The Indo–French strategic dialogue: bilateralism and world perceptions

Shared willingness to develop a stronger relationship, articulated by President Chirac during his visit to India in 1998, was not weakened by India's ensuing nuclear tests. Looking for enhanced power and global recognition, India and France share a common approach to realpolitik, and India's foreign policy is still searching for fresh opportunities to maximize influence in a new global order.     

Remaking the military industrial relationship: A French‐American comparison

Defense industrial complexes in leading Cold War nations have downsized and reallocated resources to other productive activities in the 1990s. In this paper, we analyze the experience of two key countries ‐ the US and France. Comparing the two countries, we find similar outcomes in budgetary retrenchment and large firm restructuring but marked differences in the pace of downsizing and diversification among small and medium‐sized firms. We hypothesize that three sets of contextual differences may explain these differences: 1) institutional differences in the way that the State bureaucracies ‐ the Pentagon and the French Délégation générale pour l'armement (DGA) ‐ oversee defense industrial matters, 2) differences in military industry ownership and firm size patterns, and 3) differences in the regional distribution of defense industrial capacity and associated regional policies. In closing, we note that the two countries’ defense industrial complexes are becoming more alike and speculate on the significance of invidious competition and interactions between them. We address briefly the future of French/American arms industrial competition and cooperation, given the trend towards transnational security arrangements and defense industry globalization     

French Military Adaptation in the Afghan War: Looking Inward or Outward?

ABSTRACT

For some, a specific feature of the French armed forces' adaptation process in the adaptation process would be the capacity to look inward instead of outward in order to identify relevant solutions to tactical/doctrinal problems. This article questions such a narrative, and argues that the French armed forces are as quick as any to borrow from other countries’ experiences. In order to do so, this article introduces the concept of ‘selective emulation’, and compares the French and German military adaptation processes in Afghanistan. The article argues that there is indeed something distinctive about French military adaptation, but it is not what the fiercest defenders of the French ‘exceptionalism’ usually account for.     

French war plans, 1914: The ‘Balance of Power Paradox’

Historians have noted that both German and French war preparation in 1914 fell victim to the inadequacies of traditional threat-based planning: vulnerability to ‘threat deception’ which caused each to underestimate or mischaracterize the threat; a tendency to ‘mirror-image’ by fitting intelligence into preconceived notions of how the enemy was expected to behave; and ‘group think’ that discouraged a serious consideration of alternative scenarios. This article applies the ‘Balance of Power Paradox’ to explain why, at the dawn of the twentieth century, war planning in both Germany and France was driven by an acute sense of weakness which encouraged each side to fashion highly ‘risk acceptant’ strategies. In particular, he examines why and how French commander-in-chief General Joseph Joffre evolved and rationalized his audacious, and disastrous, Plan XVII to leverage French weaknesses and prevent the stronger German Army from bringing the full weight of its military strength to bear against France. The potential implication of this historical vignette is that leaders, and by extension military planners, of both strong and weak states focus on the constraints faced by their opponents, and assume that they can avoid the limitations of their position, while their opponent cannot.     

The British government and the end of French Algeria, 1958–62

Unlike France, Britain viewed the Algerian conflict from 1958 to 1962 primarily as a colonial war. The British government regarded Algérie française as an anachronism, which France would have to relinquish one day. Though Britain was no stranger to ‘dirty’ colonial wars, as simultaneous operations against EOKA nationalists in Cyprus continued to prove, it was not averse to displaying a certain smugness at having averted the kind of mess Algeria seemed to represent. Britain's interest in the latter stages of the Algerian conflict centred on four major areas: Perceptions of colonial warfare; de Gaulle's Algeria policy; Algeria and Britain's view of France in Europe and NATO; Negotiating the ceasefire and ending the conflict.     

Using Indigenous Forces in Counterinsurgency Operations: The French in Algeria, 1954–1962

While the importance of indigenous forces for successful counterinsurgency operations has long been recognized by great powers fighting local insurgencies, the factors that determine the performance of such forces have attracted relatively little scholarly attention. This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of those determinants through an examination of the role and performance of auxiliary indigenous units in French counterinsurgency operations during the Algerian War (1954–62). The findings presented here suggest some important lessons for those seeking to recruit and deploy effective indigenous forces in counterinsurgency operations.     

Initiating insurgencies abroad: French plans to ‘chouannise’ Britain and Ireland, 1793–1798

Secret French plans to launch guerrilla-style raids on the British Isles devised in the spring of 1796 were referred to as ‘chouanneries’. The name and concept behind these small-war operations were modelled on the irregular tactics used by the Chouan rebels in the Vendée, which the French state army had brutally quashed, but some wished to transfer into their institutional practice. Part of France's ongoing military strategy in the war against Britain, which included fomenting insurrection in Ireland, these irregular operations were to be manned partially by pardoned deserters and released convicts and prisoners of war. Of these, only Tate's brief invasion of Wales in 1797 was realised, but the surviving plans provide insightful historical lessons into an Anglophobic mindset shared by a small network of practitioners and policy deciders on the effectiveness of such shock and awe tactics. Largely motivated by the desire to take revenge for Britain's support of counter-revolutionaries in the Vendée, these plans could more aptly be referred to as counter-‘chouanneries’.     

The French Army ‘Centre for Training and Preparation in Counter-Guerrilla Warfare’ (CIPCG) at Arzew

Psychological warfare had been used by the French army in the Indochina War (1946–54), and had spawned a sub-caste of French officers who moulded it and counter-insurgent propaganda into a doctrine known as guerre révolutionnaire (revolutionary war). In Algeria, in 1956, the army established a specialist training centre, the CIPCG, at Arzew on the Algerian coast, to provide courses for all officers arriving ‘in country’. By this, the French command sought to ensure that field officers possessed an approach to pacification and the political dimension to their missions well suited to the terrain and socio-political make-up of Algeria. The real ‘revolutionary war’ zealots were kept away from the directing staff, although some delivered guest lectures. Despite complaints from commanders of field units at losing experienced officers to the CIPCG instructing staff, Arzew students testified that the courses aided them in their missions. Some 10,000 French officers undertook courses at the CIPCG before it was downgraded and then disbanded after Pierre Messmer, a Gaullist, became Minister for the Armed Forces in 1960.     

Operation ‘Serval’: A Strategic Analysis of the French Intervention in Mali, 2013–2014

In 2013, France launched Operation ‘Serval’ to halt the southwards advance of Islamist insurgents in Mali. Using a Clausewitzian analytical framework, this article provides an assessment of France’s political and military aims in Mali and the degree to which they have been attained. Clear political goals, coordinated international diplomacy, an effective use of military force and blunders by the rebel forces turned ‘Serval’ into a short-term success. Strategically, however, the mission has proven unable to address the conflict’s underlying causes. Serval’s long-term effect is probably better measured by what it prevented than what it contributed.     

The Gaullists,the French army and Algeria before 1958: Common cause or marriage of convenience?

Though the Gaullists and the officer class shared a common view of France's military, diplomatic and operational weaknesses during the Algerian War they did not always share ideas on solutions to the problem. The Gaullists were fixated on France's declining world status and were prepared to act opportunistically to halt it, thereby making a French Algeria expendable. The military, on the other hand, believed that keeping Algeria French was axiomatic in avoiding further national humiliation. The coming together of Gaullists and the Army in May 1958 was therefore only a shortterm alliance, which quickly crumbled.     

Institutional Analysis and Irregular Warfare: A Case Study of the French Army in Algeria 1954–1960

This article proposes a case study to illustrate the usefulness of sociological institutional analysis as a method to uncover ‘blue force’ challenges to deal with irregular warfare. The French Army's adaptation to revolutionary warfare in Algeria, starting in 1954, is used to illustrate both the application of the methodology and how institutional forces can hinder as well as overwhelm transformation for irregular warfare. The analysis emphasizes three key dimensions of the French Army's institutional adaptation: the regulative, normative and cognitive. These empirical elements are used to show how they interacted and influenced the institutional implementation of the French COIN structures.     

The essence of war: French armies and small war in the Low Countries (1672–1697)

In the late seventeenth century during the Dutch War (1672–1678) and the Nine Years War (1688–1697), French armies relied on small war for the accomplishment of essential tasks and as part of an overall strategy of exhausting their opponents in the Low Countries. The purposes of small war included the imposition of contributions on enemy populations, the destruction of the enemy base of operations, blockades of fortresses, and the general support of campaign armies. The expression ‘small war’ in the French language appeared with growing frequency in the 1690s. Small war can be viewed as both a cause and consequence of the characteristics of these wars. The limited policy goals of Louis XIV the king of France required a strategy that minimised risk and accomplished the goal of reducing if not eliminating the Spanish presence in the Low Countries that bordered the north of France. As French armies increased in size during this period, the demand for specialists at small increased in order to provide security and ensure supply. Small war in the late seventeenth century was thus not ideologically motivated insurgency, but in the minds of French commanders an essential component of strategy and the nature of war.