HASWhen France has embarked on a rearmament program, it is useful to know how the State has, in the past, equipped its armed forces with tanks, planes, missiles, munitions… Samuel Faure, lecturer at Sciences Po Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Paris-Cergy and Paris-Saclay universities), has been studying, since 2010, the programs carried out since 1945, analyzing administrative and parliamentary documents, questioning nearly 200 actors (military , ministers, industrialists, armaments engineers, etc.).
Exhibiting the fruit of his research, on April 3, during the seminar “ Bureaucracy(s) and managerialism of French capitalism” (University of Technology of Compiègne-Sciences Po), the researcher explained that the policy of the French State in this sector historically oscillates between three practices: purchasing from national manufacturers, according to a logic of national sovereignty and… revenue capture (for the industrialists concerned); “off-the-shelf” purchasing abroad – essentially American –, according to a liberal logic of competition and lower prices; European cooperation, according to a political logic of institutional construction of European sovereignty.
These three practices mix and overlap, one prevailing over the other, depending on the case; national sovereignty for the Rafale, European cooperation for the A400M, American purchase for the Reaper drone. Beyond taking into account geopolitical and economic developments, decisions are taken according to the weight of socio-political coalitions formed by “programmatic actors” engaged according to their own interests and logic, sometimes divergent, sometimes convergent: ministers, senior civil servants, staffs, high-ranking military personnel, industrialists, engineers from the Directorate General of Armaments (DGA). These “configurations of actors”, which leave little room for parliamentarians, are complex, because positions within the same body, institution or company, vary according to individuals over the course of careers in the political, bureaucratic, technical and capitalistic fields.
Facing American competition
However, two major trends are emerging. First, the State and national industry are gradually disintegrating as “liberal” logics – and budgetary difficulties – prevail to the detriment of “sovereignist” logics. As a result of privatization, the DGA only has 10,000 civil servants today compared to 50,000 in the mid-1990s.
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