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Comment by vrganj | Hacker News Reader

> As a source puts it, the French said: "Would you like more soldiers? You could have them. Would you like more naval support? You could have that. Would you like more air support? You could have that too."

Thank God for the French. I long thought their strong Gaullist stance on sovereignty was a bit silly in today's world, but turns out they were right along.

Europe can't trust any outside powers. Any external dependency can and will be used against us. We used to be wide-eyed believers in international corporation and global alliances, but those are, as it turns out, always a risk and a liability.

I sure as hell am glad the French kept being stubborn enough to build most capabilities in-house, so now we have our own nuclear deterrent, aircraft carrier and fighter jet programs. Imagine if we had gone all-in on American weapons tech! They'd have us, excuse my French, by the balls!

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> I long thought their strong Gaullist stance on sovereignty was a bit silly in today's world

There is very good reasons why De Gaulle was always a bit doubtful about American military protection and why post-war France put a strong emphasis on military sovereignty.

That has nothing to do with any French stubbornness or a so called French anti-American feeling.

The main reason is that De Gaulle experienced the fact American leadership can be untrustworthy first hand.

When he was the leader of the exiled French force during the 40s, Churchill supported him.

Meaningwhile Roosevelt refused to give him any support and actively acted to make him replaced by a puppet, General Giraud. Mainly because it was better aligned with American interests to setup a puppet state in France on the longer term.

The situation changed only later when it became pretty obvious that Giraud was antisemite, an openly nazi collaborationist and a pretty poor politician.

Only then, America started to support De Gaulle officially. Initially only indirectly through the relation between De Gaulle and Eisenhower.

You can always trust americans to do the right thing after we have tried everything else.

Never trust america unless our last option is the one you want. Otherwise, let us stubbornly do it wrong until we come around.

I can't wait.

I don’t think that aphorism is actually true. What’s the right thing that’s going to follow being complicit in Gaza and bombing Iran?

I think it was a quip strategically designed to make the Americans feel better about themselves even as it clearly puts them down, and to become an aspiration at least. In some sense the history of the US is about unleashing a powerful idea and always falling inshort of living up to it.

It was even more than that. In the late 1930s the US told France not to worry about those aggressive Germans next door, if things go pear-shaped we'll stand by you, you can rely on us to help defend you.

This is why France went with its own nuclear deterrent, among other things.

Ukraine gave up their nukes due to American assurances as to Ukraine's defence.

Not this talking point again...

I am very pro Ukraine, but those nukes where never "Ukranian", they where Soviet nukes, staffed and manned and made by Russia.

This is like if USA puts nukes in Sweden under NATO, are they suddenly Swedish nukes? No.

Nah, this is like if the US puts nuke in California and the US falls apart.

Are they Californian nukes or DC nukes? Possession is nine-tenths of the law...

Well, does it matter if California never had the staff/manpower to use them, and they were all administered & maintained by DC staff?

As a Brit it’s been very obvious CdG was right since the start.

The final straw was almost 50 years ago when Thatcher gave up the UKs space program and satellite plans in favor of giving the money, in cash, to the US.

In return for paying for 1/3 of the keyhole satellite network Regan said we could borrow them when needed.

Then we asked to use them to look at the Falklands and Regan said no.

That was the same period where we traded British missile technology for renting D5s from America. So though we make and own our own nuclear warheads, the delivery systems are American and must be returned to the US for maintenance on a regular basis. Essentially robbing the UK of an independent deterrent.

I am all for unilateral nuclear disarmament but if we are going to have nukes in the current climate they should be entirely homegrown and independent.

The British support of the US military industrial complex doesn’t benefit the UK as it means we have no ability to act alone or in opposition to the US. We are as dependent on resupply as the Israelis.

Obviously that’s great for the US.

>I long thought their strong Gaullist stance on sovereignty was a bit silly in today's world, but turns out they were right along.

Every single French president since Mitterand (with a brief exception for Iraq that was more than made up by Libya) spent a large part of their time liquidating Gaullism.

The French took basically the exact opposite approach to the British in terms of post-WW2 foreign policy.

I think partly because of the shared language British elites were able to convince themselves that the US is just like us, and the so called "special relationship" sort of preserved British power albeit as an extremely junior partner riding on the coattails of the US.

With the French there was no such delusion and they've never seen eye to eye with the Americans, they've just been biding their time waiting for this all to play out.

In hindsight, the French were right of course (they usually are as much as it pains me to say it)

All this is very funny if you take into account how the United States originated.

What's going on right now makes a lot more sense when you consider that what's now the US was populated not so much by people of English descent, but specifically super religious Protestants who were often causing trouble.

Part of the solution to Europe's wars of religion was to pack off some of the most swivel-eyed ones to the new world to let them build their New Jerusalem there, and it worked for a bit

Even as an American reading some diaries of English colonists provided a lot of insight into the culture to this day.

I remember one where a man decided to move to America to escape religious persecution. Of course said religious persecution was his neighbors laughing and dancing and enjoying themselves.

It often gets somewhat glossed over in modern secular readings of history but the Protestant Reformation is one of the most important events in European (and Western more broadly) history.

We're still feeling the reverberations of Martin Luther (allegedly) nailing his theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg today

I can see you aren't french, nor know the culture, else you would have known that those were only words. false promise and pretending isn't seens as really bad in france. Words are just words. Foreign naive beliefs about our culture is realy cute.

> I long thought their strong Gaullist stance on sovereignty was a bit silly in today's world, but turns out they were right along.

Silly ? it originally comes from the american trying to impose a governement to france / print money and administrate it right after WW2. The ONLY reasons this didn't happen is because De Gaulle marched to paris and became the de facto ruler of the nation after that from his popularity, other wise the american plan would have happened.

US has literally had the SAME policy since maybe as early as the 1800 : expand the empire and get as much as influence as possible. They were never exactly friends or at least "kind" friends.

If anything the subsequent presidents who meshed our defense / intelligence / technical appartus so deeply with the US were complete fools, at best.

I'm not sure you understood my point. I used to think it was silly, but now I agree with your view.

French is a lot more American in terms of doing the right thing than the Americans like to think they are (or really, propagandize they are).

History shows that Europe can't trust any inside powers either...

pre-EU history shows that, which is why we founded the EU in the first place.

To quote one of our founding fathers, Robert Schuman, the point of tightly interweaving our economies this way is to "make war not only unthinkable, but materially impossible"

Sounds kinda like why they founded the League of Nations

> Thank God for the French

France has nowhere the military power to resist a country like the US. They have not invested in the military for a very long time and most of their equipment is completely outdated.

France has completely sovereign nukes and the only first-strike nuclear doctrine in the world. It has the military power to resist any country.

It's not the only country with that doctrine. See [1]. I think only China and India is no first use.

[1]: https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nuclear-declaratory-p...

France is never going to send a nuke to the US.

It happened in the Simpsons.

They already nuked America economically twice in the 20th century.

The first time the French involvement in gold markets caused the Great Depression and the second time the repatriation of gold caused a financial system crisis which severely damaged the dollar and forced the US to decouple the dollar from gold entirely.

Nuke means no return and MAD. Not a word you use lightly.

Your attitude reminds me of this old meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/what-are-you-gonna-do-stab-me

So explain yourself instead of using memes.

I thought it was obvious, but let me explicitly spell it out for you:

You speak with an unfounded arrogance that will earn you a bloodied nose if you don't course correct.

France's nuclear policy isn't unique in that they are willing to launch a first-strike (all the serious nuclear powers claim to be). France's nuclear policy is unique in that they are willing to use nuclear fire as a warning shot: before they launch their full strategic stockpile, they'll (probably) erase a military base or aircraft carrier with a tactical nuke. That lower threshold to break the nuclear taboo is what's interesting.

Yup. No other country had an official Force de Frappe.

Ah but alas: have you considered that the US is increasingly run by actual idiots?

It turns out even Iran has the power to resist a country like the US.

Iran is no joke. Everybody knew it and yet they went full ahead with it for some reason.

It's more that "military power" per se is not the be-all-end-all of conflict.

USA has not gone full force into Iran.

Need you be reminded of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War

What has happened to this site? Its all these leftie pro MENA talking points.

You can disagree with the tone on the user above but the fact is NOBODY can stand up to USA military.

t. Swede

America below the President and his appointees is an unbelievable dream team. That's why the whole machine works, regardless of who is at the top.

I agree in principle but actually much of this system has been gutted in horrific and hard-to-reverse ways.

For now, but it's working less and less well as the rot spreads.

Maybe not but they have enough to be useful. They do have nukes - a US invasion of France would not be a good idea. On the more realistic end of things the French are able to provide military intelligence to Ukraine to counter the US president turning it off to help his mate Vlad.

You don't need a lot of nuclear weapons to be able to say "Fuck off, or everyone dies". You just need enough, and the widespread belief that you'd actually use them.

France probably has enough, and is definitely credible in their willingness to use them.

After the failure against countries with no military might like Vietnam, Irak, Afghanistan, and now Iran, I wouldn’t place a lot of importance into how much tech and quantity in the military plays a critical role into winning wars today.

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