6 ms·

The US is separated from Iraq by half a world, but invaded it twice. France still has a top-10 military and maybe the most effective overseas force projection

The US is separated from Iraq by half a world, but invaded it twice. France still has a top-10 military and maybe the most effective overseas force projection capabilities outside the US and Great Britain (maybe China, we'll see how effective their navy is, sooner or later). Not to mention a long-standing nuclear arsenal. If Europe—any of it, at least in the EU or NATO—is attacked from the East, the French will be on the front lines, and landing on beaches. Turkey, on its own or as a puppet of (probably—god, they've wanted it for like 200+ years at this point) Russia, is increasingly a realistic threat. Plus Russia itself. Like other major European former-colonizer states, France maintains strong ties to many parts of the world and is relied on, or considers itself responsible for, security in those regions. Algeria is attacked? France will surely show up to the party. Algeria decides to take some kind of Cuba-like action against French property? France will likely be there, in a very different capacity. They have strong interest in Lebanon (threatened, potentially, by Syria and Turkey, among others) and much of West Africa, as well, where, if you follow international news, their foreign legion and special forces are often deployed and quite active. Sidebar: They're also possibly the most experienced torturers in the West. You see them called in for it sometimes, if you read between the lines a bit. Yikes. See also: Libya, and Italy's leadership there (for better or worse). France has similar ties to a dozen or more countries in Africa and the Levant. Warranted or not from some broader perspective, they'll tend to see intervention in conflicts there as obligatory and desirable.

zabzonk 6y ago
> the French will be on the front lines, and landing on beaches. They have never done so effectively in the past (Vietnam? Algeria? Suez?) and I don't see them doing it now or any time in the future.
- gh-throw 6y ago
  I think it's safe to say they intend to do that, though, in the event of an outright invasion or hostile coup of one of their closely-tied states in Africa or the Levant, or an attack on Europe. Which explains the exercises.
- hollerith 6y ago
  France's military performance in WW I was outstanding. The only way to win was to take massive casualties. They incurred the massive casualties and won. Very few of the world's 193 or so countries will ever be able to summon what we might "collective national will and capacity for sacrifice" (for any purpose) to the degree France did in WW I. (Russia and the Soviet Union have also performed outstandingly in war, but the French government treats its citizens much better much more consistently than Russia or the Soviet Union ever have.)
- sofixa 6y ago
  > Vietnam? Algeria? Suez? Vietnam and Algeria were asynchronous battlefields, and nobody seems to be able to win those. ( Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam) Suez failed politically and internationally, and the French were forced to pull back because the British got forced by the US. Militarily it had a decent start before that. And all of those were more than 60 years ago, so hardly applicable today.
tablespoon 6y ago
> Sidebar: They're also possibly the most experienced torturers in the West. You see them called in for it sometimes, if you read between the lines a bit. Yikes. Can you expand on this?
- gh-throw 6y ago
  I have zero references, just that I've encountered that bit of "common knowledge" enough times among IR professors and military-connected people to take it as basically true. As any such hearsay/common-knowledge, it could be wrong. I've heard a lot of stuff like "headlines say French advisors arrived in Afghanistan, guess they needed some help with interrogations (ahem, torture)." I should have been more up-front about the quality of that statement (middling, I'd judge). The way those things are presented sometimes in e.g. Foreign Affairs sure seem to support that subtext. Strikes me as somewhat less "well it's denied officially, but nonetheless everyone knows..." than Israeli nuclear capabilities. Attempts to find any recent documentation of this are frustrated by modern search engines being terrible, and French torture in the Algerian conflict being so well-documented and infamous that results for that overwhelm everything else no matter how one tries to search past it (and Algeria would likely be mentioned in any long treatment of the topic, making it even harder to narrow in on more-recent examples). There's a definite sentiment of "the last Western government you want to come after you with black ops is France, because they'll be ripping out all your fingernails before they start asking questions, then they'll get really nasty"—sometimes stated almost exactly in those terms—that I've picked up, though. It's entirely possible this is a widespread but inaccurate notion, or even a deliberately-cultivated whisper campaign on France's part.
aksss 6y ago
> If Europe—any of it, at least in the EU or NATO—is attacked from the East, the French will be on the front lines Somebody forgot to tell Ukraine about this Gallic heroism.
- gh-throw 6y ago
  Specifically why I added the caveat of "at least in the EU or NATO". If you don't think they'd show up to defend Poland or Greece against attack, I'd love to see your rationale.
  - aksss 6y ago
    Because the only time in last 250 years that French forces have shown up in Poland in numbers, it was to invade? The above, combined with their inaction in the face of Russia annexing part of a European state means you're arguing for ambition contrary to history. You say things are different now, and maybe they are. Time will tell, I suppose. I think it more likely that if Germany has her way and builds a EU army, France would take their lead in defending European nations. I'm really not trying to smear France here - I think they could be doing far more for global stability than they are, and would like to see it. But actions speak louder than words.
    - gh-throw 6y ago
      You expressed confusion about why France would claim to be preparing for war with North African or Near East states. I'm not making any claims about their effectiveness in combat, just that they probably do expect to take part in certain conflicts in those regions, should they happen. Whether they'd be useful once there, whether the conflict would last long enough for them to even show up, et c., are other matters. Ukraine is contributing to this attitude, I expect. Western states at least want to project the image that they would, given enough pushing from Russia and others, intervene, in order to (they hope) make them think twice about further expansion. Exercises aren't just about actual preparation, but about sending messages. The intended audience may be domestic and foreign, and in this case they seem to be pretty up-front about some of the intended recipients. More directly, I don't think it's true that there's no possible level of aggression from certain states that wouldn't draw an actual military response from France, even well into Eastern Europe, the Near East, and North/West Africa (and, in such a case, almost certainly some of France's allies would be involved as well, outside smaller conflicts in West Africa particularly). Exercises and public statements about their purpose may be designed to make potential adversaries less certain about just how far they can go without crossing that line, while also providing actual preparation should a conflict happen. They're saying (bluffing, or not) that they're preparing for exactly the kind of greater intervention you're talking about. That's why they'd hold exercises like this and make the statements they have about them. This and my earlier posts are an explanation for why France would, very publicly, hold exercises with the stated purpose that they did. Obviously they know Turkey and North African states aren't going to invade France herself. They're not preparing for an invasion by Tunisia. They're sending a message about the regions they will defend (claim they will defend, of course—the seriousness of this posturing is untested, but the new stance seems to promote the idea that they are now more serious), and which states they want to know they're concerned about—apparently Turkey, and with Turkey, implicitly, Russia, either defending them from Russia or defending against a Russia-aligned Turkey, which relationship is seemingly going to continue being a major component of European politics indefinitely, as it has been the last couple centuries.

zabzonk 6y ago

> the French will be on the front lines, and landing on beaches. They have never done so effectively in the past (Vietnam? Algeria? Suez?) and I don't see them doing it now or any time in the future.

gh-throw 6y ago
I think it's safe to say they intend to do that, though, in the event of an outright invasion or hostile coup of one of their closely-tied states in Africa or the Levant, or an attack on Europe. Which explains the exercises.
hollerith 6y ago
France's military performance in WW I was outstanding. The only way to win was to take massive casualties. They incurred the massive casualties and won. Very few of the world's 193 or so countries will ever be able to summon what we might "collective national will and capacity for sacrifice" (for any purpose) to the degree France did in WW I. (Russia and the Soviet Union have also performed outstandingly in war, but the French government treats its citizens much better much more consistently than Russia or the Soviet Union ever have.)
sofixa 6y ago
> Vietnam? Algeria? Suez? Vietnam and Algeria were asynchronous battlefields, and nobody seems to be able to win those. ( Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam) Suez failed politically and internationally, and the French were forced to pull back because the British got forced by the US. Militarily it had a decent start before that. And all of those were more than 60 years ago, so hardly applicable today.

tablespoon 6y ago

> Sidebar: They're also possibly the most experienced torturers in the West. You see them called in for it sometimes, if you read between the lines a bit. Yikes. Can you expand on this?

gh-throw 6y ago
I have zero references, just that I've encountered that bit of "common knowledge" enough times among IR professors and military-connected people to take it as basically true. As any such hearsay/common-knowledge, it could be wrong. I've heard a lot of stuff like "headlines say French advisors arrived in Afghanistan, guess they needed some help with interrogations (ahem, torture)." I should have been more up-front about the quality of that statement (middling, I'd judge). The way those things are presented sometimes in e.g. Foreign Affairs sure seem to support that subtext. Strikes me as somewhat less "well it's denied officially, but nonetheless everyone knows..." than Israeli nuclear capabilities. Attempts to find any recent documentation of this are frustrated by modern search engines being terrible, and French torture in the Algerian conflict being so well-documented and infamous that results for that overwhelm everything else no matter how one tries to search past it (and Algeria would likely be mentioned in any long treatment of the topic, making it even harder to narrow in on more-recent examples). There's a definite sentiment of "the last Western government you want to come after you with black ops is France, because they'll be ripping out all your fingernails before they start asking questions, then they'll get really nasty"—sometimes stated almost exactly in those terms—that I've picked up, though. It's entirely possible this is a widespread but inaccurate notion, or even a deliberately-cultivated whisper campaign on France's part.

aksss 6y ago

> If Europe—any of it, at least in the EU or NATO—is attacked from the East, the French will be on the front lines Somebody forgot to tell Ukraine about this Gallic heroism.

gh-throw 6y ago
Specifically why I added the caveat of "at least in the EU or NATO". If you don't think they'd show up to defend Poland or Greece against attack, I'd love to see your rationale.
- aksss 6y ago
  Because the only time in last 250 years that French forces have shown up in Poland in numbers, it was to invade? The above, combined with their inaction in the face of Russia annexing part of a European state means you're arguing for ambition contrary to history. You say things are different now, and maybe they are. Time will tell, I suppose. I think it more likely that if Germany has her way and builds a EU army, France would take their lead in defending European nations. I'm really not trying to smear France here - I think they could be doing far more for global stability than they are, and would like to see it. But actions speak louder than words.
  - gh-throw 6y ago
    You expressed confusion about why France would claim to be preparing for war with North African or Near East states. I'm not making any claims about their effectiveness in combat, just that they probably do expect to take part in certain conflicts in those regions, should they happen. Whether they'd be useful once there, whether the conflict would last long enough for them to even show up, et c., are other matters. Ukraine is contributing to this attitude, I expect. Western states at least want to project the image that they would, given enough pushing from Russia and others, intervene, in order to (they hope) make them think twice about further expansion. Exercises aren't just about actual preparation, but about sending messages. The intended audience may be domestic and foreign, and in this case they seem to be pretty up-front about some of the intended recipients. More directly, I don't think it's true that there's no possible level of aggression from certain states that wouldn't draw an actual military response from France, even well into Eastern Europe, the Near East, and North/West Africa (and, in such a case, almost certainly some of France's allies would be involved as well, outside smaller conflicts in West Africa particularly). Exercises and public statements about their purpose may be designed to make potential adversaries less certain about just how far they can go without crossing that line, while also providing actual preparation should a conflict happen. They're saying (bluffing, or not) that they're preparing for exactly the kind of greater intervention you're talking about. That's why they'd hold exercises like this and make the statements they have about them. This and my earlier posts are an explanation for why France would, very publicly, hold exercises with the stated purpose that they did. Obviously they know Turkey and North African states aren't going to invade France herself. They're not preparing for an invasion by Tunisia. They're sending a message about the regions they will defend (claim they will defend, of course—the seriousness of this posturing is untested, but the new stance seems to promote the idea that they are now more serious), and which states they want to know they're concerned about—apparently Turkey, and with Turkey, implicitly, Russia, either defending them from Russia or defending against a Russia-aligned Turkey, which relationship is seemingly going to continue being a major component of European politics indefinitely, as it has been the last couple centuries.