I am an officer of the French Army. I have been reading your page for some time to get a different view of the conflict in Ukraine. Thank you for what you do.
If I write to you today, it is to tell you exactly what it is like to be an officer in a Western European army in 2023.
In concrete terms, we are constantly being told about "high-intensity warfare" and "the return of modern warfare". We, specifically, are told about the importance of our role as armored officers, because "tanks will play a major role against our enemies". We are constantly being fed a pro-war arguments, very anti-Russian, very pro-NATO discourses (no surprise there). In other words, we are in an era like in 1872, when France had just lost against Germany, and the whole country was in propaganda mode to prepare the "revenge" (we call this "revanchisme" in France).
That's kind of the feeling I get (even if I don't really see the revenge we would have to take on the Russians, Lol).
But this bellicose speech is a facade, like a cat growling at a bear hoping to scare it. In reality our army is in tatters. We are unable to maintain our Leclerc tanks for example: only fifty of them are functional, a shame for "the first army in Europe"... A shame for an armored cavalry officer like me... It is not better in other sectors of the army, we have for example almost no more CAESAR (thanks Ukraine!). In other words, we have neither tanks nor guns.
The French like to make fun of China, which they say is a "paper tiger". The paper tiger is us. Our army was unable to eliminate 500 terrorists in Africa, it would not last 2 days in a real modern war.
But the most ridiculous thing is what? It is that our army is wallowing in this mediocrity. Like an old man who contemplates his reflection in the mirror, dreaming of his past glory. I'm thinking of a specific episode that happened recently and that justified my writing to you: an evaluation for my officer class that we just passed consisted in "eating properly" and "knowing how to set a table in a noble way", to respect the tradition of armored cavalry officers (supposed to be particularly noble)... Funny if it was just some tradition. Except no: it was decisive. Those who misaligned knives and forks got very bad marks, which would be reflected in their career and choice of regiment. The French army breaks the ambitions of young people who have been preparing for 6 years to lead tanks, for a story of forks...
This army is ridiculous, it is only a shadow of its former self. It disgusts all the sincere French patriots: most of my comrades consider leaving the army as soon as they can. For this reason in particular, because the army brings nothing. But also because they do not want, for some of them, to be the minions of NATO while they enlisted to serve France...
You don't have to worry about Western European countries, our arrogance is theater.
I give you my greetings, take care of yourselves and let's pray (whatever our obedience) that this conflict will stop and that Europe will find again a peaceful and multipolar balance.
