:france-cool:
"In January the general staff quietly established ten working groups to examine the country’s readiness for high-intensity war. French generals reckon that they have a decade or so to prepare for it. The groups cover everything from munition shortages to the resilience of society, including whether citizens are “ready to accept the level of casualties we have never seen since world war two”, says one participant. The spectre of high-end war is now so widespread in French military thinking that the scenario has its own acronym: HEM, or hypothèse d'engagement majeur (hypothesis of major engagement). The presumed opponents are unnamed, but analysts point not only to Russia, but also Turkey or a North African country."
Obviously, Turkey and France aren't exactly best buds. While the brain trust that uses /r/geopolitics, /r/neoliberal as NATO flairs think that just because these two are in an alliance of convenience they will be forever, it wouldn't surprise me if they actually got into some kind of conflict that would shatter NATO.
Not sure what France is gearing up for, the only actually sensical target is some north African country. Possibly Libya to "re-stabilize" it. I don't know if this type of gearing up is actually typical for France or not, either. It would be normal for the US, I guess.
The article mentioned an increase in troops in the Sahel region (think Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, etc.)
Good analysis.
The rate of profit's decline can also be reversed temporarily by the destruction of inefficient capital - and WAR is a really good way of destroying old capital stock. I honestly don't know how else they'd do it besides a government bailout of badly performing capital stock and then a subsequent literal destruction of that stock or just warehousing. You can really see this principal in action with US Government Cheese, the bourgeois state buys up tons of dairy because it is massively overproduced and if allowed to enter the market would crash in price (and cause a bunch of dairy farmers in key states like Wisconsin to get pissed off), so the state buys up this milk and will literally just dump it or turn it into the absolute grossest cheese and let it sit in stores for ages before distributing it to the poor. The same principle applies to US war industry production, like the government buys way too many tanks that end up sitting in empty lots, but that ones a little more on the nose - this general principle of bourgeois state destruction of produced goods applies to everything including food.