The second round of French parliamentary elections on 7th July yielded a hung parliament with three main blocks, none of which could command an absolute majority. The largest of those blocks, with 183 deputies; was the Nouveau Front Populaire, a coalition of four left-wing political parties: LFI (France Unbowed), EELV (the Greens), the Socialist Party, and the Communist Party.
The centrist coalition Ensemble (seven parties of which the largest is Macron’s Renaissance party) obtained 168 deputies, while the RN (National Rally), which had come first in the first round, came third with 143. Despite the alarming and continuing rise of the National Rally, the “republican front” of citizens wanting and voting tactically to keep the Rally out of power had held firm.
At the time of writing this article (late August), France still has no new government. The new government might be a left of centre-leftist coalition, or a centre/centre-right one. One would expect this to make a difference with respect to military and security policy. Unfortunately, it is almost certain not to. A centre-right government will pursue the military policies already pursued by Macron’s existing centre-right government; and a left-of-centre government not divergence from current military and foreign policies significantly.
One reason for this is that several clauses of the Constitution explicitly give the president greater responsibility for foreign and military policy, and Macron would almost certainly take a maximalist interpretation of those clauses. A putative left-wing government would come into conflict with Macron in a renewed period of “cohabitation”, and would most likely save its powder for fights on social, economic, or internal politics issues.
A second reason for which a left-wing government would not markedly change existing military and security policy is that this is an area in which the coalition partners are deeply divided.
Key features of Macron’s foreign and military policy are as follows:
1) Unqualified support for and investment in France’s nuclear deterrent
2) Massive increases in the military budget
3) Unashamed promotion of French arms sales, as a means of financing France’s own arms industry, and of increasing French geo-strategic influence
4) A re-affirmation of support for NATO (Macron has not disowned his 2019 description of NATO as “brain-dead”, but has described the Russian invasion of Ukraine as an “electro-choc” which has “reawakened” NATO)
5) Significant promotion, at least verbal, of the idea of European military integration as a complementary force “within NATO”
6) Rhetoric around ”civic and moral re-arming of the nation”, translating concretely into a proposal to re-introduce a form of national service (supposedly with a mostly civic component, but with strong militaristic overtones)
7) In principle, a more sophisticated approach to French interventionism abroad, possibly involving European partnerships, after the failure of France’s 2014 – 2022 military interventions in Africa
Plus ça change
The coalition of parties which will necessarily be formed if the left comes to power will not challenge or change the majority of these policies, either because they all agree with them, or because they are hopelessly split on them.
In the short term, all left-wing parties, in their official position at least if not in the views of their activists, support the continued existence of France’s independent nuclear deterrent. The Greens, the Communists and to a lesser extent France Unbowed support France’s engaging constructively with, and ultimately signing, the Treaty on the Prohibition on Nuclear Weapons; but the Socialists are strongly opposed.
None of the parties will commit to reductions in the military budget, or cancellation of its planned doubling over the next five years. The Greens go no further than to promise French advocacy for “a concerted reduction in military spending worldwide” (party project on the EELV website).
The left-wing parties all call for more parliamentary scrutiny and “ethical oversight” of arms sales; but this has always been a rallying cry of the left, without it ever having much impact on the behaviour of left-wing governments in the past.
Europe is a major area of disagreement between the NFP Partners. France Unbowed is traditionally distrustful of European integration and strongly attached to national sovereignty; the Greens and the Socialists are strongly pro-European, including with respect to military matters and the weapons industry (production, procurement and equipment); the Communists are somewhere between these two poles. In consequence, one could expect a little less pro-European militaristic fervour from a new government, but no significant changes.
The parties divide along similar lines with respect to NATO. France Unbowed and the Communists support progressive or immediate withdrawal from NATO; the Greens and Socialists support continued or even reinforced membership.
The Service National Universel would almost certainly be dropped if the left came to power, and one could expect a toning down of “civic and moral rearmament” rhetoric.
Lastly, the left-wing parties promise a more cooperative, less vertical, less “neo-colonial” partnership with African and other countries, based on equality, and genuine respect for independence. How this would be translated into practice is not clear.
The divisions between the coalition partners constitute one reason why military policy has been almost completely absent from debate in the run-up to the elections. What is far more remarkable is the way in which the RN’s military policy has been kept silent, as part of its leadership’s bid to make the party “electable”.
Earlier this year, the RN’s website contained 17 links to thematic “projects” in which the party outlined its policies on a wide range of different themes. Before the parliamentary elections, the link to the project concerning “defence” was removed. The project is still there, but it is no longer directly accessible from the party’s website.
The “defence” project is an abominable homage to the glory of the army, embodiment of the sovereignty and pride of the nation. It calls for respect for the military “rooted in the unashamed re-affirmation of the military state in all its forms”. Along with such outdated and fascistic-sounding rhetoric, it contains a reaffirmation of the primacy of naked national self-interest over any other consideration, this apparently being best served by ensuring that France is at the forefront of military technological innovation, and that the army is showered not just with praise and “the eternal gratitude of the Nation”, but with limitless funding.
The document illustrates the close ideological, and no doubt practical, links between the RN and the most regressive, militaristic, nationalistic sections of the French military establishment and of French society more generally. That the RN may have wanted to occult all this throughout the pre-election period certainly does not mean that those trends and extreme right-wing sympathies are in abeyance or have been relinquished.
Despite these explanatory factors, the silence on military policy issues throughout the recent elections is quite remarkable. It is as if consultation on these matters with the voting public is considered to be superfluous. An interesting parallel can be drawn with the situation in the UK, and with our own recent elections. In our case also, broad agreement amongst the major parties was a core factor in stifling wide public debate on military matters. Perhaps it is a trend in modern democracies, and if so a worrying one, that wide public debate on such matters is not considered important, as if opinion on such matters is best left to the establishment and to “people in the know”.