France seeks to preserve global role
PARIS - The French government decided yesterday to increase military spending by an average of $1.8 billion a year as part of an effort to field a trimmer but better equipped army to safeguard France's role in world affairs.
The five-year program, which has been under study since President Nicolas Sarkozy took office in May 2007, was maintained despite a financial crisis that has undermined the already sluggish French economy and led to predictions of budget cutbacks across the government. Defense Minister Herve Morin said the decision illustrated Sarkozy's determination, even amid financial turmoil, to conduct activist policies in Afghanistan, Africa and other trouble spots around the globe.
Sarkozy proposed yesterday, for instance, that European countries, including France, dispatch a military force to Congo to help end the spiraling conflict there.
"In spite of the crisis, we will not touch defense funds," Morin told the Figaro newspaper. "France wants to maintain a strong foreign policy. For its voice to be heard, it must be a credible military power."
The Defense Planning Law, which is likely to pass unaltered, provided for $230 billion through 2014. It listed as priority expenditures the launching of reconnaissance satellites, increasing by 700 the number of intelligence agents and buying anti-missile alert systems. In deference to the economic slowdown, however, it mandated holding firm on expenditures for three years and then piling the increases into the last two years.
