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The French armed forces are planning for high-intensity war
- throwaway4good 6y agoAvec who?
- mc32 6y agoGood question. The whole point of globalization and disinterventionism was to avoid hot wars. And, given their potential foes, I’m not sure they want to get into a hot war. More importantly none of the powers have high reproduction rates so they won’t have a large fresh pop from which to draught troops and the robots aren’t quite ready yet, so I don’t know what gives.
- throwaway4good 6y agoThe threath from Africa is of the asymetric counter-insurgency type; not a large scale military to military type this article is about. Neither Russia or China pose any military threath to Europe unless we send our ships right up their shores. Maybe that is what we are about to do?
- goatinaboat 6y agoNeither Russia or China pose any military threath to Europe unless we send our ships right up their shores. Ukraine and the Baltic States are in Europe, no? The Baltic States are, for better or worse, NATO members and the alliance is bound to defend them.
- nspattak 6y agoCan you name some of the latest NATO member that were defended by NATO?
- goatinaboat 6y agoCan you name some of the latest NATO member that were defended by NATO? NATO has the "enhanced forward presence" (tanks) in Estonia and "Baltic air policing" (fighter jets) covering all 3.
- rmind 6y agoWest Germany during the Cold War? At least technically, USA (following 911)?
- sudosysgen 6y agoSo, not a defence. There was no confrontation in East Germany. NATO in practice is an offensive alliance as much as a defensive one.
- goatinaboat 6y agoThere was no confrontation in East Germany. The scenario BAOR was prepared for was the Third Shock Army surging through the Fulda Gap, and likewise the Third was prepared to do that.
- sudosysgen 6y agoThe question was, did NATO ever defend anyone, not "did NATO prepare to defend anyone".
- goatinaboat 6y agoAre you counting defence only as actively fighting in response to an attack? Because deterrence is defence is its passive form of which NATO has done plenty
- iomodo 6y agoSince when Ukraine and Baltic States are not considered in Europe? Do you mean EU?
- literallycancer 6y agoRussia is currently occupying the territory of another European country, or several countries if you count the Caucasus as Europe. What makes you say they pose no threat?
- sudosysgen 6y agoRussian occupation of Ukraine is a bit more complicated. It's in the context of a red line they set out decades ago, which is that NATO wouldn't be able to extend all the way to the Russian border in the south. Now certainly that's a bit unreasonable as countries should be allowed to associate with whoever they want, but it's not exactly a live wire threatening war left and right, it's a red line they set out a very long time ago, and there's not much reason to think they're interested with much beyond that red line.
- mc32 6y agoSevastopol is critical to the Russian navy. It’s like Mexico taking over San Diego. It will not be allowed to happen. The Crimea was not historically part of Ukraine, though for political and administrative purposes it was assigned to the Ukraine soviet republic. Given its criticality Russia took it back.
- Robotbeat 6y agoBalooney. Crimea was not historically part of Russia! Second, Russia is not just annexing Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula but also attempting to annex parts of eastern Ukraine and recently moved a bunch of troops potentially to expand their held territory beyond the peninsula and deeper into central Ukraine. I don’t understand these arguments carrying water for Russia. Yeah, we all know Russia wants to annex parts of Ukraine for what they consider strategic reasons. But we can’t go about justifying wars for annexation in the 21st bloody century! Doesn’t matter if it’s the US, China, or Russia. Annexation is not justifiable.
- mc32 6y agoIt was made part of Russia by the Russian Empire during expansion a couple of centuries ago. It was its own soviet republic prior to WWII and afterwards made part of Ukraine SSR. Now Russia took it back. Majority speak Russian not Ukrainian since most actual native Crimeans were displaced during Soviet era.
- orange_joe 6y agoAccording to the free portion of the article they envision Turkey, A North African state (Algeria? Egypt?) or Russia.
- sudosysgen 6y agoThere's no chance that a North African state could project power into France, so presumably such a war would be fought on the soil of that nation. Doesn't bode well :/
- Robotbeat 6y agoIt could in 50-100 years. Brazil is much more capable than Portugal. But I agree it seems kind of a weird thing to be worried about right now for France. Russia is probably the much bigger threat, but invasion seems pretty unlikely given the distance from Russia and the relatively low population (vs the Soviet Union). I guess some resurgent Soviet Union (ie Eastern Europe comes under the sway of Moscow, voluntarily or otherwise) could do that, but that seems really unlikely. I can see Turkey or Russia invading its neighbors (I mean, Russia literally is doing this right now... slowly consolidating their annexation of parts of Ukraine), but not much further. If Turkey and Russia became strong allies (as well as maybe some disgruntled former colonies), I suppose that could pose a legitimate threat.
- m00dy 6y agoAs an insider, I can tell you that Turkey and Russia can never be strong allies, but it could be a partnership. Turkey and Russia are on opposite sides in Syria, Libya, Armenia, and Ukraine. Being on opposite sides is not today's thing. You can easily trace this way back in history. My personal opinion is that Turkey is threatening France's interest in Northern Africa. By saying Northern Africa, I would like to point out countries with a Muslim majority society and have a grim past of French colonization. I think the tension in Northern Africa will escalate. Because I don't believe Turkey would give up its position on Libya. Having a sea border with Libya is directly related to Turkey's potential rights on gas resources in East Mediterranean. Another thing to mention here is Turkey's defense budget on maritime industries. In Turkey's threat modeling, they expect something profound in the Mediterranean soon. We can see this by looking at how much money they invest and how they build ships—the ships equipped with sensitive long-range missiles etc.
- newsclues 6y agoMilitants in Africa are the current enemies.
- gdsdfe 6y agoMaybe they want to finish what they started in Libya
- _huayra_ 6y agoAvec les Suisses in response for military exercise around France invading https://www.bbc.com/news/24329818 https://www.bbc.com/news/24329818
- av3csr 6y agoTheir largest border is shared with Brazil
- phtrivier 6y agoTechnically right ; but this is the border between French Guyanna and Brazil. I doubt the condition of the exercise in the North-East of France are transferable there. (Although, don't get me wrong, I'm pretty sure there are people in the French army with some ideas about how to wage war in a tropical forest.) That being said, it's still nice to have been alive during a span of ~50 years without any actual full-on people-are-killed-in-your-neighboorhood warfare.
- samus 6y agoAre you referring to the Foreign Legion?
- Ceezy 6y agoWell they also prepared for a trenched war before the confrontation with the Nazy...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cassepipe 6y agohttps://www.en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line https://www.en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line
- cassepipe 6y agoBeing downvoted for providing the link to what parent is referring to? Seems unfair.
- TheHypnotist 6y agoThe link doesn't even work.
- hef19898 6y agoAh, they didn't really. The Maginot Line held, and they knew they needed to stop the Germans at the Belgian / German border. That the invasion of France ended the way it did was a surprise to everyone, including the Germans. Mainly you could boil it down to better command and control all the way from strategic to tactical and luck on the German side and the opposite, bad luck, bad cooperation and bad communication on the allied side.
- samus 6y agoSo, basically like in the 1870s? Back then, the French hat better weapons (guns, cannons and gatlings) and technically even a defence strategy, but bad coordination on both strategic and tactic levels lost them the war.
- Zitrax 6y agoLocked article.
- cwwc 6y agoHover works like a charm to unlock these — https://github.com/hover-inc/hover-paywalls-browser-extension https://github.com/hover-inc/hover-paywalls-browser-extensio...
- dstick 6y ago"Planned for 2023, Exercise Orion is a full-scale divisional exercise that will last several days, based probably out of camps at Suippes, Mailly and Mourmelon. It will involve the full range of French military capacity on a scale not tested for decades." Saved you the trouble ;-) The title is clickbait
- karmakaze 6y agoArmies must be like backups or disaster recovery plans. No sense having them if you don't know how to use it, or if they work at all.
- dstick 6y agoI commented on the title, not on the French army. I’d struggle to see how they could be clickbait. Although maybe it’s a brand new cyberwar tactic?
- yamrzou 6y agoDiscussed two weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26634839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26634839
- zabzonk 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26634839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26634839
- nemesisj 6y agoI moved to Europe (Scotland) about 10 years ago, and prior to that lived most of my life in China and the USA. One thing that struck me is that in both China and the USA, the idea of a war close to home is not a thing. Nobody considers it to be a remote possibility, and it isn't. There is simply no entity who can project enough power to mess with either of those countries for a sustained period of time on their home turf. It's different in Europe - the UK seems to be the least conscious of the possibility of war but the farther east you go, the more it's on people's minds. I've been to Poland a few times now, and each visit through chatting with randoms in a bar or pub (and through chatting with a number of Polish friends here in the UK) I had a similar experience: there would be a point where someone would casually remark that they're just spending time concentrating on keeping fit (aerobic and weight lifting) because "the next war is coming." Poland of course has particularly horrible geographical luck and an extremely war-torn past to reckon with, but I was really struck with this idea that anecdotally many folks seemed to be living under the perception that the next war is coming, and we all need to be prepared. I've had similar but less extreme and consistent conversations with folks in Romania, for example. I'm not really sure what there is to learn here, apart from the fact that the EU has been a phenomenal success in its real purpose - keeping the peace in Europe. Just look at this list of wars in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe Is the world getting safer? I think so. Is the risk of large scale war like France is planning for decreasing? I hope so. But we are on very new footing in terms of this being the new normal, despite what it might feel like, and this perception certainly differs based on how close to perceived threats you might live.
- hef19898 6y agoGrowing up in Germany in the 80s had a similar effect. Every one was, at least to a degree, aware to be living in the main battle ground of the next big war. Also the reason Germany had such a large peace movement. Obviously over simplified a complex situation.
- smackay 6y agoThe effect of the Cold War extended over much of Europe. I grew up in a small town in the north of Scotland which had an airport that could support Vulcan bombers. There was the widespread feeling we were on the list of places that would get nuked if hostilities broke out with the Soviet Union.
- tupac_speedrap 6y agoDoesn't seem too out of the ordinary. NATO did a similar thing a few years back on the Russian border. It's basically a mixture of sabre-rattling and getting the cobwebs out of the military in terms of logistics, planning and communication.
- idownvoted 6y agoNo. "The groups cover everything from munition shortages to the resilience of society, including whether citizens are “ready to accept the level of casualties we have never seen since world war two”, says one participant." …isn't at all what "NATO did" in any of its training maneuvers.
- Jiejeing 6y ago>“There is a great risk of falling behind as automation on the battlefield accelerates,” warned a report by the Institut Montaigne, a think-tank. A think-tank of right-wing economists essentially backed by big corporations (e.g. Dassault or Safran) which have a stake in this fearmongering.
- jimmyed 6y agoDoes the French preparing for war mean anything at all? The French are horrible at preemptive preparation, much less actually fighting. No one has forgotten the second world war.
- WJW 6y agoYou should probably not take memes about the French surrendering as gospel truth about their actual capabilities. They are a nuclear armed state, have been involved in Afghanistan and across North Africa for decades and in general are one of the more capable land armies in Europe. That said any army will always be planning for high intensity war, and also for low intensity war, and also for small scale anti-insurgency ops, and also for protecting national interests abroad, etc etc etc. Preparation for that is a key element of any army.
- astrea 6y ago> You should probably not take memes about the French surrendering as gospel truth about their actual capabilities. Especially when one considers there were technically two French states during WW2.
- kiliantics 6y agoUntil more recently than WWII, they were pretty good at maintaining military presence in their colonies and massacring their colonial subjects
- julienfr112 6y agoAnd at sharing some good people to help US doing the same in South America : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Aussaresses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Aussaresses
- idownvoted 6y agoActually the first time in decades I applaud a, any, French policy decision. Readiness for war is a topic Western European societies have shied away from for decades (some more, some less). Just because their foreign first-world peers are all concerned with craft brews of beer and coffee, bycicle highways and never sufficient equality demands (e.g. lesbian extremists blocking a Berlin memorial for gay concentration-camp inmates, until they got their lesbian inmates commemorated as well, although there never were any lesbian inmates) - doesn't mean the rest of the world is concerned with that as well. Or at all. It also doesn't mean that lower-status pockets within first-world societies are or that first-world middle-classes will still be in the coming future. Just look at the pathetic state of the German military which openly states that it isn't "wehrtauglich". For years now. Look at the public "outcry" in Germany about it: Crickets. And look at the rampant anti-americanism in Germany: In full motion (as in other EU countries), although the US is the only defense Western Europe has.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago>although there never were any lesbian inmates that seems highly unlikely?!
- idownvoted 6y agoUnfortunately it is likekly indeed. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denkmal_f%C3%BCr_die_im_Nationalsozialismus_verfolgten_Homosexuellen#Diskussion https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denkmal_f%C3%BCr_die_im_Nation... Note that this ironic achievement of the woke movment is already 15 years old. I doubt there was much improvement on the logic-front since then.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ArkanExplorer 6y agoThis is the perfect cycle for global interests. Spark conflict in a country, where you can profit from increased military spending and activity. Young male migrants from that wartorn country are then driven into Europe, where you can profit from security and anti-terrorism spending. Rinse and repeat. Why are we constantly invading and destabilising countries around Europe and the Middle East? Why do we still have troops in Syria, Iraq, when oil is now an irrelevant commodity, when we should be rapidly decarbonizing our economies?
- idownvoted 6y agoSo your hypothesis is: Countries like the Netherlands or Austria are bombing say Iraq so they can reap the profits by staffing their military with refugees? Can it get any weirder?
- wffurr 6y agoNo, so their governments can use fear of those refugees to spend more money on police and counter terrorism.
- idownvoted 6y ago> No, so their governments can use fear of those refugees to spend more money on police and counter terrorism. This argument isn't exactly less weird. So if I get you right, there is a Cabal of elites in say the Netherlands and Austria that is pushing invasions on say Iraq while simoultaniously cutting down on domestic security so they can later, say 15-30 years, rake in the profits by increasing spending on domestic security. Quite the detour for ruining your country half the way, don't you think?
- sudosysgen 6y agoFor a lot of people with a lot of power, finding a way to expand domestic security laws and general state power is not ruining your country, but instead a good way of preventing social change you don't want. Also, the domestic defence industry is really the best way to transfer money from government coffers directly towards the pockets of an arbitrary person.
- FpUser 6y ago>"including whether citizens are “ready to accept the level of casualties we have never seen since world war two”" And if they're not ready then what? Oopsy can't have big war cause not enough votes? I do not like this part at all. It reads like they actually want a war assuming they train the obedient to be willing to die "en masse".
- DisjointedHunt 6y ago"How do we then get support" is a general conspiracy i've seen thrown around.