Building European defence is a long road: to achieve synergies, to reorient policies, to acknowledge how mindsets have matured, to seize opportunities… In short, to change!
France and Britain have finally decided to take action on their combat navies – the French Navy, nicknamed “la Royale”, and the Royal Navy (in the air, European cooperation was already much more advanced)… What a long process since Trafalgar and Mers-el-Kébir (where the British fleet shelled the French fleet in 1940), but also since Saint-Malo, the 1998 Franco-British summit that rekindled, nearly fifteen years ago, the fires of necessary joint work.
Some will say that these joint decisions are justified only by the economic crisis our old Europe is going through. But since the aim here is to observe the changes and transformations that public and private structures undergo, in order to draw all the useful lessons from them, let us also observe other concurrent transformations…
France’s return to NATO’s integrated command, the professionalisation of the armed forces in every European country, but also the assertive emergence of new military and military-industrial powers that are getting the better of European defence industries…
So, when it comes to change, it is always essential to take a broad view of the movements and developments in the subject of interest, but also in its “collaterals”, and to know how to run several projects at once. Because while some look at only one aspect of a transformation – in order, if need be, to oppose it – only a broad approach guarantees effective synergies.
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