General Michel Yakovleff served for the most part in the Foreign Legion (where he commanded the 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment) and the 3rd Dragoon Regiment, as well as in Saumur, where he held the position of Director, Training and Education. Apart from French military academy Saint-Cyr, he attended two schools in the United States, at Fort Leavenworth and Norfolk. After serving on the Military Committee of NATO and serving as Vice Chief of Staff at Supreme Headquarters of Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), he lectures at Sciences Po Paris.
I described the reform of the French Army in my previous article, where I presented The strategic vision: “Operational Superiority 2030”. It is a response to a changing security environment in Europe and the world. The size of the reaction is clear if we take a look at the French military spending, which is unprecedented in recent years and reaching up to 56 billion USD in 2021. What does this mean for the French military, which way is France going and what is the security situation in Europe is going to be answered by retired French Army General, Michel Yakovleff.
The new strategy implies that the French Army is preparing for a major conventional interstate conflict. Where do you see the most pervasive threat in Europe that France is preparing itself for?
Well as you know the French will be very reluctant to say “Oh, we're just thinking of this or that country”. The French doctrine says France has no enemies. You will find no French official to say that we are preparing against a military buildup of this or that country and therefore we are reacting to that and that goes all the way back even to the Cold War. Even during the Cold War France would say we don't have an enemy.
Now we want to be ready and what drives the French thinking is that we live in an uncertain and dangerous world. If I dare say, anything can happen and therefore we've got to be ready for any eventuality, but I wouldn't say that the French are preparing because of the Russian buildup for example.
What do you think is the most destabilized region around Europe that might be a potential threat to France?
Well, that's another question. It is clear that what Russia is doing is inherently destabilizing, that Russia wants to destabilize what we call the European order. If only because they have said so officially. There is no secret that the Russians are not in agreement with what they call the current European security architecture that they consider it a risk to them and a threat to them. It is clear that they want another arrangement in Europe, which excludes NATO. It is official that the Russians want to get rid of NATO, so I'm saying that because the Russians say so.
Regarding the question of destabilization and so on, it is very easy for former French officials to say there are people currently destabilizing Europe and that is the Putin regime. We have a very recent example yesterday with the act of piracy over Belarus which was at a minimum condoned by the Russians.
How does the French Army perceive Russia within the context of recent revelations that GRU agents plotted an explosion of an ammunition depot in the Czech Republic? In addition, Emmanuel Macron is often very pragmatic, almost friendly with Vladimir Putin which is usually not appreciated in the Eastern flank of NATO and the EU.
The French don't believe that the Russians intend to attack Europe, end of story. That said, there is destabilization, dirty acts, terrorism to include what you have mentioned and murdering or attempt at murder with novichok in England. All that is very clearly the Russian regime at work, but the French don't believe in a large-scale war initiated by Russia in Europe. Nevertheless, they do understand, that there is ongoing destabilizing terrorist activity, intoxication and all the range of what the Soviet art of war had before Putin. That is happening every day. It's not quite the same story (as an outright invasion) and you don't react the same way.
Also from the French perspective, Russia is part of Europe. The Putin regime will die one day. There's a difference between making an enemy of Russia and confronting Putin. That is what Angela Merkel calls strategic patience. The French consider that Russia should be given a real role in Europe, that would correspond to its historical weight and role in Europe, but that also depends on their values. It's important not to make an enemy of Russia more than it is already and I'm saying that for future generations. Don't pick a fight that you can do without.
According to the strategy, simplification of command and control chain and subsidiarity of certain tasks should bring in more flexibility. Do you think that the current adjustment of the Army is rigid? We have seen that modern recent conflicts usually entailed sudden, usually hybrid operations – for example in Ukraine 2014.
In Ukraine there was a hybrid component, but the Ukraine military was defeated in a pretty conventional way. The Ukraine military had almost won the conventional battle against the Russia-backed rebels until the Russians intervened directly in August 2014. If the Ukrainian military had defeated the Russian onslaught then we wouldn't be in the situation where we are now. So Ukraine is not really a failure against hybrid warfare, it is also and possibly more importantly so a failure and defeat in conventional ways of war. For the French and specifically the army there is the realization that high-end combat is possible in Europe or elsewhere, you know large-scale operations…
The French army has got to, as they say, rediscover high-intensity combat. That was my doctrinal setting when I was younger, up to the rank of major. Until the 1990s I was part of a pretty large army ready to do conventional war at a very high scale against large formations inspired by the Red Army. But for 20 years we've gone to do other things including counter insurrection in Afghanistan, bombing in Libya and so on. For me the basics of war remain large-scale high-intensity conflict, and that is where the French army is, if I dare say, we’re going back to basics now. And it is doing it in a very large way by the way. Recently I've participated as a senior mentor in an exercise one month ago in Texas Fort Hood. It was called the Warfighter exercise that involved the 3rd (US) Corps based in Fort Hood. There were three divisions, the 1st armored division US, the 3rd UK division and the 3rd French division.
For the French army that was a laboratory exercise to see how far we could fight with the Americans under their doctrine and setting of a larger American formation. For the Americans it was a test of the French as a credible provider of a pretty large force under their command. As a result of the exercise, both sides feel quite confident that we can operate together at a higher range of warfare. It proved the Americans that the French have the degree of technical expertise, headquarters, doctrine and so on to do that kind of thing. Thanks to the exercise with the Americans and British, as the chief of army staff general Burkhard says, we have gained two years in a matter of months. So there's a lot happening in the French army right now.
Are modern European armies suited, or even capable of fighting a conventional, inter-state war?
In general terms, there are very few armies in Europe ready to participate in a serious war. The French are improving in that respect, the British are somewhat receding currently. They are receding, their army is getting smaller, they are shedding important equipment in terms of high-scale warfare. It's a big concern to me. The British Army tended to be the most competent army for its size in Western Europe, but they are now bleeding. The reality of the British Army today is that it is bleeding, it's losing strength despite what they say about going modern and developing robots and all that. All that is nice and well, but the reality is that the British Army was theoretically at 86,000 of which they are 78,000 today because they couldn't recruit the missing 8,000.
They are not good enough at recruiting the manpower they need. So the current strategic review took advantage of the fact that they don't have more than 78,000 and they said: brilliant, now the British Army is 78,000. Whereas the French army has increased in size over the last five years. It has gained six or 7000 men which is a lot. The French Army today is 106 000 military personnel, plus there are civilians. Compared with 76,000 UK military, and I think 68,000 German military, the French army is the strongest army in Europe today by quite a margin.
In reality it also has a few other advantages over the UK army. The French army has the advantage of a more coherent set of equipment and it's more modern. Our tank is better than the British tank, our artillery is better, our infantry fighting vehicles are much better. I'm saying that because I read in the British press that their soldiers are very angry at the equipment that they are given. The Ajax, which is an armored infantry combat vehicle, can't fire on the move and is heavily criticized by the soldiers even though it's brand new and arriving. Whereas the French equivalent of Ajax which is a wheeled vehicle is very much liked by the crews. They find it very dependable, very effective and so on.
For a number of reasons, it looks like the French spend their money much better than the British. Regarding the German army, and I know that from a report in the German press so it's not as if I'm doing propaganda or I'm working for Putin, there is a spate of scandals well known about lack of maintenance in the helicopter fleet and the tank fleet and so on. The fact is that the German army is not ready to fight, I'm not the one who says that, it's parliamentary commissions. And my German friends in the military are very competent, but the ethos of the army as an institution is not based on adventure, as much as it is in the French Army. I have no doubt the German military I know will put up a real fight for the defence of their homeland, but they are definitely much less interested in fighting other peoples’ wars, as is the case for the French. The French soldiers will go to whatever fight they are told to go to. I’m not sure that would be unquestioned in the Bundeswehr. I have a suspicion that is true of many European NATO countries.
How compatible do you think the French effort to reach strategic autonomy and the European defense project are? Isn’t France to some extent contradicting itself regarding this point?
France would like Europe to be a strategic power, not only an economic power but power at large like America or China. France sees international relations with the “glasses of power”, so we believe that the European Union should be also a military power. It doesn't need to be a very large power, just large enough for people not to mess with us. We are very disappointed by the fact that just about none of our EU partners sees it that way, so we're doing strategic autonomy on our own.
We have been doing that forever and we know that just by going on with strategic autonomy does not mean that we can do anything we want. We realize that we are not a superpower, so there are many things that we can't do on our own, but the important things we can. We believe that the rest of Europe should have that vision, except that the rest of Europe has generally left that to NATO. I love NATO, I'm very fond of NATO and I think it's a very important organization. However, the hard fact is that for years while Bosnia Herzegovina was descending into chaos NATO did nothing because America didn't want to get involved. So the French had hoped that by that time all our European friends would realize that what happens, if we have our own interests and it's next door, it's our continent and the Americans don't want to have anything to do about it. How do we do it? That question has not yet been solved.
Germany doesn't want what we call strategic autonomy because their understanding is that it is a Napoleonic version of autonomy, meaning the French are autonomous and the Germans are subordinate and they think that strategic autonomy is a way of destroying NATO, which is disingenuous. The French believe, by the way even Macron doesn't want NATO to go away, he believes in NATO. It is very useful and necessary. It's just that he does not believe that NATO will take charge of every strategic issue that we could have in Europe and then we are left on our own.
One of the goals of the strategy is to digitalize French Army but also prepare it for scenarios where technology fails. Can you imagine on a tactical level, how a modern soldier can deal with situations in which he has very limited or no technology at all at his disposition?
It's very easy. Navigation. Soldiers need to know how to navigate without GPS and that goes back to basic school skills that I learned when I was a kid to use a compass and a map. To do what we call dead reckoning, to walk at night without necessarily tracking the path on the screen of a smartphone. In essence, it is going back to war as we did before. Range artillery calls for fires, artillery fires without the use of a GPS, and well it's possible because GPS has been jammed and is routinely jammed for example in the Persian Gulf by the Iranians.
That is one example. Another example is that you are cut off from the communications radio link. What do you do? Well, that's where an army that is built on mission command as opposed to directive control finds it much easier. Mission command gives the subordinate his overall mission and your intent and he goes and does it. On the other hand, under directive control, every step is authorized. The reality of the US style of war is directive control and soldiers and subordinate elements take very little initiative. In the French army they are expected to take a lot of initiative, which means, that if the command chain is silent, if the computer screens are dead, well as long as the guy is still in his mission and he has control over his subordinates, he can go on doing his job to the best of his ability.
I think that was also mentioned in the strategy as the army want to want to give more freedom of decision to lower ranks or even reservists and also apply more subsidiarity within the command and control chain
Well, that's a culture that we have in my army to a large degree. Certainly more than any of my NATO friends, at least from what I have seen. I'll tell you a story of a friend of mine when we were both captains, so we both commanded a company. It was the Foreign Legion Parachute Regiment and he was in Africa. Initially, he was there for a four-month mission rotation in Chad. From Chad he was sent to Kigali and there was a French operation before Rwanda became very famous. Captain Tony was there for a noncombatant evacuation operation carried out by the French, so his company was told to go to Kigali.
His mission was to prepare the arrival of the battalion of the rapid reaction force that would be flown in the following day from France. That was his mission and he had two aircraft for his company of about 170 men. They landed in Kigali at night with two green, as we call them, green aircraft probably Hercules. The airport was closed, but then you know these military aircraft can land anywhere at night. They don't need the authorization, so they landed and they taxied up to the main building of the airport and they got out of the planes, went into the hall and took control of the airport. Basically, there was just one guy now going around mopping the place up.
There was no one in there, no one and my friend captain Tony didn't even have a map. He was at the Kigali airport, during the night and there was a place where you could rent cars like Hertz for example. He saw a flyer with the general map of the area, that said if you exit the airport and turn left and do 8-10 kilometers you're in Kigali downtown. Very basic map.
On the parking of the airport there were two trucks, you know the large trucks that usually transport minerals and that kind of stuff. He commanded a foreign Legion unit, so you have a number of bandits in Legionnaires, so some of them said, you know we can start the trucks if you want to. So they “requisitioned” the trucks. He left one platoon of about 30 men at the airport and he took the rest by piling them into the two trucks and they went into downtown Kigali.
And there, on the way to Kigali he wondered, you know, how did Lenin do it (laughter). How do you take over the capital? So one truck went to the television station and the other truck went to the presidential Palace. Those who arrived at the television station, you know it's night program, so the lieutenant went up the staircase all the way up to the studio and he asked the guys about what are you doing. “Oh well, we have folklore local music and so on”. He said OK, go on with the program and don't touch it.
The platoon that went to the presidential Palace, there were a few guards there and they said we have arrived to support you, to reinforce you. OK no problem. Just take places here and there. And eventually captain Tony went to the French embassy and I suppose it was two or three in the morning and he called Paris to report: “I'm in Kigali, the situation is calm, I have one platoon there and there. As far as I know, there is no gunfire, no big movements of population that we came across”. And he was told: “Okay, the battalion is arriving this afternoon”.
And in the afternoon a number of Airbus planes landed bringing about 800 soldiers with the Colonel to take charge. No one had told him to do all that. His mission was to secure a bridgehead for the battalion. He interpreted the orders, took his risk and it went out that way so that's what we expect the captain in the army to do.
Quote from the document: „it is exacerbated in France, where the fragilities of a society lacking cohesion and searching for meaning can cast doubt about its will to build a common future and firmly defend its model with a spirit of resistance.“ What do you think about this particular paragraph in relation to the recent letters from within the French Army, and could you comment on them?
Well going back to the concern about the cohesion of French society, I think it is generally overplayed. French society is not less coherent than most and you will always find reasons of concern. Areas like the banlieue where the police don't go, where drug trafficking is rife, human trafficking and so on. Yes, I would like to think that that does not happen in France, but there are few countries where that does not happen.
To what degree is cohesion of society at large under threat… I think France is under less threat than most nations in Europe. That is a personal opinion. It doesn't mean to say that I'm delighted with what's happening in my country every day. It's just that before we talk of the nation being split, irrelevance of the state, etc, I think we need to go much deeper than where we are now. The concern in the text for me is its pretty strong wording. I wouldn't use it myself but after all, I'm not the authority behind it.
As for the letters produced by retired generals and others, they expressed concern, they voiced concerns that are very often heard but there's a difference between perception and reality. Most of the public, it appears, I think 58% of the people who were polled said that they agreed with the letter. France at risk of civil war… I don't believe it, but I understand that there is perception. In my personal opinion, there's been massive overreaction all over the place. When people say stupid things or excessive things… Do you need to react? Just let it go. I will say okay. People have an opinion. I don't agree with it.
I think it's not good, that former generals would openly state, that they are former generals and saying that kind of thing. That is not appropriate. The degree to which it is actually illegal will probably be tested in court and I'm not sure the government will win. I think there is a risk when the government is going into legal procedures against these people. Well, there is the right of free speech in the constitution. I have a suspicion that if the government actually sanctions them severely, they will appeal. And I have a suspicion that they will win the appeal, based on “I have a right to say, what I want to say”.
They will be told: “But you shouldn't have said that, you were generals”. Okay, just for your information, I've seen a number of doctors routinely sign that kind of document or journalists. You don't need to be a politician to have a political opinion. My personal opinion is that the government has overreacted to that despite the initial paper being inappropriate.
