{"id":527028,"date":"2025-03-10T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-10T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/?p=527028"},"modified":"2025-12-13T22:54:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T21:54:12","slug":"macron-war-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/en\/policy\/france\/macron-war-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"War economy, towards the mammoth state?"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a time of geopolitical turbulence, interventionism may be desirable, provided that political power is capable of reversing course afterwards. However, nothing is less certain for a country like France, which is already over-indebted.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The improbable lynching of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office at the end of February sounded the alarm: Europeans are now alone in defending liberal democracy in Europe. Emmanuel Macron has announced France's entry into a war economy<\/em>. The program includes an increase in the defense budget, accelerated rearmament and massive investment in the military industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Armaments production lines are already running at full speed: while France was producing 500 shells a year in 2017, this figure has risen to 3,000 shells a month by 2024. The Rafale production rate has tripled since the start of the conflict in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The invocation of the war economy seems to foreshadow the advent of a mammoth state. At a time when Europe is trying to put an end to Russian authoritarianism, liberalism - the continent's economic and political foundation - seems to be on hold, for better or for worse. For dirigisme need not become an unsurpassable horizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

War, the gravedigger of liberalism<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The war in Ukraine embodies a pioneering, shifting front between two irreconcilable worldviews. The Westphalian state is once again at the center of the international game, despite Francis Fukuyama's \u00abend of history\u00bb theses. Gone are the days of gentle commerce. Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are forcing Europe to assume its responsibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Russian Federation has built stone by stone its deafness to liberal ideas, falling into the monotonous rut of democracies. Since Putin came to power in 2000, the air of freedom has been thinning in Moscow, yet no one seems to be suffocating. A command economy, a starving country, unlimited power. The Kremlin tames and subdues every sector: energy, defense industry and infrastructure. It wields the iron fist when necessary. Competition, in the political market as in economic life, is a blind spot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A war economy completely reconfigures economic structures. It's not just a question of reallocating budgetary resources. In France, a country with a strong statist tradition, the war economy now decreed implies greater control of the workforce. Interventionism leads to market distortion, savings diversion, a culture of wait-and-see and corporate dependence on public authorities, followed by path dependence, weak incentives for innovation, administrative complexity, a lasting rise in taxation and unsustainable debt... Not to mention the fact that the burden of debt is already on its way to becoming the French government's biggest item of expenditure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n