The military metaphor has the advantage of dramatizing a situation, and aims to “generate consensus through astonishment”as researcher Renaud Bellais writes in a publication for the Jean Jaurès Foundation. It is used all the more because consensus is difficult to obtain. Emmanuel Macron used the term “rearmament” seven times in his wishes to the French, on December 31, 2023; six times the expression “we are at war” in his televised intervention on March 16, 2020 to announce the confinement; and announced, on June 13, 2022, that France had entered into “war economy” following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The expression has since flourished. A information report from the finance committee of the National Assembly, submitted on March 29, 2023offers no less than ten recommendations for “implementation of the war economy”. Among these: extending public procurement to innovative SMEs and start-ups in the sector; secure the supply and store the components essential to the defense industry; encourage banks, investors and even individual savers to finance this industry.
Public procurement, control of supplies, call for private financing: these are the three instruments identified by economists and historians to define a “war economy”. Except that these tools are only used in times of war, rarely in times of peace; However, France is not at war.
War and economy have certainly always been linked. It was to finance their first permanent army that the kings of France, in the 14the century, created permanent taxes, borrowed (or confiscated) from bankers, devalued the currency by reducing its share of precious metal, and occasionally repudiated their debts. War is a factor of both economic enrichment (looting, ransoms, annexation of rich countries, etc.) and destruction, when the “scourges of war” fall on the territory. Added to these “physical” catastrophes are the State’s overindebtedness, hyperinflation and the ruin of savers.
The virtues of “sweet commerce”
Very early on, economists were concerned with measuring and demonstrating these harmful effects, in order to convince princes of the benefits of peace – since Jean Bodin in the 16th century.e century, during the wars of religion, until Antoine de Montchrestien and Vauban, criticizing the incessant wars of Louis XIV. Later still, economists will question the economic causes of wars – precisely to better avoid them.
You have 55% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.