The French military: they're there when they need you

That an I'm feeling lucky Google search for 'french military victories' comes up with no matches and asks: Did you mean 'french military defeats', may be just an American joke. But when you think about it, it's hard to come up with a war in which La France has been notably victorious - no, hang on, there was their victory over Greenpeace in 1985 when their navy sneakily sank Rainbow Warrior when she was tied up in Auckland harbour.

That Britain's Armed Forces should be merged with any foreign military is bad enough, but that there should currently be talk of a merger with a country with such a dismal military track record is as alarming as it is ludicrous. Yes, there should be strong military alliances with foreign powers, there always have been. But Britain must never have to seek permission from such a bunch of losers and 'surrender monkeys' in order that she can carry out her foreign policy - because we know what their answer would be: "Non".

Some other comments on French military prowess:

The question for any country silly enough to count on the French should not be "Can we count on the French?" but rather "How long until France collapses?"

"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. All you do is leave behind a lot of noisy baggage."

Or, better still, the quote from the Wall Street Journal: "They're there when they need you."

Latest figures show Army at full strength

The latest figures published by the Defence Analytical Services and Advice (DASA) wing of the MoD show that the improvement in manning levels, which began in the late 2008, has been maintained and that the Army has actually been operating at full strength over the last quarter.

The MoD reports that the (markedly) reduced intake requirement reflects the fact that the Army is currently fully manned and can therefore cut back on new entrants.

The continued drop in the number of those leaving is also an encouraging sign as it implies that the Army is retaining more of its experienced personnel.

That the country is in the midst of the worst recession since the 1930s may also be influencing the situation.

The issue for the immediate future is of course whether the Army will be permitted to continue to operate at the 102,000 mark. Defence Secretary Liam Fox has already hinted that the Strategic Defence Review is going to hit military spending hard; he's quoted as saying that the Goverment will act "ruthlessly and without sentiment" in finding savings in the defence budget. Indeed it's already been rumoured that even Britain's elite 23 SAS Regiment is in line to be culled.

Liam Fox is hoping to play the magician: although he will be overseeing radical reductions (15% is the current consensus) in military expenditure, he also insists that eventually Britain's security would end up "stronger".

The UK is not alone in seeking significant cuts in defence expenditure: across Europe governments have started to slash their military procurement projects. One way that Dr Fox may seek to square the circle of delivering more with less is through closer co-operation within Europe. Integrated procurement programmes, shared hardware, split operational responsibilities - indeed European Military Union itself - may start to look like attractive options to a Coalition desparate to make ends meet. God help us.

MoD: Latest UK Armed Forces manning figures released

The Princes of Denmark

It sometimes seems that the only real military allies the UK has in Europe are the Danes and their fellow Balts, the Estonians.

750 Danes are serving in Afghanistan, proportionately one of the highest national contingents out there. 31 Danish soldiers have given their lives fighting to make Afghanistan a better, more secure place. A high price; in fact this casualty rate, 4.1%, is higher than both the UK's 2.6% and the US's 1.3%.

Unlike other European countries, the Danish people are honouring their commitments to NATO. We had thought that the Dutch could be relied on, but then, I suppose, so did the people of Srebrenica (the Danish Army's record in Bosnia on the other hand earned them great respect). It is most likely that the Dutch will soon be pulling out, leaving their NATO allies in the lurch. Other European contingents are reluctant to be posted to "restive" regions like Helmand or to take the fight to the Taliban; they'd rather leave that to the professionals.

The Danes, however, are in the thick of it and holding firm against the European flight to the Maginot line. Their forces in Afghanistan continue to have strong public support at home - their recent military resurgence has rightly been a source of great national pride.

As one Danish soldier said: "It is too easy to stay at home, and Denmark is doing its part"

There's no 'to be or not to be' for these Vikings.

UK sleepwalks into European Military Union

On the 6th February at the Munich Security Conference, Germany's Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, expressed his country's determination that Europe should have its own permanent, fully integrated army. "The long-term goal is the establishment of a European army under full European parliamentary control (sic). The EU must live up to its political role as a global player. It must be able to manage crises independently. It must be able to respond quickly, flexibly and to take a united stand".

Where Germany leads France of course follows. These two countries are already pressing ahead with their plans to set up a "Synchronised Armed Forces Europe" or SAFE. Under this scheme the national armies of the EU countries will become increasingly synchronised until they will eventually, some say "naturally", merge into a single European Army. Military "interoperability" (in eurospeak) will be the inevitable outcome of this sychronisation process: sychronisation in equipment = sychronisation in training = sychronisation of command.

The labour government's collusion with this Anschluss was witnessed yesterday when Quentin Davies, minister for Defence Equipment and Support, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with France enabling closer co-operation on the procurement of military equipment.

This synchronisation of British and French military equipment is an example of labour's policy announced in the government's recent green paper: "the UK will in future need to co-operate more closely with allies such as France to provide the full range of military capabilities". Defence secretary Ainsworth said in the green paper: "In Europe, the return of France to Nato's integrated military structures offers an opportunity for even greater cooperation with a key partner across a range of defence activity."

The insidious incremental subordination of Britain's Armed Forces to the diktats of the EU will inevitably mean that Britain will soon lose the capability to act unilaterally to defend her national interest and national security. But, I suppose, in Grosse Europa there is no such thing as "national" interest only Franco-German interest.

MoD: MoU between UK and France on urgent operational requests

Nato head Jaap De Hoop Scheffer reminds the UK that our losses in Afghanistan must be seen in a European context

Nato General Secretary Jaap De Hoop Scheffer from Holland congratulated the UK yesterday for being a "team" player in the war in Afghanistan. He also remarked that Britain's losses should be seen as part of the "shared sacrifice" being made in the war against the Taliban.

He said: "If one reads any national press, you could be forgiven for thinking that your forces were fighting in Afghanistan alone. But they are not. They are part of a team...... Fourteen nations are fighting in the south of Afghanistan, alongside their British colleagues, along with Afghan forces. Hundreds of Nato soldiers from other countries have also lost their lives - which is a sad, but real, measure of shared sacrifice. The United States has lost 747 soldiers, the most of any nation, followed by Britain 187, then Canada 125, Germany 35, France 28 and Denmark and Italy 25."

However, what Mr De Hoop Scheffer chose not to point out is that the disproportionately high sacrifice being made by the US, Canadian and British Allies is happening because they are the ones who are prepared to take the fight to the Taliban and are consequently bearing the brunt of the fighting and of the losses.

President Obama and Prime Ministers Harper and Brown have repeatedly been pleading with other Nato-Euro countries to "step up to the plate". One wonders whether Mr De Hoop Scheffer has been asking his European friends to play a fuller part in the team that is fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Mail: British bomb disposal expert dies in Afghanistan as Nato boss says UK is making a 'shared sacrifice'

Bundeswehr: a soft option

The descendants of a once mighty military machine are now considered by their own inspector general as being "an embarrassment". General Wolfgang Schneiderhahn told the Bundestag that depite their positive contribution in Afghanistan, German troops needed to have "a better feeling for discipline and to show a greater readiness to serve the state".

His comments came after troops had been moaning about their conditions during deployment - e.g. the quality of their sleeping bags. This lack of esprit de corps may in part be due to the fact that German forces are not allowed in offensive combat situations and, in Afghanistan for example, are only assigned to protecting reconstruction projects - and that only during office hours.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Sarkozy have for some time been strutting around Europe extolling the virtues of an integrated European Defence Force; French and German troops have actually formed a Euro Brigade and have carried out joint exercises in their borderlands - the Saargebeit or somewhere. Border guards sounds about right.

The Telegraph: Moaning German soldiers an 'embarrassment' say chiefs

Royal Marines to go on EU standby

Britain's Armed Forces have taken yet another step on the slippery slope towards full European military integration.

Yesterday Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth announced that Royal Marine Commandos will be on standby over the first six months of 2010 to form part of a battlegroup ready to be deployed to a conflict zone determined by the EU.

Not only will this put British troops under EU control; it also means that the Commandos on EU standby will not be available to serve with British forces in Afghanistan.

Defence management: Royal Marines on EU stand by

European military integration? No tanks.

Ever since the Mark 1 crawled across the battlefields of the Somme in 1916 Britain has had a tradition of producing some of the world's finest tanks. All that, however, may soon be coming to an end. With the closures recently announced by BAe of some of its Global Combat Systems factories, Challenger 2 may well prove to be the last battle tank to be made in the UK.

Although this may please the anti-war demonstrators who marched through the streets of Brighton at the weekend, the demise of tank production in the UK will be another nail in the coffin of our military independence and force us even further down the road towards European military integration: we've already got the Eurofighter, next it'll be the EuroPanzer.

BAe blames the closures on the MoD and its disastrous management of the FRES programme and the scrapping last December of the order for 2000 armoured untility vehicles. Of course the recession hasn't helped either.

The Mail: Tanks for the memories... Britain ends tank production after 93 years - and future models will have GERMAN guns
Defence Management: BAE blames FRES debacle for cuts

European Defence Force - a French ambition

In a few months time, France will take over the presidency of the European Union. The major initiative which is expected from Paris during the six months of the French presidency is the drive towards an integrated European Defence Community (CED Communauté Européenne de Défense). This is a long-held ambition of French diplomacy originally conceived as a European third way between the US and USSR hegemonies.

Although President Sarkozy has seemed keen to improve relations with the US and NATO, this has not meant that this French ambition has been discarded. Indeed the apparent reconcilation with the US and NATO enables M. Sarkozy to promote his European defence ambitions without fear of being accused of being anti-American and anti-NATO.

Over the coming months France can be expected to begin articulating the structure it envisages for pan-European defence. The sort of proposals coming out of Paris at the moment are:

• Greater defence co-operation amongst the big six European countries - UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Poland - in line with an emerging common EU foreign policy.
• Setting up a "European Intervention Force", a EuroCorps made up of contingents of 10,000 troops from each of the big six.
• Implementation of defence budgets to a fixed 2% of Gross National Product.
• Harmonisation of procurement and development programmes.
• Integration of armaments industries with the creation of more pan-European conglomorates.
• The Europeanisation of military bases, wherever they may be located round the world.
• The implementation of common European programmes around defence strategies for the future - communications, information systems, anti-missle defence systems.
• The introduction of common European civil protection programmes to meet threats from international terrorism - including nuclear, chemical and biological threats.

And this would be just the beginning: full integration of defence and foreign affairs is the ultimate goal of the Eurocracy. The British Army will form the GB Division of the EuroWehr; the Royal Navy will form the North Atlantic Fleet of the EuroMer; and the Royal Air Force the GB squadron of EuroAire.

Link> Le Figaro: 8 propositions pour donner à l'Union une défense commune