The entente frugale: Cost-cutting 50-year deal that will see French take command of the SAS and Britain share nuclear secrets

Britain and France will sign a new entente cordiale today which will put the security of the UK and her overseas territories in the hands of the French for 50 years.

The ground-breaking agreement will even see French generals taking command of the SAS as part of a rapid reaction force.

Nuclear secrets - which have been preserved for five decades – will also be shared under unprecedented plans to merge the testing of warheads.

Senior defence officials claim the historic deal, dubbed the ‘Entente Frugale’, will save millions and boost the fighting power of both countries.

But critics claim that the pact has been forced on Britain by budget cuts and will leave the Armed Forces dependent on their historical rivals, who opposed conflicts in Iraq and the Falklands.

David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarzoky will sign two treaties designed to end years of mutual suspicion and bind the Armed Forces of both nations together for 50 years.

The historic deal will see Britain and France:

Share aircraft carriers from 2020, so that at least one is at sea at all times, leaving Britain dependent on French support to defend the Falkland Islands
Launch a brigade-sized Combined Joint Expeditionary Force - about 6,000 troops – including the SAS, SBS, Marines and Paras, to deploy on civil and military operations together.

Britain will surrender testing of nuclear warheads which will be done at Valduc, near Dijon, from 2015. The Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston will focus on developing new technology.

Share more intelligence, air-to-air refuelling and cyber-warfare capabilities
Work more closely on counter terrorism, particularly with regard to the Channel Tunnel .

Force British and French defence companies to collaborate on future missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Defence Secretary Liam Fox insisted the move makes 'perfect sense' and stressed: 'This is not a question of our military assets coming under the control of any other power than the United Kingdom.'
He claimed it would not stop the UK acting alone if it had a disagreement with France over policy.

'There is nothing in this treaty that restricts either country from acting where we want to in our national interest,' he told the BBC.

'We're talking about joint expeditionary forces with our forces in all three services working together to develop common practices, better inter-operability and to look to see where we get better common equipment. That makes perfect sense in a world where resources are tight but our interests are increasingly common.'

Dr Fox said the deal was not the same as allowing the European Union to have responsibility for defence.

'Defence has to be a sovereign capability,' he said. 'If we decide to make a defence deal with France, where we operate together when it's in our interest to do so but retain our capabilities to act independently when our nations require it, that's very different from having a European Commission rule in our defence.'

Two years ago, a leaked French government document revealed most of France’s tanks, helicopters and jet fighters were unusable and its defence capabilities were on the verge of ‘falling apart’.
Under the terms of the defence pact, Britain’s only aircraft carrier capability for the next decade will be the French flagship the Charles de Gaulle.

From 2020, when the UK has its own new carrier, the two countries will agree to keep one of the two at sea.

But that means when Britain’s carrier is in refit, about 30 per cent of the time, the defence of the Falkland Islands could depend on help from the French government, which sold Exocet missiles to Argentina during the 1982 war. And they could simply say: ‘Non.’

Commander John Muxworthy, a Falklands veteran who is chief executive of the UK National Defence Association, branded the plan ‘utterly irresponsible’.

He said: ‘This compromises our operational integrity completely. If we need to send a carrier to protect one of our territories, and ours is in refit, and the French say, “Well, we don’t agree – you’re not using ours”, we’re not going to be doing much protecting.

‘It is not in the best interests of the nation. The Government is trying to paint the picture that this is the smart way to do defence, but the reality is that ministers are trying to disguise the cuts and have defence on the cheap.’

British and French forces earmarked for the rapid reaction ‘expeditionary force’ will train together from next year.

The plans will have serious implications for Nato because Britain and France could carry out operations outside the alliance, but officials say it is better than allowing the EU to develop military capabilities.

Mr Cameron said yesterday: ‘I do seriously believe that this link-up with the French is in the long-term interests of both our countries.

‘And to those who worry that this might in some way lead to sort of European armies – that is not the point. The point is to enhance sovereign capability by two like-minded countries being able to work together.’
New Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir David Richards said: 'From a purely practical military perspective, we have been working very closely with the French ever since the First World War, but particularly in Nato,' he said in a BBC interview ahead of the summit.

'We lost some of that in the 1990s and the last 10 years or so, so we are almost going back to the very close co-operation we had in the Cold War era.

'It makes absolute sense, from my perspective, as we are going to fight alongside the French, which has been our plan for a long time, to be as good at it in training as we possibly can be.'

Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy said: 'I support the Government's emphasis on international co-operation, taking forward the good work of the last government.

'We share common threats with countries such as France, from terrorism to privacy to cyber-attack. Deepening military ties is an essential part of modern defence policy.
'Interdependence, however, is different from dependence, and binding legal treaties pose some big questions for the Government.
'We know British aircraft carriers won't have a strike force on them for a decade. Is today's treaty going to usher in an era where we are reliant on our allies to fill in the gaps in the Government's defence policy?'

Will we ever really trust the French?Commentary by COLONEL TIM COLLINS

Horatio Nelson famously instructed his officers that, ‘you must hate a Frenchman as you hate the devil’.

The Duke of Wellington proclaimed: ‘We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be detested in France.’

Well it seems now we are to be one with them – at least militarily. I must admit I am sceptical.
I have served with the French many times; in Berlin during the Cold War, with their special forces on numerous operations when I was in the SAS and in Bosnia, both with the UN under French command and with Nato.

I recall serving alongside the French Foreign Legion in Bosnia when I was deployed with the SAS. They could not speak workable English and our French was basic to say the least.

In the hunt for war criminals, joint operations with France often ended with the blighter getting away – almost as if he had been tipped off. Yet acting alone or with the U.S. we usually got our man.

But the language barrier is not the only potential snag. The ‘advantage’ of sharing aircraft carriers – which would allow us to have a carrier available to us when our own is in for refit – is in fact nothing of the sort.

The problem is that, if we want to use a French aircraft carrier, we then have to seek the permission of the French.

That could present insurmountable difficulties. If, for instance, the Falklands crisis were to flare up again, would they agree to their aircraft carrier braving the French-made Exocet missiles they sold to the Argentinians to recover our islands?

I very much doubt it. After all, they were opposed to our Task Force setting off to recapture the islands in the Falklands War.

As for sharing nuclear secrets and research facilities with France, and merging the testing of nuclear warheads, what impact will that have on our relationship with the United States?

The fact that our Trident submarines currently act as an integral part of a collective global nuclear deterrent with the U.S. is a main pillar of the special relationship.

We are told that the U.S. is relaxed about this new arrangement with France, and that they regard the new Anglo/French relationship as a means of bolstering France’s global military engagement.

But what if the people of France object to an enhanced role for the French military in world affairs? Has anybody told them what happens when the French government do something the French people don’t like?

Last week in Boulogne, the evidence of burning barricades was still very visible on the blackened roads around the town. And that was about an increase in pension ages – not an unpopular war in a faraway land.

The truth is that for years, the French have punched below their weight. They have committed far fewer troops to Nato’s UN-mandated operations in Afghanistan than the British.

We have more than twice the number of service men and women in Afghanistan, despite the fact that the British have 10,000 fewer full-time Army personnel than the French.

The U.S. commander of the first Gulf War ‘Storming’ Norman Schwarzkopf jibed that ‘going to war without the French is like going duck shooting without an accordion’.

In the second Gulf war against Iraq, it was the U.S. which dubbed our new best friends ‘cheese eating surrender monkeys’ and rebranded French Fries as ‘Freedom Fries’ when they failed to support the 2003 invasion.

I hope I am wrong. I hope the mutual suspicion that has existed through the centuries has gone – a mutual suspicion, incidentally, that hampered our operations in Bosnia where the French had a relationship with the Serbs we never fully understood. But I can’t be sure of it.

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