underestimating France?

I guess that the recent dislike for the French by the Americans is due to lack of support of the imperialistic policy of the American Government.

Of course, I'm not so naive to think that the French are disinterested in their opposition to American policy, they have their own policy.

What I don't understand is why our beloved premier Mr. Berlusconi aims at doing the silly Billy of the Americans. Which policy does he pursue?

Originally posted by Frederick Roger Seriously, take a look at this: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/france.html

the search worked for me...3,670,000 hits on google, its just the albino website that created a page for defeats, lol
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Originally posted by Leonardo Originally posted by Halevi Originally posted by Leonardo I guess that the recent dislike for the French by the Americans is due to lack of support of the imperialistic policy of the American Government. Of course, I'm not so naive to think that the French are disinterested in their opposition to American policy, they have their own policy. What I don't understand is why our beloved premier Mr. Berlusconi aims at doing the silly Billy of the Americans. Which policy does he pursue? Yeah, Berlusconi bewliders me a little. He seems so out of touch with the pulse of Bella Italia. He must have either a very personal agenda in mind, or some sort of committment to a new US-aligned conservative global order. I could be very wrong. BTW, da dove in italia sei? Io amo il tuo paiese... I live in Gorizia, a little town on the border between Italy and Slovenia Ciao!

Cool... what's the cuisine like there? Venetian? Friulian?.... Olive oil, or butter based?

Originally posted by Halevi Originally posted by Leonardo Originally posted by Halevi Originally posted by Leonardo I guess that the recent dislike for the French by the Americans is due to lack of support of the imperialistic policy of the American Government. Of course, I'm not so naive to think that the French are disinterested in their opposition to American policy, they have their own policy. What I don't understand is why our beloved premier Mr. Berlusconi aims at doing the silly Billy of the Americans. Which policy does he pursue? Yeah, Berlusconi bewliders me a little. He seems so out of touch with the pulse of Bella Italia. He must have either a very personal agenda in mind, or some sort of committment to a new US-aligned conservative global order. I could be very wrong. BTW, da dove in italia sei? Io amo il tuo paiese... I live in Gorizia, a little town on the border between Italy and Slovenia Ciao! Cool... what's the cuisine like there? Venetian? Friulian?.... Olive oil, or butter based?

It's a mix of various kinds with some Slav and Austrian influences.

Some samples:

Musetto e brovada (friulian):

Scampi alla Busara (from Trieste):

 

Gulasch suppe (Austrian influence):

 

Cevapcici (balcanic influence)

 

Gubana (friulian):

But above all, in our region there are the best white wines in Italy :

Originally posted by mamikon yes, that is true...but you are comparing France in both WWI and WWII with the strongest country at those times, Germany.  If Great Britain was not an island, and was connected to Germany, you can bet they would have been gonners too And lets not forget, France is still one of the strongest countries in the world...now how would a country that has not won anything, be at the top of the food chain for the past 1000 or so years

Actually, it's a bit unfair to say France has won nothing. Ok, you can attribute those victories for a big part to the USA but don't forget it took part in the Kosovo and Gulf Wars and with quite some success in both.

More recently it made a successful intervention in Ivory coast by evacuating it's French citizen there from the rampaging mobs fed by propaganda from their government, those situations are often very tough to handle (where to put the difference between a soldier and a fighting civilian, Israel has this dilema to settle for ages).

Originally posted by Exarchus Originally posted by mamikon yes, that is true...but you are comparing France in both WWI and WWII with the strongest country at those times, Germany.  If Great Britain was not an island, and was connected to Germany, you can bet they would have been gonners too And lets not forget, France is still one of the strongest countries in the world...now how would a country that has not won anything, be at the top of the food chain for the past 1000 or so years Actually, it's a bit unfair to say France has won nothing. Ok, you can attribute those victories for a big part to the USA but don't forget it took part in the Kosovo and Gulf Wars and with quite some success in both. More recently it made a successful intervention in Ivory coast by evacuating it's French citizen there from the rampaging mobs fed by propaganda from their government, those situations are often very tough to handle (where to put the difference between a soldier and a fighting civilian, Israel has this dilema to settle for ages).

These are excellent points.  The French military is highly professional and technically competent.  Their equipment and training are first rate, and I have met French officers on fellowship to the US Army War College.....Very impressive.  The performance of their air forces in the first Gulf War was outstanding.

This will surprise Maju, but France had a magnificent modern navy in 1940 with some of the best ships in the world.  I don't know about the modern navy, France being an important part of the WEU land forces for 50 years.

The French political elites, isolated and indoctrinated in their ecoles superieurs, still want it to be 1919.  It is not.

 

The French navy by 2015 would look like:

1* Charles de Gaulle nuclear supercarrier (40,000 tons, can use 40 Rafales M and 3 E-2).

1* CVF (probably the Georges Pompidou) supercarrier (65,000 tons, can use 60 Rafales M and 3 E-2).

Both will be using catapults and not STOVL systems, being the only ones in Europe (UK and Italy stick with STOVL, same for Spain).

2* Mistral class Helicopter carriers (20,000 tons, can use 8 Tiger and 8 NH-90, can transport 40 Leclerc MBT).

2* Foudre class landing platform (8,000 tons)

2* Anti-Air Horizon class destroyers (6,600 tons) maybe 4 (depends, they cost 1,1 bilion each)

2* Tourville class Destroyers, anti submarine warfare (6,000 tons)

17* FREMM (5,500 tons) European multimission frigates) maybe 19 if the last 2 Horizons aren't ordered.

5* La Fayette class stealth frigates (3,500 tons)

6* Floreal patroling frigates (3,000 tons)

4* Triomphant class tactical submarines (14,000 tons)
 
6* Barracuda class attack submarines (4,700 tons)


Edited by Exarchus

Edgewaters.

I would tend to disagree when you say France is wealthier than Britain. It's true the French may be enjoying a higher quality of life. Most likely due to the nature of the landscape and climate itself. But that's not wealthier.

In GDP per Capita, Britain is slightly over France, but you also have to consider two things:

- France includes in its GDPs (as well as unemployment) stats its overseas departments and territories, and those have fairly low wealth and high unemployement (up to 30%) while they account for 2 milion of the French population (on 62 milion) as the oversea territories are as French as the mainland is. I think mainland France proper is indeed slightly wealthier overall than Britain proper, but it's given irrelevant because the wealth difference between France and mainland France only is the one spent on the oversea territories.

- Average weath takes in account everyone, including a small minority that control large amount of wealth, even though those are important for the economy they are hardly relevant of the middle class standard of living. Between the richest region of Britain (aside London) which should be Surrey and the richest French one (outside Paris) which would be Alsace, there is indeed a large difference in favor of Britain. While the same comparison between Cornwall and Corsica should give the wealth advantage to the later.

In international affair, the Suez crisis was the turning point. Britain thought that to avoid future situation they would become the best friend of the USA. So they bought a lot of US technologies, like their nuclear weapons (the Tridents) and use a lot of American designed weapons or will use some like the F-35 JSF. Though, if Britain can have fairly good equipment at a much lower cost than France, it has its bad effect:

- Britain is very dependant of the will of the USA about technology transfert. The JSF is the best example when Britain may get much lower than they expected about it.

- The USA can delay the supply of ammo to Britain, making it very vulnerable if that happens.

- The USA can jam the British weapons as they have the codes. Just like France could jam the Exocet missiles in the Falkland war. This is of course including the Trident nuclear missiles.


France in the other hand decided it should be able to strike and destroy both the USSR and USA in the MAD (mutual assured destruction doctrine). This was visible in the nuclear arsenal of France. Don't forget it used to have 6 nuclear tactical submarines, ICBMs, nuclear strike aircraft fighters and short range nuclear weapons (Hades and Pluton). Believe it or no but it was enough to kill everyone in a nuclear war. But those weapons were very expensive and showed useless in modern conflicts with Serbia and Iraq.

So I would say in a conventional conflict Britain definately weight more than France, their navy is more capable to project their power (though it's gonna change soon, France is changed hell a lot of ships, see my previous post) while France is definately in a better position to defend its land against big players because of the threat of mutual annihilation.

this just in...there is no nuclear war...

I don't think anyone considers (say) Poland a worth-nothing country and yet Poland was technically for hundreds of years a country split in pieces amongst the great powers that be of the time. But this is not the first thing we think about when we listen Chopin, and by the way Chopin was enthousiastically adopted by the French intellectual elite. If we look at nations only in terms of which exerced sheer domination and which is more wealthy, it comes to only one Big Boss and all the rest can be deemed as waste. China is the largest nation and has incontestable cultural strongholds yet sincerely I'd never want to live (again) in a communist contry, be it a "liberal" communism. There is no such thing as "unimportant" nation. Those who are really so are actually disappearing (as the cause of their maintainance is lost). Compared to France, Austria or Denmark look pale yet they both have relevant positions in Europe's and world's history. Europe's early middle ages were shaped in many respects by the vikings and European history after the Renaissance spells "Austria" in many points. That now Austria is a shadow of the immense prestige and power of the former empire, whilst Denmark never accomplished something relevant in its efforts to obtain a voice amongst the powers that be of Europe from Middle Age till now is a gross balance of their history. But human civilization has much more depth.  < id="kpfLog" src="http://127.0.0.1:44501/pl.?START_LOG" onload="destroy(this)" style="display: none;"> < ="text/">