Remember this acronym: DTIB. Up to now, it has been reserved for experts in defense circles. Remember it, because if the world follows its current trajectory, that of a universe dominated by power relations, the DTIB – Defense Technological and Industrial Base – should become as important a tool for European societies as social security.
Should, because, to listen to our strategists, we Europeans are lagging far behind in strengthening this DTIB. Opening the Major Strategic Issues lecture series at the Sorbonne on January 22, France's chief of defense staff, General Thierry Burkhard, painted an extremely bleak picture of our geostrategic environment. "The new strategy map," he said, can be summed up in a triptych: "competition, contestation, confrontation." Competition is now the "normal" mode of relationship between countries. Contestation manifests itself in increasingly transgressive and brutal ways – Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 is a case in point. Confrontation can lead to war: "If necessary, it must be fought."
So we're going to have to get used to it: "Competition, contestation, confrontation" have replaced cooperation, conflict prevention and peaceful resolution. And that's not all, explained the defense chief, always reassuring with his five stars. The battlefield, too, has been transformed. "Imposed warfare" has replaced the outdated "peace operations." Previously, the adversary sought to prevent us from acting; today, their aim is to "kill us." Burkhard also observed an "operational paradigm shift": No more commando operations. Today the Russians are committing hundreds of thousands of men to war. In the French army, no one has forgotten the day when troops deployed in Mali lost 13 men in a helicopter collision. Today, in Ukraine, "13 dead is a good half-day."
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So we've been warned. This radical change in the environment implies, we assume, an adaptation of the response. All the more so since, continued the chief of defense staff in a dystopian vein, "One day, the US will no longer want to intervene in Europe. What interests them is leadership in the Indo-Pacific. So we need awareness in Europe of the need to strengthen our defense capabilities."
This is where the problem lies, and where the DTIB comes into its own. Awareness is growing, albeit belatedly. The European Union (EU) and its member states no longer deny that the post-Cold War era of peace dividends is over and that we need to rearm. But strengthening our defense capabilities seems to require unthinkable efforts.
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