" To prepare the next war or how not to become an army of veterans "

[Pat Vinciolo]

The danger which watches for very armed is to have a war of delay. Whereas our French Armies are marked until in their flesh by the Afghan experiment, the paradigm of the against-insurrectionary war is about to being essential in the current French military culture. It of vivifying by the healthy reconsideration of all presupposed something which inevitably mark an army; it also carries in it the risk to set up in new dominant school of thought to the detriment of other realities.

Military culture – heard as the state of mind which impregnates the military institution creates an environment more or less favorable to the innovation. The inter-war period teaches it to us in connection with the preparation of the following war. The United Kingdom, whose Army created the first permanent armored brigade of the history in 1931, was not able to carry this front revolutionary project; project taken again and developed then by the Nazi Germany and the Red Army. Its military culture was mainly resistant even hostile to this change. In parallel in France, the doctrinal school born from selected lesson of the Great War had developed a kind of coordinated battle which left little place on the initiative. Allied with a strategy become exclusively defensive with time, it became an official thought which it was interdict to contradict and which created a state of mind with the source of the defeat of 1940.

The risk is to create a myth to escape reality, because in particular of the paradox inherent in the military organization: because of discipline essential to the control of the operations, an army is laid out naturally little with the change whereas the challenges of the war require imagination and creativity. The essential rigour can be moulted in conformism of the thought, and lead surreptitiously to an opposition to progress making the institution finally not very inclined with the exploration of innovative concepts. The culture of an army can be unconsciously let lock up in its preferential vision of the threat. The risk is to focus itself on a single type of threats while being plugged on more complex or different reality; were the Ardennes insuperable, isn't? The Afghan experiment durably will mark our military culture. However, as Williamson Murray explains it, “there are few military organizations having a culture which encourages the meticulous study of the recent same events. Most military organizations myths develop quickly which make it possible to escape the unpleasant truth. ” Without devaluing the action by the French Army in Afghanistan, let us not let create a myth of Afghansty.

One can foresee three tracks to solve this natural antagonism. Initially the national strategic choices can draw a military culture from its resistance to change. Indeed, it is the strategic choice of the defensive “excessively” which prevented the development of an operation of the tanks in France; for the United Kingdom, it is the myth of a defense of its Empire out of continent of Europe which made reject the development of the armor-plated weapon. Ideally, is it possible to today define a strategy to keep the range of the capacities, on a sufficient level of control and technology, without neglecting to explore the new conflict fields like common strategic spaces (Total Commons)?

Another track is to support the mental activity of the officers so that it innervates the military culture. Prohibition to publish made the officers by the commander in chief of the time, British or French, is not foreign with the rout of 1940. The general Cavan, chief of imperial staff of 1922 to 1926, opposed the publication of works on military subjects by officers; in France the Gamelin general prohibits in 1937 any publication not validated by his staff. This attitude with the more high level thus encouraged the officers to avoid any consideration out the official line. Certain current anecdotes authorize to be questioned if this tendency always does not have survivals in France. However the expansion of ideas born of the rebirth of the combat of against-rebellion should open up the way for a healthy reconsideration of the generally accepted ideas.

Finally, the challenge for the armies is to remain a learning institution. Institutional mechanisms take part in it already like the “retex” or the departments of doctrines. But beyond these mechanisms, it is well with the surprise and the shock that it is mentally necessary to prepare, since by definition, we will be circumvented by an intelligent enemy. Today in France, not having more enemy at our borders, we are in situation of strategic insularity, following the example of the United Kingdom. Our army, which is not built besides to defend only its national territory with its manpower of task force back-up troop, will probably not be committed tomorrow in a symmetrical conflict. Also it probably will develop its competences on its Afghan experiment, to be invited to intervene in a more specific way, on the mode of the recent Sahelian interventions, by seeking a strategic effectiveness by the lever of a doubled tactical action of missions of assistance and formation. But the development of a new type of military intervention which will be born from the conjunction of the Afghan experiment and the news gives strategic to the south of the Mediterranean will not have to be set up in absolute. Because no one does not know the threat with our vital interests which an emergent Eastern power in a generation will constitute or less.

To obtain a military culture which prepares to face unforeseen whatever it is a vital requirement. Can we preserve our Afghan experiment the flexibility of spirit which enabled us to evolve vis-a-vis this kind of conflict, while prohibiting to us to set up in principles the precepts which of it were drawn, for fear those prevent us from evolving again with the next shock. Involve we to react to the unimaginable one.

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[Aryte]

Oh neat. Thanks for translating that.