Emmanuel Macron mentioned yesterday, at least half a dozen times, the concept of “war economy” to urge the arms industry and the State to make a long-range effort. In a speech at the Cherbourg naval base (Normandy) to congratulate the armed forces on the new year, the French president said that France urgently needs to restore its full military power to confront threats and to further help Ukraine in the face of Russia.
Macron’s intervention came a day after his Defense Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, placed emphasis on the “war economy” and announced immediate aid to Ukraine (40 Scalp cruise missiles, 78 Caesar cannons, 3,000 howitzers per month and hundreds of A2SM guided bombs). Just as Macron was speaking in Cherbourg, the Russian Foreign Ministry made it known that it was summoning the French ambassador to express dissatisfaction with France’s increasing involvement in favor of Ukraine.
According to the French head of state, rearmament is inexcusable as the world is. Macron boasted that the Defense budget doubled in the ten years of his stay in the Elysée. Praise was also directed to the war industry for having accelerated the production, cutting deadlines by half, of such important elements of the arsenal as the Rafale fighter-bombers, the Caesar cannons, the Mistral missiles and the Thales radars.
“We need faster and stronger military production capacity,” Macron stressed. In 2024 alone, the armies will receive new material worth 9,000 million euros and there will be orders for 14,000 million. Items included are a new observation satellite, 250 Scorpion armored vehicles, 13 new Rafales and an attack submarine. The budget for cyber warfare will grow by 30% and there will be significant investments in aerial and naval drones, robots and artificial intelligence, and to increase the stock of ammunition. Macron recalled that already in 2022 he predicted “the growth of a war economy.”
The decision to support Ukraine more strongly is clear. Paris is aware that it must compensate for the decline in American commitment. Macron will soon travel to Kyiv to finalize the plans already outlined by his Defense and Foreign Ministers. The philosophy, according to Lecornu, is to stop providing Ukraine with weapons from the French stock and design a lasting industrial production strategy, partly on Ukrainian territory. France is proud of the help it has already given, numerically inferior to partners like Germany, but more real and effective. Paris complains that other countries made promises that they did not keep – alluding to Berlin – or that they sent defective material, such as Leopard tanks. Lecornu assured in an interview with France Inter that, for his part, “everything promised has been sent, and everything sent works.”
In the Cherbourg speech, Macron emphasized the idea that “we cannot let Russia think it can win,” although he did not say at any point that Ukraine must completely restore its territorial integrity. The French president warned of the dramatic consequences of a Russian victory, which would be “the end of European security.”
The terrorist threat was addressed by the president, also in the context of the Olympic Games, and there was a reference to the painful setbacks suffered last year in several Sahel countries. Macron denied that France is leaving and abandoning its commitment to this African region. “France is reorganizing,” he said. On Gaza, his formulations were cautious and there was no indication that France would embark on a war against Hamas. On the Red Sea crisis, he reaffirmed the autonomy of the French response, the classic line since the time of De Gaulle. Yes to solidarity with allies, but without assuming joint operational duties. That is why the country wants to rearm itself and show itself a robust and credible deterrent capacity.
