If that is not a famous line from a Feydeau farce then it ought to be, otherwise it might do as a press release from the French Minister of Defence who finds himself standing alone in an African war minus his trousers - and much else. If I come across as enjoying this French débâcle too much, well, who doesn't get a giggle from watching a blind cripple cross the M25 motorway? Joseph A. Harriss in The American Spectator does a better job than me at keeping the relish out of his tone - but only just! What he does do, however, is to spell out the embarrassing folly of President Hollande's ridiculous posturing over the conflict in Mali:
WITH WELL-ARMED radical Islamist insurgents closing in last winter on Mali’s
capital, Bamako, French President François Hollande suddenly decided to defend
Western civilization. Plunging in the polls as the most unpopular French
president since the Fifth Republic was founded in 1958, he just might have had
ulterior motives; diverting hostile public opinion at home with a military
escapade abroad is a tried and true tactic for floundering chiefs of state. Be
that as it may, French troops, mainly Foreign Legion, began deploying to Mali in
Operation Serval on January 11. The French applauded his unwonted boldness. He got a brief bump in the polls.
But alas, mon braves, it was an even bumpier downhill drive after that when it became clear that the French military were even less prepared for war than they were in 1940 when at least they had an ally of sorts, er, us Brits, that is, even if we were equally useless. In January this year they had nothing:
But it quickly became clear that Hollande, for maximum go-it-alone swagger,
had ordered the operation without prior consultation with his potential allies.
Even less had he assembled an operational coalition. France’s great new friend
Germany quickly ruled out sending combat troops, proving that the ballyhooed
Franco-German Brigade is useful only for creating a façade of European military
cooperation and parading down the Champs-Elysées on Bastille Day. The European Union hemmed and hawed, finally promising a modest training mission for African troops in Mali. Even NATO, eager for new missions to justify its existence in the absence of the Cold War, declined to get involved.
The European Defense Agency (EDA) in Brussels, created nine years ago
ostensibly to further European defense cooperation? Count them out: They’re too
busy with visionary projects like using solar power to reduce military energy
needs. As retired French Air Force General Étienne Copel, a former assistant
chief of staff, scoffs, “The EDA is incapable of even doing a feasibility study.
The lack of an operational European defense effort is a catastrophe.” That left
Britain to volunteer a couple of military transports and some training
personnel, Canada a transport plane, Belgium some helicopters, token efforts
that increased incrementally as time went on and danger decreased.
Thus, and in graphic form, les poulets had come home to roost. The French, along with most European countries, had enjoyed decades of comfort and safety under the American umbrella. We, at least, had tried to contribute something but the French had stalked out of NATO in true Gaulliste style and allowed their aero companies to concentrate on military and civilian aircraft in competition with the Americans. Perhaps in the latter years of the last century that might have been très intelligent but today, in the 21st century it has left the French floundering in a new technological warfare quite beyond their capabilities:
Today’s advanced surveillance drones, like America’s Predator and Reaper UAVs,
fly high and loiter long over target areas. But France, like the rest of Europe,
is years behind the curve in developing them—despite having the technology and
industrial base to produce aviation and space successes like Airbus airliners
and the Ariane 5 rocket launcher. Except for some small tactical drones
ineffective in that environment, it currently has a sum total of three obsolete
surveillance drones with inadequate airborne sensors based on a 20-year-old
Israeli model. (By comparison, the U.S. has more than 6,000 drones of all
types.) As Defense Minister Le Drian admitted recently, “France completely
missed the drone revolution. Our backwardness in that field is considerable and
incomprehensible."
Quelle domage and all that sort of thing but before we get into full 'sneer mode' we should remind ourselves, or better still remind 'Dim Dave', that we are not much better off and thus any ideas of intervention in Syria need to be squashed firmly.
