The French level of spending gives them the capability to act - such as their deployment of ground troops to Afghanistan or ground-attack planes to Libya - but not the capacity to sustain such action for weeks and months.Įnter the U.S. France currently spends 2.2 percent of its GDP on defense, compared to U.S. For better or worse, the French have invested their money differently, opting to spend a much smaller percentage of its GDP on defense, dedicating public spending to other priorities such as social welfare programs. For decades, the United States has chosen a robust defense strategy, providing its military with trillions of dollars to develop the capabilities it has today.

military.Īt a very fundamental level, every nation must identify its interests and choose the best ways and means to pursue them.

The Mali campaign shows both the problem, and also a possible solution, blending French willingness to put their boots on the ground with the substantial global capabilities of the U.S. defense budgets go down and European countries continue to spend their funds on other priorities. This problem will likely grow worse as U.S. Put bluntly, France and NATO countries spend too little on their defense to afford the kind of global power-projection capability they need to support missions like Mali. However, this diplomatic row obscures a much larger issue between the U.S.

and French governments have tussled over what, exactly, the United States would do to support the Mali campaign, and how much, if anything, France would pay for this support. Instead, the Defense Department has dispatched surveillance, refueling, and transport aircraft to aid the French effort, prov iding their troops with the capability to conduct sustained combat operations roughly 2,500 miles from Paris. officials have expressed interest in the fight because of the militants’ connection to al Qaeda’s North African franchise, the White House declined to intervene directly. French forces launched a military offensive last week in Mali to push back Islamic militants and help the nascent government assert control in the northern part of that former French colony.

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