For 35 years, France's leaders have unilaterally disarmed their country

Just like with Denmark's politicians, France's "leaders have unilaterally disarmed the country", Jean-Philippe Feldman explains on IREF Europe, while an RTBF TV documentary adds that a front line that the French army could reasonably defend would barely be 80 km long. 

"The latest generation of tanks in reduced numbers, military vehicles poorly suited for heavy combat, lack of gunpowder, delays in the drone delivery program": in case of war with the Kremlin, France would in addition have to deprive itself of some of its top troops, as the Foreign Legion has hundreds of Russians and Ukrainians among its ranks…

Related: The Systematic Destruction of Denmark's Military Over 30 Years: "Ships that cannot sail; Planes that cannot fly; And cannons that cannot fire — Everything is missing"  

Jean-Philippe Feldman:

Nos hommes politiques, de droite, de gauche et du centre, pour une fois à peu près d’accord, semblent subitement se rendre compte que notre pays a tiré les « dividendes de la paix » depuis trop longtemps. Il s’est désarmé, ce qui le rend vulnérable. Comment en sommes-nous arrivés là ? 

Une précision tout d’abord : il devrait être aisé de donner les chiffres relatifs à l’évolution du budget de nos armées. En réalité, les chiffres disponibles sont très divers parce qu’ils renvoient à des données différentes. Certains donnent les statistiques globales de l’armée et des anciens combattants. D’autres, en vertu du changement des règles budgétaires, renvoient à des missions, et non plus au ministère. D’autres encore retranchent les dépenses de pension, voire de gendarmerie. Les derniers concernent des euros courants ou bien des euros constants sur la base d’une année particulière.

Cette précision étant faite, nous pouvons dévoiler à nos lecteurs un ensemble de statistiques, puisque ce sont surtout les ordres de grandeur qui importent.

 … En 1988, le budget des Armées était encore le premier budget de l’État devant l’Education nationale (Jean-Marc Daniel, « Finances publiques : les dividendes de la paix ? », Observations et diagnostics économiques, n ° 47, octobre 1993). En 2018, un auteur se lamente du fait que le budget de la Défense soit devenu en 2015 seulement le sixième poste de dépenses publiques (Friederike Richter, « Les budgets de défense en France », Les Champs de Mars, 2018/1, n° 30).

Les raisons de la chute des dépenses militaires

Comment expliquer les chiffres des dépenses militaires en chute libre ? Un article récent (Julien Damon, « Dépenses militaires versus dépenses sociales ? », Telos, 25 février 2025) livre un tableau fort éclairant en pourcentage du produit intérieur brut que nous reprenons :

                                        1960                      1990                       2023

Dépenses sociales        15 %                       25 %                       33 %

Dépenses militaires        5 %                         3 %                         2 %

Ce tableau se passe à peine de commentaires. Le 10 juin 1990, un certain Laurent Fabius, alors Président de l’Assemblée nationale, parlait des « dividendes de la paix » à la suite de la chute du mur de Berlin. Il convenait donc selon lui de baisser les dépenses militaires puisque « l’Armée Rouge ne (représentait) plus une menace ». Et de les baisser non pas bien entendu pour diminuer les dépenses de l’État, mais pour les réorienter ! Les gouvernants successifs, tant de droite que du centre ou de gauche, ont suivi son conseil comme un seul homme. Selon la formule consacrée, les dépenses militaires sont devenues une variable d’ajustement pour assurer la croissance du modèle social français, d’autant plus que la « Grande muette » qu’est l’armée ne pouvait guère renâcler.

Pour le dire autrement, nos gouvernants successifs ont unilatéralement désarmé le pays. Il faut savoir gré à Emmanuel Macron d’avoir pris conscience de la gravité de la situation fin 2017, mais, du fait de la croissance continue de la dette publique et, ceci expliquant cela, de l’État providence sous ses mandats, les efforts restent aujourd’hui très insuffisants. Et de toute façon, on ne rattrape pas en quelques années des décennies d’errements…

RTBF L'armée française est-elle prête à la guerre ? 

L'armée française est-elle prête à la guerre ?

Les points faibles de la Défense nationale

45 min

| Publié le 28/01/25

|Disponible jusqu'au 05/05/2025

80 kilomètres, c'est l'étendue de la ligne de front que l'armée française pourrait tenir si elle était confrontée à un conflit de haute intensité. Une étendue très limitée qui illustre les capacités actuelles des forces françaises en cas de guerre. Chars de dernière génération en nombre réduit, véhicules militaires peu adaptés à des affrontements lourds, manque de poudre à canon, retard dans le programme de livraison de drones. Une enquête sur les points faibles de la Défense nationale. En cas de conflit avec la Russie, l'armée française pourrait aussi devoir se priver de plusieurs centaines de soldats parmi les plus aguerris, ceux de la Légion étrangère, qui comptent dans ses rangs 1200 combattants d'origine russe ou ukrainienne.

Casting et équipe

Réalisateur

Sarrade Benoit

Réalisateur

Palencia Juan

Réalisateur

Nicolas Duchêne

A fundamental misunderstanding: The truth about European "conservatism" that American conservatives must understand

Over at the Washington Examiner, Ian Haworth insists that American conservatives must understand the truth about European ‘conservatism’ (danke zu Stephen Green).

The American political system is unique: a system built in pursuit of deadlock rather than “progress,” a system that fully understands human nature and proactively defends against it, and a system that holds itself accountable, at least when it works as designed.

But at its heart, American politics is unique because the United States of America is unique. It is a miracle of human ideological experimentation that, thanks to the genius of the Founding Fathers, has almost single-handedly provided the country and the world with levels of peace and prosperity that would have seemed unimaginable at any other point in human history.

Despite these marvelous attributes, however, there is a persistent and dangerous flaw in the American psyche: an assumption that the rest of the world is just like us. You see it when leftists make the laughably absurd argument that all cultures are equal. If you think that’s the case, please explain how life in modern-day Nashville, Tennessee, for example, is as good as, say, that of the Mayans, who routinely performed child sacrifices to satisfy the hunger of supernatural beings.

The other side to this misguided coin is an insistence on seeing all other nations and cultures through an American lens as if Disney’s image of multiculturalism provided in Orlando’s Epcot is a window into global reality. And how does this manifest in the context of politics? One clear example is the projection of American politics onto other political movements in Europe.

How many times have British conservative politicians or figures been celebrated by American conservatives as their ideological counterparts, with even President Donald Trump praising former Prime Minister Boris Johnson as the British Trump?

How often do American conservatives celebrate nations such as Hungary for their supposed commitment to conservative principles? How often do American conservatives throw their weight behind foreign political campaigns after skimming the blurb and picking the self-professed conservative choice, as with Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk’s recent rush to cheer on the German AfD party?

But at the center of these misguided alignments, and so many others, is a fundamental misunderstanding: the assumption that foreign conservatism bears any meaningful resemblance to American conservatism. Newsflash, it doesn’t. In fact, it’s about as similar as chalk and cheese.

American conservatism is built upon a set of foundational principles, principles enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The rights to free speech, gun ownership, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly and the notion of limited government are not mere policy preferences. They are the core tenets that define what it means to be an American conservative. At least, they used to be.

True American conservatism is not just a political leaning. It is a philosophy rooted in the preservation of individual liberty and our God-given inalienable rights. Meanwhile, European conservatism is mere branding. What passes for “conservatism” in Europe depends entirely on the alternative, which often makes it little more than a nationalistic version of its left-wing opposition with a half-hearted call for marginally lower taxes and a growing opposition to unfettered illegal immigration.

Sure, these European conservative parties might occasionally borrow from the American conservative playbook in terms of their rhetoric, speaking passionately of freedom or tradition or liberty, but they lack the ideological backbone and the political will to turn these words into action. Let alone the fact that American conservatism is tied to the ideology that birthed the nation itself. European conservatism is tied to nothing.

In the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party enjoyed power for more than a decade before being unseated by Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. What conservative values that are central to American conservatism did the Conservative Party defend? The U.K. is still anti-gun, still pro-abortion, still pro-socialized medicine, and still hostile to free speech.

Our trans-Atlantic cousins have hate speech laws that criminalize political expression, knife control laws that would be laughable if they weren’t so dystopian, and a public healthcare system that is as mandatory as it is inefficient. If that’s what passes for “conservatism,” count me out.

Hungary’s right-wing populist Fidesz party, led by Viktor Orban, is often praised by American conservatives for its hard-line stance on immigration and defense of national identity. While there certainly are aspects of Orban’s policies that merit discussion, let’s not kid ourselves. Hungary is not a beacon of conservatism in the American sense, and its claims of conservative victories often rely on a heavy dose of marketing-based creativity.

What about Germany’s Alternative fur Deutschland? While it brands itself as a nationalist, anti-globalist party while being arguably and oxymoronically pro-Russia, it is by no means a party that champions the ideals of small government and individual liberty. Germany remains deeply embedded in the European Union’s bureaucratic nightmare, and the AfD, despite its populist rhetoric, has shown no real commitment to dismantling this supranational control. Just like there is no word for “fluffy” in German, there is no German word for “small government.”

Then there’s France, where “conservatism” is often nothing more than a slightly slower march toward socialism. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party may reject mass immigration and Islamic extremism, but it is hardly a bastion of free-market policy or constitutional rights. You could even argue that it represents a nationalist brand of leftism, with economic policies that would make Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) blush.

Of course, the “America First” crowd will now ask: Why does this matter? Well, because if you care about American conservatism, you should care when our flag bearers start waving other flags at the same time. While it’s obvious that European politicians have a lot to gain by aligning themselves with us, when we align with European “conservatives” in return, despite sharing few or no actual ideological positions, we risk diluting our movement and becoming more like them.

If American conservatives look to Europe for inspiration, we risk normalizing the idea that big government is acceptable as long as it wears a different hat, and we risk embracing a watered-down version of our own ideology that makes room for policies we would otherwise reject.

The truth is we don’t need to look abroad for examples of conservatism. We already have the greatest example right here at home. We are a nation built on not only independence from a foreign government but independence from big government, a nation that enshrined inalienable rights into our Constitution.

Instead of looking to Europe for guidance, we should be strengthening what makes American conservatism unique. We should be fighting to uphold the principles of limited government, free markets, and individual liberties — not seeking validation from parties that wouldn’t recognize true conservatism if it smacked them on the nose.

So, the next time you see a European politician being lauded as the “Trump of [insert country here],” take a step back and ask yourself: What do they actually stand for? Do they defend the right to bear arms? Do they oppose government overreach in healthcare and the economy? Do they protect free speech from government interference? If the answer is no, non, or nein, then they are not conservative in the American sense. 

And the American sense of conservatism is the only one that matters. Here’s a radical idea: Stop looking to Europe. We are still the best. Act like it.

Is Donald Trump Dropping the Ukrainians? Asks French TV; Is America Still the Ally of Europe?

On Saturday evening, BFMTV hosted a debate on Ukraine, the war with Russia, Putin's most recent bombardments, and whether the United States is still an ally of Europe.

The BFMTV debate became very animated, in the words of Philippe Karsenty, who stood alone up against five or six anti-Trumpists, not excluding the TV presenter herself, all of whom tried to interrupt him (1:11:17-1:40:24).

| Week-end soir 

Émission du 8 mars 2025

Le vendredi, samedi et dimanche soir, Karine de Ménonville est à la tête de Week-End Soir : un rendez-vous pour décrypter et débattre, au cœur de l’actualité.

1h40min|2025|

Diffusée le 8 mars 2025 à 22h00 sur BFM TV

Encore disponible 8 jours

How does the Democratic Party expect to be popular when it is "offending most people in the country, calling everybody sexist and racist and transphobic and every other name, and then saying, ‘please follow us'’'?

"Offending most of the country, turns out, is not as popular as my party thought it was going to be."

Van Jones warns Democratic Party is 'screwed,' adding they 'don't know what to do' writes Lindsay Kornick on Fox News.

Former Obama advisor Van Jones declared that the Democratic Party was "screwed" and trapped between two deeply unpopular factions.

The CNN commentator couldn’t help but laugh at the "nightmare" Democrats were in when asked about the ongoing friction between party members.

"Look, man, we’re screwed," Jones said on "CNN Newsroom" Sunday. "I mean, Democrats don’t know what to do. This is a nightmare. You know, somebody like Donald Trump, we thought we’d at least have Hakeem Jeffries in the Speaker’s chair to hold him back if we didn‘t have Kamala in there to do the right thing."

Jones commented on how the party continues to be caught between the establishment members and the more progressive members with no clear path moving forward.

"Listen, the Democratic Party is going through a massive set of internal crises. You have a party that got trapped two ways," he said. "One, defending a broken status quo that nobody likes because they thought that Donald Trump was going to make it worse. But when you’re defending the status quo, you’re going to lose."

"And then offending most people in the country, calling everybody sexist and racist and transphobic and every other name, and then saying, ‘please follow us.’ That’s not a good strategy, folks [Laughter]. Defending a broken status quo and offending most of the country, turns out, is not as popular as my party thought it was going to be. And so it’s going to take a while for people to get it figured out," Jones added.

But have no fear, leftists. As Stephen Kruiser writes, the Dems Are Hoping to F-Bomb Their Way Into America's Hearts:  

This is from something that Rick wrote over the weekend [Dems Tossing 'F Bombs' Around, Looking to Create a 'Shortcut to Authenticity' by Rick Moran]:

For Democrats, the experience is particularly unnerving. It has unmoored many of them from civilized society and sent them on a search for "authenticity." As Politico reports, "one unifying thread as they try to invigorate their connection to the American voter has been a reach for profanity."

 … And who needs fresh policy ideas when you can bond with the voters by simply wagging a salty tongue?

I'll admit to being a little torn here. Lately, I think it would be nice to go for a day or two without writing another "Yeesh, look what the Democrats are up to now" column. Then again, that's a rich vein of material to keep mining. There's also the fact that this particular iteration of the Democratic Party is so filled with lunatics that there is some variety to the expressions of madness.

To the surprise of no one, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas shows up in this story. She is rapidly establishing herself as the Queen of the Democratic toilet. If the Dems ever do eventually come up with any coherent plans for emerging from the political exile that they are in at the moment, there's a good chance that Crockett's perpetually open foul mouth will interfere with them. I've got a feeling about this one. In fact, I told Paula last week that we might want to get more pictures of Crockett for our photo library because I'm sure we're going to be writing about her a lot in the coming months. 

None of it will be flattering, by the way.

The fact that the Dems think that coarse language will "invigorate their connection to the American voter" shows that they've lost all ability to read the room. If American voters are swearing up a storm, it's likely in response to the mess that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the rest of the Democrats spent the last four years making. I know I threw more than a few f-bombs their way during that time.

Beijing's Road & Belt: China is not only trying to junk the Monroe Doctrine, it wants to establish itself as the head of the OAS

China is "trying to junk the Monroe Doctrine," reports Dick Morris, and "establish itself as the head of the Organization of American States" (OAS).

Attempting to influence the upcoming election of the secretary general of the OAS tomorrow Monday (March 10), a victory for the Surinam candidate would signify a Chinese implantation of the Western hemisphere.

Related: You Cannot Understand Trump's Greenland-Panama-Canada Declarations Unless You Recognize the Extent of the China Threat 

 … Beijing approaches a country with country with limited resources — mainly, but not uniquely, in Asia and Africa — and offers them very good deals with regards to investments. When the country cannot pay its bills, the offer turns out to be a Trojan Horse with Beijing taking over all or part of a city's infrastructure.

 … The Economist's Telegram reports that

Chinese ambitions to develop a port near Antarctica were “appalling” to America, [Carlos Ruckauf, a former Argentine vice-president and foreign minister] says. China’s space-peering radar station is a “very hard” problem because it is governed by a bilateral treaty.

 … [Already, Beijing is responsible for] Chancay, a Chinese-built and controlled port in Peru, which will be the largest and deepest on South America’s Pacific coast.

It is nothing less than incredible that Beijing managed to build a new Chinese Megaport — the largest on Latin America's Pacific Coast, referred to as China’s gateway to South America — only three or four months ago without it being reported in the West, even by conservative news sites.

 … in his article about waging Diplomatic War in the Central and South Pacific, Austin Bay writes that

Chinese military aircraft and navy warships need forward bases beyond the First Island Chain (Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines).

The new bases also provide the People's Liberation Army with missile launch sites. The closer missile launchers are to U.S. bases such as Pearl Harbor, San Diego and Puget Sound, the better, from Beijing's perspective. All the better for cowing the U.S. Navy.

 … the hearts and minds of people living in these [places] matter. In these small nations, (and that's the current political configuration, nations and confederations) they are vulnerable to the suite of tricks that serves Beijing well in Europe and Washington. The wallets of agents of influence -- diplomatic slang for politicians and media operatives accepting bribes -- are a classic means of first obtaining a weather station, then fishing rights, then naval anchorage rights, then a navy base. After the navy base: a missile launch site.