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Chasing Grandeur? What You Need to Know about the 2017 French Strategic Review
Just a snip, much more at the link.[WarOnTheRocks] France’s new Strategic Review has just been published. Yes, it is a Strategic Review and not a White Paper, and the change of name is more than just an exercise in rebranding. It is shorter, more concentrated, and more concise than a White Paper ‐ the 2013 version had 136 pages developed over seven different chapters. The new Review (only available in French for the moment, but an English version is due in November) sets out France’s priorities for the next ten years, and as stated by President Emmanuel Macron in the foreword, aims at "coming up with solutions to today’s great crises, promoting [France’s] values, and protecting its interests." Unsurprisingly, the Review starts with a description of the world we live in, depicting a volatile strategic environment and identifying current and future threats and risks. Is that anything really new? Well, yes and no: The threats are more or less the same as those featured in the 2008 and 2013 White Papers ‐ terrorism, cyber-warfare, nuclear proliferation, pandemics, etc. ‐ yet they have become more pressing than ever. The context has also evolved: In the interim, Russia has invaded Ukraine, France has led two demanding interventions in Mali and the Central African Republic, and the country has been badly shaken by an unprecedented wave of terrorist attacks. Against this backdrop, the Review cites terrorism, especially jihadist terrorism, as the most pressing threat ‐ which Macron clearly emphasized in his first speech to French ambassadors last August. This threat will not fade away in the coming years ‐ even after the defeat of ISIL ‐ and will likely reconfigure itself, extending into new regions whilst thriving "on chaos, civil war and the fragility of states." Terrorism will continue to strike against French and European populations, but this is sadly a fact of life that resilient societies will have to learn to live with. Moreover, the Review notes that Europe and France are at this moment facing the "greatest concentration of challenges." The document adopts a 360-degree view, highlighting a series of issues. It starts with a destabilized Middle East and the conflict in Syria, continues with the resumption of war on Europe’s doorstep, and through a resurgent and aggressive Russia which endangers the European security architecture. In addition, it clearly states that other state actors such as China and Iran openly challenge the current world order, further contributing to chaos. And the Review goes on by pointing out other imminent issues: the migration crisis, persistent vulnerabilities in the Sahel region, the effects of climate change, pandemic risks, trafficking, and organized crime. Among the worst-case scenarios, cyber has become the new asymmetric battlefield. Cyberattacks with catastrophic effects ‐ including attacks on critical infrastructure, like he attack against the French TV network TV5 Monde in 2015 ‐ are a reality, even while governments and militaries are depending on cyber for their daily business. This has led NATO (and France seems to endorse this point) to consider a cyberattack as an armed attack requiring an armed retaliatory response. This could have dire consequences, especially because of the ambiguity with which these wars are waged. More than an assessment of what is happening in the cyber domain, it underlines two key issues: first, that the basic principles of deterrence have been forgotten. Second, that there’s a missing ability to carefully assess the threshold at which a country or adversary can respond. This makes escalation, up to a nuclear strike, more likely, something that recent research has underscored. The whole "hacking requires us to bomb you in response" was the casus belli that Hillary was going to use to drag us into a big shooting war with Russia. She could have even taken us up to Defcon 1. Thank God for Trump. Posted by: Herb McCoy7309 2017-10-28 |
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