The multilingual contents of the site are the result of an automatic translation.
 

 
 
 
 
 
Français
English
Français
English
 
 
 
View
 
 
 
 
 
View
 
 

Other sources

 
Saut de ligne
Saut de ligne

Towards severing the army-army bond?

military-Earth thinking notebook
The Army in society
Saut de ligne
Saut de ligne

While all our attention has been focused since the suspension of national service on the durability and quality of the armed/national link, have we asked ourselves the question of the armed/army link, and therefore of the internal cohesion of our military institution? This is the question that the author of this article asks himself and provides a possible answer in an uncompromising statement.


The suspension of national service in 1998 saw the emergence of a new problem: how to maintain the link between the nation and its army when the sons of France were no longer obliged to serve in the armed forces?

The creation of the days of call and preparation for defence (JAPD), which have now become defence citizenship days (JDC), could not of course be enough to maintain a link that had become increasingly tenuous over the years. Consequently, particularly in order to reach recruitment targets, the armed forces made it a priority to maintain the armed/national link. Initiatives have multiplied and external communication has become a major lever for achieving this objective.

However, a new, but above all more dangerous, issue is now emerging. At a time when all our attention was focused on the maintenance of the armed/national link, did we ask ourselves the question of the armed/army link?

Indeed, restructured or even destructured by successive heavy and profound reforms, the armed forces, and in particular the army, are experiencing real centrifugal tensions which could in the long run seriously harm its overall cohesion which, for many years, has been its strength.

The Army, a large and sickly body...

After an uninterrupted succession of reforms that have affected the numbers, structures, organisation and even the functioning of our army, it is difficult to find one's bearings. The brain, skeleton and muscles of our army are deeply affected.

First of all, the brain is directly affected. For two years now, we have been witnessing a redefinition of the prerogatives of the Ministry of Defence authorities, to the detriment of a "brain".military corps" which, like its chief, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, had acquired a preponderant weight since the decrees of 2005 and 2009. At the same time, the Chief of the Land Staff had seen his area of responsibility considerably reduced in favour of the Chief of the Armed Forces Staff. Former high-ranking army officials, such as General Bentégeat, former CEMA, denounced this refocusing of the military on their core business (operational) and their distance from the centres of power of the Ministry. In a recent column in Le Figaro[1]...General Bentégeat wrote: "Clearly, the generals or admirals would be combat technicians with little ability to manage men, finance, international relations, or even logistics. As a result, military leaders are excluded within the ministry itself from a range of skills that are nonetheless indispensable for crisis resolution and the conduct of so-called global military operations".

This situation and perception could create a distance between political power and military leaders who lose their ability to advise and influence policy choices and directions. It leads some to believe that there is a form of mistrust in the political sphere towards officers that is completely unfounded. Indeed, military leaders have always remained faithful to the principle of obedience to political power. This is also the thesis developed by Marshal Juin in his book "...".Three centuries of military obedience 1650-1963». It also means forgetting that the internal acceptability of fundamental reforms is all the easier when they have been initiated and implemented by military leaders. In this respect, postponing the announcements of restructuring until after the 2014 municipal elections is a very negative signal within the Army and suggests that organic concerns will only be very secondary in the decision-making process.

The brain of our army, normally intended to direct the rest of the body, seems to have been marginalized in the choices, to the detriment of the harmonious and global functioning of the body.

The skeleton is also affected. Indeed, more than two years after the beginning of the implementation of a major support reform for the Army, both culturally and functionally, the skeleton seems to be weakened, struggling to consolidate its numerous fractures, and is deprived here and there of essential limbs. This reform is also accompanied by a twofold movement of civilianization and the outsourcing of a number of support functions.

This is a far cry from the slogans of the recruitment campaigns of the late 1990s: "With these shoes you can become a hairdresser". Just as leaders must be "refocused on their core business", soldiers would no longer be called upon to perform one of the 400 Army trades, they would be called upon to be first and foremost combatants.

From then on, there was a risk of the emergence of a two-speed army with combatants increasingly separated from non-combatants. The divide is both geographical (the basic defence support groups are rarely co-located with the regiments they support), but also cultural since the reform of the support groups also includes the interarming of their functions. Some army regiments therefore depend directly on defence bases that are derived from air force units. This is for example the case of the 12th cuirassiers regiment of Olivet (Orléans Bricy Air Defence Base). Furthermore, the lack of a bridge between support and combat functions means that in the very short term, the two will no longer know each other. With the erosion of this geographical and cultural proximity between supporter and supporter, the impact is direct on the quality of support. A real effort is therefore needed to bridge the gap between forces and support, in the service of a better general functioning of the corps.

Finally, the muscles themselves are sick. Budget cuts and downsizing lead the forces to have to struggle daily to train in good conditions. Indeed, organizing the slightest training session can be complex... now very ordinary. All means are counted, especially ammunition. The employment and fleet management policy has reduced the number of vehicles in the units to a minimum. The corps commander no longer owns anything. He has no control over vehicles or training facilities. There is a permanent contract between the user and the service provider (whether civilian or military). In the directive for the preparation for operational engagement for the period 2012-2015, the Chief of the Land Staff states that he wants to "wear theto focus on decentralised operational readiness while ensuring that the thresholds of the standard pathways for all operational functions are met to the maximum extent possible". These thresholds include the number of days of preparation and operational activity (JPAOs, which include OPEX deployment days) set at 120 per year. In reality, units are no longer even able to meet these thresholds.[2].

A struggle for survival, the law of the strongest...

Thus, the disease seems to be widespread, and rather than seeking a global and coherent treatment, each limb and each organ struggles for its own survival, sometimes even to the detriment of the rest of the body. Indeed, in the face of the restructuring that is still in the offing, several solutions are available. Either a reduction in size in a more or less homothetic manner, or capacity choices. Now, of course, even if capacity choices are made, everyone is working to ensure that amputations take place in others. We then witness an agitation of the different lobbies, each one pleading for its parish. The example of the fight between the "paras colo" and the line infantry illustrates this (the former heads of corps of the 3rd RPIMa recently mobilised through an open letter addressed to the Minister of Defence to save their regiment...).[3]). While we should be facing each other in a united front, we are engaged in a fratricidal battle whose sole purpose is to ensure the survival of a specialty, a unit or a regiment. But isn't this already a rearguard battle, and isn't the signal that these divisions send to the political world even more dangerous for our army than an objective reflection leading to decisions that are painful but necessary and rational?

This law of the strongest clearly raises the question of our identity and the balance to be struck between our membership in the army on the one hand, and our membership in a particular weapon, subdivision of a weapon or regiment on the other. The need for our soldiers to be closely anchored is obvious. Indeed, just as when the prerogatives of the European Union increase, we are witnessing an affirmation of regionalism, when the army is in turmoil, everyone clings to what is closest to them, very often their regiment. Consequently, there is a great risk of wanting to put one's identity as a bigor or a porpoise before one's primary identity as a soldier in the French army. This assertion of identity creates endogenous tensions in our institution that are detrimental to the overall cohesion of our army and which, above all, are misperceived and misunderstood outside our army. This is not, of course, a matter of advocating a sanitized army. On the contrary, the diversity of our army and the specificities of our units constitute a historical legacy that should not be denied. It is important to maintain this culture which constitutes the richness of our army. This diversity is even likely to create emulation. However, we must not overlook the risk posed by this affirmation of identity, and it is vital to ensure that it does not undermine overall effectiveness.

All the more so since, in the game of the most assertive identity, the units forming the skeleton risk searching for theirs for a long time. Indeed, defence bases and groups of defence bases were certainly built from elements that belonged to the forces (thus with a real identity).), but this identity can only disappear, drowned in the joint forces, but also suffocated by the nature of the missions of these new units. The risk then is not that the identity of the original unit will disappear, but rather that the fundamental identity of the soldier, the identity of a soldier, will disappear in favour of a specialist identity.

Finally, this struggle for survival generates a lack of understanding, all the more so because it is not a matter of pursuing personal interests but, on the contrary, of pursuing the national interest. It is in the interest of the State to have an efficient army in which soldiers are animated by a true esprit de corps. For this, it is therefore fundamental that the units of the forces retain their specificities, but only as a complement to their primary identity as soldiers, and that the units in the support chain do not lose their identity as soldiers in favour of their functions as specialists. It is at the price of these challenges that the army will manage to remain united and that it will succeed in not breaking the army/army link.

1] Le Figaro, 12 September 2013

2] MPA Implementation Report

3] Blog "Secret defense", September 16, 2013

A Saint-cyrian from the "General Vanbremeersch" class, Captain Claire BOËT comes from the Army of Engineers. After a time as a section leader and then as a deputy officer in the 5th Engineer Regiment, she commanded a squadron at the 2nd support base at Vincennes Command.

Séparateur
Title : Towards severing the army-army bond?
Author (s) : le Capitaine Claire BOËT
Séparateur


Armée