Although
Britain and France have closely aligned interests, they have long found it
difficult to cooperate. As Shakespeare once described the relationship: "France and England, whose very
shores look pale with envy of each other's happiness." While NATO allies
France vetoed Britain's application for the European
Economic Community -- not just once but twice. But yesterday, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President
Nicolas Sarkozy signed a treaty that will bind their defense establishments tightly
together for the coming fifty years.
The treaty commits the countries to cooperation in nuclear stockpile
stewardship, development of a 10,000 troop expeditionary force, and sharing of
aircraft carriers. The agreement will see Britain's second
carrier capable of landing French (as well as American) fighters, and swapping
crews. They will jointly purchase transport aircraft and develop UAVs and
future attack submarines.
Cameron was at pains to emphasize the agreement's strengths in terms of Britain's ability to fight unilaterally, saying it will "increase not just our
joint capacity, but crucially we increase our own individual sovereign
capacity." Sarkozy reassured that France would not balk
at participating in Britain's wars -- a crucial argument after the Falklands and
Iraq wars.
France and Britain have fought mostly on the same side in their wars of the
past century, they've been committed to the others defense through NATO
since 1949, as well as have Europe's only nuclear arsenals and its most powerful
conventional militaries. They also have political cultures in which the
use of military force is still generally accepted as a central element of
statecraft.
It has long made sense for Britain and France to cooperate more closely on
defense issues. The Blair government took a major step forward with the
St Malo agreements in the late 1990s; but France remaining outside the NATO
integrated military command since 1967 created both practical difficulties and
suspicion in the United States about European cooperation.
France has been warming to NATO for nearly a decade, acknowledging advances
other militaries were making as the result of close cooperation with U.S.
military transformation. France returned to NATO military staffs last
year, removing major obstacles to the kind of relationship Britain has been
seeking.
Both countries showed unexpected compromise. Britain has accepted in
defense the "two speed Europe" it fought so stridently against in EU councils.
France was ambitious for an EU defense in ways that have not
materialized; the agreement with Britain can be seen as both countries
conceding the EU is incapable of providing the basis for closer practical
cooperation. The United States should understand it also as a vote of no
confidence that NATO can provide that basis (although the Cameron government
would surely deny that, given how much rhetoric about NATO the defense review
contains).
The Cameron government managed this all very shrewdly, rolling out their
national security strategy, then their defense review, then their budget, and
only then signing the U.K.-France treaty. Different sequencing would have
increased the outcry in Britain that the budget cuts were damaging to Britain's
security. Setting the context as they did, the optics are good European
politics (a novelty for a Tory government), good transatlantic politics, and
innovative ways to keep costs down.
When Great Britain and France were melding their militaries together to fight
The Great War (as World War I was called before there was World War II), the
Allied Supreme Commander, French Marshal Foch, worriedly asked his British
counterpart, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, how many casualties it would take before
Britain were fully committed to winning the war. Haig imperiously
answered "it would take but the death of a single British soldier," to which
Foch irritatedly replied, "then assign him to my staff and I'll shoot him
myself the first day of the war." With the new Cameron-Sarkozy
agreements, the French may finally have their casualty.
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