France's new defense policy will see the capacity of deployment of French soldiers in external operation theaters decreased significantly, French Defense Minister Herve Morin has said. "Who can believe that in the next 15 or 20 years, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact and the enlargement of the European Union, we might be called upon to deploy 50,000 men in a theater," Morin said Wednesday while closing the 15th "Peace and Defense" parliamentary meetings. Under the "operational policy" fixed by the current 2003-2008 military program, the armed forces must be able to engage, inter alia, a land force of 50,000 men, a naval task force, the aircraft carrier and its escort, and an air force of 100 combat aircraft supported by refueling tankers, according to military sources.
Without specifying the new figures, the defense minister said that President Nicolas Sarkozy had already declared a "part" of his position over the issue. "To be still capable of projecting 30,000 or 40,000 men in a Mediterranean theater, in the broader sense, does not mean that France is a second category military power," said Morin, rejecting the idea that the French armed forces were slowly "shrinking."