Let me react to the article from Politico « Too Early, Too Alone: France Prepares to Russia as US Withdraws » by Laura Kayali, Dec 21st 2021.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/12/21/france-europe-security-trump-00700889

I’m afraid indeed that Mrs. Kayali, as most people, massively over-estimates the reality of the effort that France pretends to have done on Defense.
Whilst I’m afraid that she is right about the high risk that this limited effort, if any, will stop if National Rally wins the elections in 2027 as is sadly likely to happen.

In summary France has not done any serious effort on defense in the last 10 years, and shall stop trying to do it from 2027 onward, precisely when the threats from Russia will be the highest

The graph below shows the actual spending on Defense since 2015. Net of nominal inflation, the increase since 2015 is only 16%, despite 2015 – 2017 were the lowest levels in the last 60 years.
As a reminder the defense spending as a % of GDP was in the 6 to 7% range in the 50’s and 60’s and still above 3% until 1990.

Excluding the pensions the real spending of France is 1.6 to 1.7% in 2024 – 2025. And if you exclude nuclear forces – which would be irrelevant for a war on the Eastern flank of the continent – you get to 1.4 to 1.5% only.
By comparison Nordics countries and double this amount, Poland is triple, Russia is quadruple (without mentioning purchasing power parity which means that its real spending is rather a factor of 6 or 7 vs France) and Germany will soon be double both in % and in absolute valuel

Hence my point that France is too little too late now. And that Macron is lying, first probably to himself as he seems not to be good at all with numbers and with real things in general, and second to the outside world, when for instance in his new year speach on Dec 31st he pretended that French army is the first one in Europe. See my first article, this is totally wrong.

France is at best struggling to execute its military law covering 2024 to 2030. Unlike what is said or thought, this law does not even pretend to grow the size of the French army compared to the previous one, despite the full invasion of Ukraine of 2022 which took place in mean time. It just tries to make the so called « bonsaï » army effective, when the previous plan was wishful thinking, with massive disconnect between the ambition and the means.

Yet despite this modest ambition, it is not even delivered, as the prices of kits are growing even faster than inflation, due to an efficient procurement process and national (only) industry.
For the French readers see this report from Senat (upper house) which describes the massive delays in execution of current programs, despite they lack any ambition whatsoever: https://www.senat.fr/notice-rapport/2024/r24-615-notice.html

Then Mrs. Kayali explains the difficulties for France to increase funding for Defense in a context of massive deficit and absence of majority at the lower house.
Yet it is good to look at the big picture and appreciate that France spends basically 10 times more money on the pensions, which are the most generous amongst rich countries. See graph below which I found on LinkedIn and does a good job at visualising the massive weight social spending in France vs national priorities:

Despite I appreciate the political sensitivity of the matter, reducing pensions by 10% over a few years would free up 40 to 50Bn€ for reducing the deficit and investing in defense, whilst maintaining French pensioners at a higher level than their peers in other developed countries.

Another even more embarassing truth is that the army personel itself could do an effort to stay longer in the job and thus bridge naturally and easily the staffing gap.
Permanent army personels are retiring at 46 on average, and get a full pension till the end of their live from then.

Imposing a minimum retirement age of 60 for instance would allow to grow the number of army men and women by approx. 10,000 / year for 10 to 15 years, all the rest being equal, till the minimum age is actually reached.
So in a context of shortage of trained people, that the new military service will not help at all – on the contrary it will be a distraction and waste of time and money – there is a fair and easy solution which sadly looks like a small elephant in the corridor that nobody wants to bother…

The sad reality and conclusion for now is that not only USA is not a trustable ally, so is France!
Macron is in a way the opposite of Trump in the sense he speaks a lot, makes promises to everyone, pretends to engage into European defense… but does nothing in reality, at least nothing significant.
Eg. France has approx. 300 soldiers in Estonia. Nice but… too little to have any weight. I know the theory that if Russia would invade Estonia, it would have to face and thus kill some French soldiers, which would de facto mean it would be at war with France. And so what!

Like France would be able to send 50,000 troops in a matter of weeks and change the situation. It is not. Or Russia would be afraid that France (or UK, same story by the way) sends a nuclear weapon to it. It won’t be because France or UK or even less USA will never use nuclear weapons to defends anything else than their own territory.

Thanks God Germany and Poland are stepping up to lead true increase in European defense capabilities. So do Nordic countries.

France is part of Southern Europe, except it speaks more, too much, but barely matches even Italy now.

So yes, too little, too late, and lying to itself in what it pretends to do vs reality. Who will wake up French people? Who will dare telling the truth, but Trump? I’m afraid for now complacency, blindness and selfish focus on pensions and welfare systems will remain the priorities of France, its politicians and its citizens!

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