Thinking about the defense of a country means having a precise vision of its content, both in time and in space. Over the decades, France’s doctrinal approach has clearly changed, with the end of the Cold War, conscription and questions about external interventions, especially in Africa. As for the comparison in space, it leads to the difference between the national defense effort measured by NATO and the budget voted by Parliament. Since the summit of the Atlantic Alliance of Vilnius, in 2023, France devoted at least 2 % of its GDP to its defense. Last year, the amount amounted to almost 60 billion euros. However, the budget of the armed armies stricto sensu, that is to say outside the pensions of the former soldiers, represented, in fact, only 48.2 billion, or 1.6 % of GDP.
To hear the speeches of the moment, this budget would be the last of the sequence opened by the fall of the Berlin Wall, which will remain like that of “peace dividends”. Let us compare it to that of 1988, which was the last year of the previous period, that of the Cold War. The amount of the budget excluding pensions of 1988, in euros today, was 50 billion, more or less the same as that of 2024. But reported to GDP, it absorbed 3.6 %, instead of the 1.6 % of last year.
“The first of the medium powers”
When we take a step back, we note that, in the long term, France rather sought to maintain a high military expenditure. This consistency corresponded to its desire to be considered a great power, today a permanent member of the UN Security Council and endowed with the nuclear weapon, or at the very least to be considered, to use an expression of King Louis-Philippe, updated by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, as the “first of medium powers”.
To be convinced, we can examine the military budget excluding pensions, the one whose current perimeter is 1.6 % of GDP, going up until the end of the 19th century. In 1889, the adoption of the FreyCinet law on the reorganization of armies, which reaffirms in particular the principle of conscription, confirmed the adoption by the Third Republic of an agro-militarist social organization based on the promotion of an army dedicated to revenge after the defeat of 1870, of agriculture protected by Méline duties and a compulsory public school focused on patriotism.
In 1953, military spending reached 8.7 % of GDP
The military budget of 1890, which is the equivalent of 3 billion euros today, absorbs 3.7 % of GDP. This share was 4 % in 1900 and 3.7 % in 1910. It rises to 9 % in 1920 before dropping to 3.2 % in 1930 and then dating to 8.5 % in 1938. After 1945, the effort was not relaxing. The Soviet threat and the Indochina War made 1953 one of the years when the weight of military spending is the highest. It reached 8.7 % of GDP, knowing that part of this effort is covered by American aid, the overall amount of which represents 64 % of the equipment budget. On the death of Stalin, this weight begins to decline, slowly first, faster after the end of the Algerian war, to reach 3.6 % in 1988. It should be noted, in passing, that the construction of the nuclear arsenal was, in part, substituted and not added to the maintenance of a conventional army.
Finding the level of 1988 in part of national wealth would today require an increase of 60 billion euros. But this increase in military expenditure requires beforehand an in -depth reflection on the threat and the responses to be provided. In 1988, the army was still a conscription army which brought together 558,000 individuals. From now on, it has 264,000. And while the army represented 54 % of these workforce, that of today is only 42 %.
During the 2017 presidential election, a debate was committed to the need to provide France with a second aircraft carrier, in order to compensate for periodic unavailability – eighteen months, every ten years – during which the maintenance of the maintenance Charles de Gaulle Handicap the navy. Now, some are advising rather to give priority to nuclear deterrence, the envelope of which amounted to 6 billion euros last year, against 30 billion francs in 1988, or 8 billion euros today. The strategic choices which are won in 2025 to protect the country cannot be summed up with simple GDP points.
* Jean-Marc Daniel is an economist, professor emeritus at ESCP Business School and author of New Economic History Lessons (Odile Jacob, 2024).
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