management of its own finances (as evidenced by the staggering amount of charge deferrals)?
If the LPM is officially maintained in appearance, its financial foundations, already undermined from its conception by general underfinancing, appear for what they are: insufficient to carry out national rearmament in a lasting and sustained manner. Will it be necessary, like Louis XIV, to sell the royal silverware? Will it be necessary to sell national goods as the Revolution did in its negligence? Or will it be necessary to crush the French with taxes as the First Empire resigned itself to to avoid borrowing?
A drastic revision of its alliances
The break with the two Brussels is the double condition of national rebirth. Faced with Europe allied against its defense system, France will have no other choice than to take action through a fundamental revision of the role of the State, that is to say the drastic reduction of its ruinous and ineffective social and economic interventions, and a complete revision of its framework of alliances, so that they strengthen it instead of atrophying it.
The Cold War did not prevent either the empty chair policy or the withdrawal of NATO's integrated command, that is to say leaving the two Brussels in favor of a policy of the open sea, and yet General de Gaulle, who made these two major decisions, was neither irresponsible nor thoughtless. The fruits of the great policy he wanted are known: a considerable influence on his diplomacy and his arms exports.
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