Combat Rations

FRANCE Combat Rations Furor over defense cuts

First came an extraordinary confidential letter from the top army commander to France's military leadership, leaked last week to Le Matin, a usually pro-government daily. Proposed cuts in defense spending by Francois Mitterrand's Socialist government, wrote General Jean Delaunay, would eliminate more than 30,000 troops from the 314,000-man army, leading to a force "weakened in its structure, aging in its equipment and wounded in its morale." Then came other leaked statements by the air force and navy chiefs of staff, revealing what they said were still secret government studies of making major cutbacks in military manpower and procurement between 1984 and 1988. The result, :hey claimed, would be grave damage to France's defenses. As public furor over the spending cuts mounted, Premier Pierre Mauroy responded angrily, calling the disclosures part of a political "operation cooked up to cast doubt on the government's will to defend the country."

The uproar comes in the midst of an unprecedented national debate over defense policy. Long accustomed to giving he military whatever it demands, in a country where patriotism and the armed forces are nearly synonymous, Frenchmen are now questioning that practice in the face of rising budget pressures. Earlier this month neo-Gaullist Deputy Pierre Messmer, a former Defense Minister under Charles de Gaulle, led a censure motion against the Mitterrand government's defense policy in the National Assembly. Messmer attacked the "mere 15%" of public spending devoted to the military as "the weakest figure since the second World War." The Socialists used their majority to defeat the motion, but in the Assembly debate Mauroy had to concede that possible changes in manpower levels were indeed being considered.

For the Socialists, reducing military spending represents a sharp turnabout. When Mitterrand was swept into power last year, he delighted France's NATO allies, and mollified suspicious right-wing opponents at home, by making it clear that he would strengthen the nation's defense effort. At a time when most of the allies were cutting back, Mitterrand proposed a hefty 17.6% increase in defense spending for 1982, or nearly 4% after inflation. Since then, the gray realities of recession have taken their toll. Defense Minister Charles Hernu, relying on a government decree, hacked a total of $2.5 billion from the current $17.1 billion military budget and from future procurement. The move will, among other things, delay by a year the delivery of the air force's first 25 Mirage 2000 combat planes.

Hernu last month pushed through the National Assembly a hold-the-line 1983 budget that calls for total appropriations of $18.5 billion, an increase roughly equal to inflation. He called it a "transitional" allocation that would not affect the new five-year defense plan due early next year.

Nearly one-third of the 1983 budget is devoted to France's independent nuclear force, which is made up of six nuclear submarines, 36 deep-penetration bombers and 18 land-based missile systems. Says Hernu: "Anybody who tells me he would prefer an army division of soldiers to a nuclear submarine is living in the wrong era." One such purchase of costly nuclear weapons will be the multiple-warhead M-4 strategic missile, which is to be deployed on the new nuclear submarine L'Inflexible in 1985. "We want to stress our commitment to the nuclear deterrent," said a top government planner. But critics fear that the reductions will severely hamper France's conventional forces, unwisely limiting its military options. They are also concerned that the cuts will put France out of step with NATO'S recent emphasis on improving conventional weapons as a defense against Soviet attack. "We are in a different situation. We are not in the front line," the government planner argues in response. "We have a nuclear deterrent, and we have our own [military] doctrine." What worries the military and the opposition is whether spending cuts will unacceptably alter that doctrine.

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