Eurodefense Nederland nieuws

While the European Union’s defence-aerospace ambitions are clear, industrial fragmentation and conflicting national imperatives continue to act as impediments within the sector, explain Douglas Barrie and Niklas Ebert  from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. This continues to provide the United States with a large window of opportunity in the European market. 

1945 ushered in the nuclear era. Yet, the construction of a European project, with the ambitions to achieve economic integration and strategic cooperation, did not have an agenda on nuclear force and deterrence. French President Emmanuel Macron brought the issue back up in a speech delivered at the  Ecole de Guerre  in February 2020, during which he called upon European leaders to engage in a strategic dialogue on nuclear issues. This call has remained relatively unanswered, especially in Germany, which is strongly committed to pursuing European security through a NATO framework, and fears France’s proposal could threaten the transatlantic partnership.

The French military currently is one of Western Europe’s most capable, and it boasts a range of capabilities that enable it to engage in the full spectrum of operations, including high-intensity conventional warfare against a peer adversary. In this report , RAND researchers examine the role that the French military might play as a coalition partner in a hypothetical high intensity conventional conflict in Europe. Researchers drew on a wide range of publications in French and English, as well as on conversations with French defense experts to understand not just the French military’s capabilities and capacity to wage war in general but also its ability to wage high-intensity conventional warfare in particular. Photo credits: Contando Estrelas, Flickr.