After a year marked by the hasty departure from the Sahel and faced with a multiplicity of challenges: Ukraine and the war economy, the Middle East but also the Paris Olympic Games, President Emmanuel Macron presented his wishes to the armies French this Friday January 19 in Cherbourg.
During his speech, the president first recalled that France’s duty was “to make Russian victory impossible. A Russian victory is the end of European security, it is the very end of a possible security architecture in Europe. This is why we will continue to help the Ukrainians”, while Emmanuel Macron plans to go to Kiev in February, for the second time since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022.
Reach “war economy mode”
While Paris has increased its announcements of military aid to Kiev this week – around forty long-range Scalp missiles first, around fifty AASM bombs (modular air-ground weapons) per month for a year thereafter, a rise in power of the production of 155 mm shells and the financing of twelve additional Caesar cannons – the Head of State urged defense industrialists to “gain speed, volume and innovation” to achieve “economy mode of war”, castigating the “form of numbness” which had spread to the sector before the invasion of Ukraine.
“We must amplify the transformation that has begun” in order to respond more quickly to Ukraine’s needs in the war against Russia, the head of state told the industrialists. “I ask each boss to be totally focused on production and supply issues. We must never again be satisfied with production deadlines that extend over several years,” he insisted. “What is expected of everyone is basically to gain in speed, in volume, in innovation,” he also argued, while Emmanuel Macron pleads for “an industry in war economy mode” since February 2022 and the start of the war in Ukraine. The Head of State spoke in particular of the “comfortable years” which, sometimes, caused “a form of satisfied numbness which allowed us to maintain a very high level of quality, very high but expensive, costly at small flows, at little innovation. But “this world no longer allows it,” he argued.
“Transformation” of armies
The Head of State also addressed the situation in West Africa, recalling that “France is reorganizing itself in Africa”, while the last French soldiers left Niger on December 22, ending ten years of anti-jihadist operation in the Sahel, after being pushed out in Mali and Burkina Faso by hostile juntas. Since then, the armies, regularly called upon to “transform”, have been waiting for prospects to reorient their missions in Africa but also towards other regions: the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, the Arab-Persian Gulf or the east of the Europe.
The head of state also spoke about the conflict between Israel and Hamas. He stressed that France would “continue its efforts” to send humanitarian aid, arguing that “no other Western country has had such intensity” on this subject. Since the terrorist attack by the Palestinian group set the Middle East ablaze, a helicopter carrier, the Dixmude, has been reconditioned into a military hospital. Anchored in Egyptian waters, he treated “more than a thousand” Gazan civilians injured by Israeli bombings on Gaza, said Emmanuel Macron.
Finally, Emmanuel Macron also raised the subject of the Olympic Games, which will mobilize at least 15,000 soldiers this summer. Even as the armies are looking for a solution to face retention and recruitment difficulties, notably with a gap of around 2,000 people in the Army. “The forces of the nation will complement each other, I know I can count on you,” greeted the president.