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Comment by zabzonk | Hacker News Reader

> the French will be on the front lines, and landing on beaches.

They have never done so effectively in the past (Vietnam? Algeria? Suez?) and I don't see them doing it now or any time in the future.

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France's military performance in WW I was outstanding. The only way to win was to take massive casualties. They incurred the massive casualties and won. Very few of the world's 193 or so countries will ever be able to summon what we might "collective national will and capacity for sacrifice" (for any purpose) to the degree France did in WW I.

(Russia and the Soviet Union have also performed outstandingly in war, but the French government treats its citizens much better much more consistently than Russia or the Soviet Union ever have.)

I think it's safe to say they intend to do that, though, in the event of an outright invasion or hostile coup of one of their closely-tied states in Africa or the Levant, or an attack on Europe. Which explains the exercises.

> Vietnam? Algeria? Suez?

Vietnam and Algeria were asynchronous battlefields, and nobody seems to be able to win those. ( Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam)

Suez failed politically and internationally, and the French were forced to pull back because the British got forced by the US. Militarily it had a decent start before that.

And all of those were more than 60 years ago, so hardly applicable today.

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