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| Europe |
| Small Wars Journal: France's Livre Blanc |
| 2008-06-18 |
| France's Livre Blanc was finally released today (French version here and here, parts 1&2, both .pdf), and the only real shock is seeing in print what's basically trickled out in leaks and declarations over the past few months. It's a very well-written document, coherently argued and convincingly articulated. As expected, counterterrorism and the integration of defense with homeland security play a prominent role, with an emphasis on developing intelligence capacity, both human and satellite-based, in the context of a newly added Anticipation component. There's also a significant reduction of the French armed forces, from a total of 271,000 to 225,000 by 2015 (Army 131k, Navy 44k, Air Force 50k), mainly from the administrative back office, but which will necessitate politically unpopular base closings. Meat at the link |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #1 Livre Blanc translates to 'whitepaper'. Although, I first read it as, Libre Blanc, which was an interesting title for a paper on terrorism. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2008-06-18 04:02 |