Britain and France lack the budgets to back their ambitions

12 April 2012

The new Anglo-French military agreement is an entente not so much cordiale as practical — or pratique as I suppose we have to say now.

France and Britain are two medium powers with global ambitions, but less than global budgets to support them.

So why not work together on military projects and missions where there is the same aim?

Much of the detail has still to be worked out. The co-operation will cover three main areas; of using common equipment, training together in a variety of roles and tasks, and having the ability to put together a joint task force.

It will not mean a surrender of sovereignty — a political Trojan horse leading to an all-European army. It will not mean Britain and France sharing aircraft carriers — at least not yet. Nor will it mean mixed British and French brigades like the Franco-German brigade of the Cold War years, which was little more than a diplomatic fig leaf in camouflage.

There is a lot of co-operation already at the tactical level. British and French paratroops have often trained together. British forces were under a French supreme allied commander, Marshal Foch, in the First World War.

A combined French and British artillery brigade, backed by Dutch heavy mortars, brought the siege of Sarajevo to an end in 1995. "The French and British armies are lot more similar in the way they go about things than they are to the Americans," one British general told me. Of course French forces won't be involved in specific British interests, such as the defence of the Falklands — as British troops wouldn't be called to serve in specific areas of interest governed by French local agreements and treaties.

However, there are several areas where French and British forces are already working together — in the anti-piracy patrols off Somalia, for example and in the tracking of al Qaeda from the Gulf and Red Sea down through eastern and central Africa.

One small thought: this time a lot of British officers and NCOs are going to have to learn good military French — and no doubt the Foreign Legion is getting ready to help them out in this.

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