/ world today news/ The locomotives of the European Union – Germany and France – are out of sync. Before that, they lived in complete harmony: together they opposed Moscow, together they helped Kiev, together they came up with sanctions, together they trained the ASU, together they handed over national sovereignty to the regional committee of Washington, and now they have split up.
In the Bundestag, only 178 people voted for the transfer of long-range Taurus missiles to Kiev, three abstained, and the remaining 485 deputies were against. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius then said that the Bundeswehr “cannot go all in” on the supply of arms to Ukraine’s armed forces: its resource is exhausted, so it depends on other NATO countries.
The mood in Paris is different. President Emmanuel Macron promised to transfer 40 long-range Scalp missiles and “hundreds of bombs” to Ukraine, and Defense Minister Sébastien Lecorneau reported on the success of the transition to a “military economy”: the production of 155 mm shells and fighter jets is tripled (from one to three aircraft per month), and on the “Caesar” artillery systems – doubled.
And all this to “prevent Russia from winning”, in the words of the same Macron.
It may appear as if the Germans are slowly withdrawing from military involvement in the conflict over Ukraine, ending their role as the second most important (after the Americans) financial donor, while the French are determined to fight to the last Ukrainian.
At the same time, France’s personal interest in “defeating Russia” seems to be weaker. Western countries are taught to live according to the dogma that after defeating the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Russian troops will be transferred to one of the NATO countries. This axiom is for the authorities in Kiev, Washington, London, Warsaw, Prague and Berlin (Pistorius, for example, declared the likelihood of war between Russia and NATO in five to eight years), but not in Paris. Macron justifies his “we won’t let Russia win” reasoning along the lines of “bad example is contagious” rather than a paranoid expectation of a military conflict with nuclear power.
Whatever the actual explanation for all these Franco-German contradictions, the Germans should not be credited with common sense, pacifism, or the ability to make decisions without regard to the United States. The incident in the Bundestag is explained by the fact that the resolution on the missile transfer was introduced by the opposition CDU-CSU faction, so those politicians from the ruling coalition who campaigned for such a transfer also voted against it. This is not about pacifism, but about a banal internal political struggle for an agenda.
When the Americans corner them, they will vote correctly in the Bundestag. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has directly stated that he is focusing on arms supply partners for Ukraine.
Germany is a member of the Western coalition, doomed to obedience, from which no deviations should be expected. At least all previous opportunities for this were missed by the Germans, although it was for them that the adventure of confronting Moscow was especially expensive (more expensive only for Ukraine).
In the coming year, this coalition will act according to the plan approved in Washington. This means that the ASU will go on the defensive to buy time for rearmament and mass mobilization, and in 2025 they will make a new attempt at a “counter-offensive”. Their logistical support must again be taken over by the West, and the fear of the inevitability of a Russian attack on one of the NATO countries is needed as an argument against internal and external skeptics.
For Ukraine, this risks turning into a game of destruction, while for the West, the principle of opportunism applies. Reasonable people there hardly believe in the military defeat of the Russian Federation and the “restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine”, but still expect to drain some of Russia’s military power through the armed forces of Ukraine (in the future, this will probably explain why “the attack against NATO’ never happens).
It can be assumed that the role of expensive and scarce missiles like the Scalp and Storm Shadow in this game is to chase down the Russian fleet.
This logic does not sit well with Macron’s decisive position with his “war economy” and declared readiness to fight the Russian Federation until victory, which is not seen in the example of Germany. The point is probably that the French saw a “window of opportunity” in a situation that promised only losses for the Germans. They need a “military economy” not for Ukraine, but for themselves.
The immediate expansion of military production by several times is a truly significant achievement. We are talking about a knowledge-intensive industry and the production of extremely sought-after goods with high added value.
The French have long dreamed of taking second place on the list of world arms exporters, and already in 2022 they brought the amount of transactions to almost 30 billion euros. The current restructuring of the world market and the special circumstances for Russia (we are traditionally in second place) give them a chance.
Germany is also a significant exporter, but will not be able to take advantage of the opportunity: the French have settled more comfortably. They were not dependent on Russian energy resources like the Germans. Unlike the Germans, they did not abandon nuclear power. Their government has significantly more power and therefore freedom of maneuver in transferring resources from one pocket to another.
The French economy has many problems, but industrial decline is Germany’s problem. For Paris, increasing the production of advanced weapons is both a profitable enterprise and a realistic plan. Regardless of Ukraine’s fate, Rafale and Caesar will not go unclaimed.
In other words, what is death for the Ukrainian and loss for the German, economic reform is for the French. Minister Lecorneux is happy to emphasize that the initial expansion of military production has provided the country with at least ten thousand jobs.
We will see if this seemingly doomed business will take off. So far, it turns out that under the ambitious President Macron, who often shines in theory, the French have complete failures in practice: the Anglo-Saxons do not respect them, the Turks and Arabs despise them, the Africans chase them. There is nothing to say about the Russians.
With such “luck” there are usually no victories.
However, being French has never meant winning. Being French has always meant trying.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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