A long-haul strategic vision for France

by Admiral Jean Dufourcq (retired), “strategist” at the Naval Academy

“Preparing for the future means understanding how the world operates, adopting a holistic approach to Europe as a continent and asking ourselves: where is the East of the West?". Such were the thought-provoking words with which the speaker set the scene for an original, rich and very full talk comprising the following three parts:

1/ A planet in transition;

2/ Europe in the world;

3/ France in Europe.

The report below summarises the highlights of this presentation.

1/ A planet in transition

The West is coming to the end of a cycle, the strategic blueprint for which dominated the planet until the end of the Cold War. Since then, we have been living through a long strategic transition, a process inevitable as the world’s population continues to expand. Our planet, which still bears the scars of 19th century empires, went through a period of major strategic upheaval 30 years ago when the Cold War came to an end. It has since become a strategic wasteland where three types of players are competing and fighting for power:

- States with a traditional strategic culture,

- (Re)emerging powers (BRICS, SCO) that are challenging Euro-Atlantic domination,

- Non-state players (GAFAM or others) that sapping States of their powers.

The 2020 pandemic disrupted international interaction and caused many projects to stall. The world is gradually recovering, with lingering tensions inherited from yesterday's world and innovations from the digital revolution. The war in Ukraine marks a huge step backwards.

The driving forces behind a transition that is gaining momentum are well-known: three challenges, four unknowns that will shape the future, and an ever-evolving state of conflict. Strategic fluidity will long continue since there is no potential stable situation visible on the horizon. The controlled tensions of the Cold War were a historical anomaly. In 2022, the world went back to its normal state of chaos, a development that caught us unawares.

It is vital that we should recognise the speed of the current transition process and work together to address the following three challenges:

- The demographic revolution: in the space of 50 years, the world’s population has tripled. It currently stands at 8 billion and will reach 10 billion over the next 30 years. This growth will last for as long as Africa has not completed its demographic transition. In truth, the fundamental factor is that demographic growth and the sheer mass of certain populations are strategically changing the balance of power in the world.

- Environmental requirements: these raise questions about technical progress (e.g. Fukushima) and growth, not to mention doubts about the future of the planet (climate change). They also oppose developing and affluent countries.

- Globalisation of markets and the resulting commercial free-for-all, often a front for financial and, at times, criminal manoeuvres. For the rank and file, globalisation is not always welcome and is a source of fragmentation and conflict.

The structural unknowns fuelling this transition are the dialectics in four key parts of the world: the European Union, the United States, China and Africa.

- In the case of Europe, the EU model is no longer working. It has come to the end of a cycle, the man in the street has had enough of integration and governance is in disarray. North-South and East-West antagonisms remain, and there is neither unity of purpose nor the desire to establish where "the East of the West" should lie. This model of political and social organisation is now obsolete. This, combined with its demographic weakness, Europe is now a spent force in the world with the exception of its market. The EU has no strategic line of thrust. Nobody cares about the EU, it is Europe that they want. The EU model is beyond repair and needs tweaking, while preserving its strategic assets and Community acquis.

- The United States, a major power whose strength has become relative and erratic, is like a headless chicken, its strategic direction dictated by lobbies whose only shared value is "America First". Like all empires, it is facing decadence and decline through its inability to change and adapt.

- The well-controlled experience of a China developing at breakneck speed is cause for concern. China is biding its time, projecting a model of harmony that offers an alternative to the Western world.

- The disunited African continent, in a state of rapid demographic transition, is a world of diversity and fragmentation with no strategic unity, but with a similar lack of strategic thrust as Europe.

How can we control the combined effects of these challenges and unknowns and the new tensions brought by this transition? Will there be widespread cooperation or the unstoppable pressure of latent conflicts? Do we try to patch up this deregulated world order or to reinvent it? What will happen to the common good against this backdrop?

The nature of conflict has also evolved. In the days of the Cold War, the era of nuclear weapons, it was “peace impossible, war improbable.” Then, trade became paramount, and countries discovered many different ways of exerting their superiority. The savviest competitors of the 21st century have taken confrontation off the battlefield, using other, vaguer modes of confrontation to wage decisive battles. They have opted to pursue conflicts in the more elusive areas of competitive sovereignty, in other words, those of currency, the oceans, the space and cyber, cultural, legal and normative spheres. Each party attempts to bring all its assets to bear, trying to impose its rules and attack its targets where they are the most vulnerable. The competition is ruthless and the alliances as numerous as they are ephemeral. The advent of AI further adds to the instruments at countries’ disposal for these sporadic confrontations. Looting, blackmail, sanctions, retaliation, ruses, fake news, disguises, corruption, and deception: all methods requiring little investment but with enormous effects. A new power hierarchy has emerged.

The current war in Ukraine marks a brutal step backwards, a sharp reversal of a well-entrenched strategic trend. Is this a tragic accident in the strained relations between Russia and its former satellites after the failed de-Sovietisation of the continent, or the first symptom of a return to ancient imperial chaos?

2/ Europe in the world

Return to the EU and where it all began. Originally, the concept was twofold, the combination of a response and a gamble. The response was in reaction to the long and tragic history of internecine wars in Europe, a "never again” reaction in the aftermath of two World Wars, both collective suicide for the Europeans. The gamble was that the general collective interest would prevail over individual national interests, the European Commission being there to make this happen. European response to the centuries-long phenomenon of civil war was convincing. Conflict within Europe gave way to a form of cooperation, which was admittedly competitive, but beneficial overall. It would be more hazardous to assert that the collective interest has prevailed, since the stance adopted by the EU has inevitably created a form of radical competition that has been the source of friction and division. The EU has endeavoured to remove the state from political, economic and social issues, while neglecting to define the requisite collective sovereignty or nurture a truly patriotic European spirit capable of guaranteeing the necessary degree of collective cohesion. At the same time, the Atlantic alliance was making every effort to denationalise defence in the European countries. To extricate the EU from the quandary facing it, there are those who are tempted to further weaken the individual States by transferring their sovereign responsibilities to multidisciplinary technostructures delivering tried and tested multinational best practices, or even have these States give up their strategic independence.

The reason why Europe is struggling is because it is impossible to forge a European “personality” or a European defence system without allowing for the history, geography and strategic cultures of different European populations, exhausted by centuries of warring coexistence. History has shown that no European nation can take the lead in Europe without prompting internal, regional or global war. Geography shows that the only true borders in Europe are human. The Mediterranean and the Baltic are inland seas linking a strong central mainland core stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals, to the archipelago of the British Isles and Scandinavia in the North and to North-African countries in the South. European culture is a patchwork of different inheritances, Greco-Latin, Germano-Slavic and Judeo-Christian, transcended by the Enlightenment to form a common socio-political system.

Such is the glue that binds Europe together: a mixture of history, geography, and culture, which clearly differs from that of the US and China but is not so different to that of Russia.

While peace in the EU represents an enduring achievement, major discord remains with regard to the strategic vision for addressing the challenges of integration, European governance and reunification. Divergences of opinion (currently, the economy, the environment, nuclear power and anti-ballistic missiles) also affect France and Germany, whose landmark reconciliation was beneficial to the European project. There is no power without borders, no European patriotism without a common destiny. Yet the EU has opted for liberalisation and internal market competition.

Events in Ukraine are a major challenge to the construction of Europe for, independently of Moscow’s violent about-face in the East of the continent by declaring war in central Europe, they are also coloured by America’s desire to neutralise Russia or even break it apart, to prevent the emergence of a Germano-Russian continental power and leave the United States free to focus on its rivalry with China.

In reality, Russia’s return to it old imperialist powerplay will long prevent European unification “from the Atlantic to the Urals”, and thus thwart the only prospect of saving a European construction that the EU is unable to achieve for want of an overall strategy underpinned by a shared geopolitical vision.

3/ France within Europe

What does the future hold for France in such a patently strategic wasteland?

Located on the western edge of the continent, France is struggling to adjust to this strategic situation with uncooperative allies in a divided European Union, facing challenges from Russia, an Africa in disarray, especially in the Sahel where France’s every action is disputed, and an Asia, where the fallout from the submarine crisis with Australia has made France’s limits clearly apparent. Post-Brexit, which freed the EU from an alien strategic presence but left France without a major partner, the country has to accept a measure of strategic isolation.

Like all established countries, France has to contend with other influential players operating within national or multinational systems, vying for power with the States, financial markets out to defend their rights, intrusive media, religious extremism, and the subterranean world of organised crime. War has left the battlefield, while economic pressures have escalated. All this begs the question of how to cope with all these factors.

In this changing world, the only course of action is to make more careful preparations and adopt a more consistent strategic approach. For France, the double whammy of Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine have heightened the need for a far-ranging three-pronged strategy: in relation to Europe, to the Mediterranean and to the world. France must now develop a new, long-term global strategic vision. And this vision will need to be supported and protected at presidential level by a consultative strategic planning entity capable of ensuring consistency in the choices made, over technological issues, power factors and external commitments. It is this that should be France’s lodestar, its central touchstone.

A new strategic sequence now needs to be developed by taking six key factors and carefully blending them into a political vision representing the culmination of a democratic process. For France, these factors are:

Defending its interests: France must put fulfilling national needs first, giving them priority over any other action. This is the basis of democratic devolution, for which political legitimacy is an absolute necessity.

Fulfilling its responsibilities: France must assume all its historical and geographical responsibilities and be very attentive to its European and Mediterranean neighbours. It must also assume its legal and moral undertakings and defend freedom and human rights throughout the world. This is its passport to strategic respectability.

Asserting its values: France must foster and promote the values that have marked the nation throughout its history and must never deviate from these values. It must be a loyal friend, a dependable ally, respectful to others, generous, and firmly committed to maintaining peace. Consistency, a reflection of a country’s national identity, is the basis of moral authority.

Controlling its sovereign territories: France must be realistic in its definition of these territories, protect them from outside interference and share with them in a spirit of positive interdependence. On this will depend its ability to exert control over its vulnerabilities, maintain its autonomy and its freedom of action.

Exploiting its assets: France must be actively aware of its strengths, must defend, teach, promote and deploy them. Its many untapped capabilities must be marshalled and boldly exploited.

Offsetting its weaknesses: France must sufficiently recognise its Achilles’ heels to be able to control and conceal them. It needs to face its inadequacies head on, without illusions yet taking every chance to mitigate and rectify these weaknesses.

Drawing conclusions with regard to this long-term strategic vision is a perilous exercise. France is in an uncomfortable position in a Europe shaken by the violent ‘family feud’ between Russia and its former satellites, a feud that has fuelled war in Ukraine, kicked NATO back into life and driven Europe to close ranks with a United States only concerned with its existential rivalry with an alternative China waiting to pounce in a drastically changing strategic world.

It is, nevertheless, vital not to be dragged into war and large-scale rearmament nor to accept a new and divisive separation in the heart of Europe. It is also important not to abandon the concept of European reunification “from the Atlantic to the Urals”, if Europeans are to be freed of 21st century geostrategic and geoeconomic rivalries and maintain their focal position as the centre of gravity of a “multifaceted” 10 billion inhabitant world.

Admiral Jean Dufourcq, edited version, 9 April 2022. jeandufourcq@wanadoo.fr. www.lettrevigie.com

Article translated into English by students at ISIT Paris, and proofread by Christine Cross (EuroDéfense-France Council member).