Bastille Day with a European twist?

On Saturday, France celebrated Bastille Day, the day when people from the ‘third-estate’—that is, the peasantry—stormed the royal prison and fortress in central Paris in 1789. Akin to Guy Fawkes night in the United Kingdom or the Fourth July in the United States, the day normally passes with the normal outpourings of tradition and nationalist sentiment.

One of the central components of Bastille Day has traditionally been a parade of France’s armed forces through the middle of the French capital, particularly with a march down the famous Champs-Élyées, the wide boulevard from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc dé Triomphe. On Saturday, like on many Bastille Days of the past, the French military was out in full force and style, a vivid reminder of the world’s third strongest military power—with a defence budget third only to the United States and United Kingdom. Only Britain’s ‘Trooping of the Colour’, which celebrates the British Monarch’s birthday, comes close to rivalling the whole affair.

But Bastille Day in 2007 was different from those of the past. The new president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, invited military contingents from every Member State in the European Union to participate in the pageant, in order to remind all Europeans of the importance of military power. Our armed forces keep us safe, lock the world under some semblance of order, and extend our values and interests throughout the globe. They are also a distinct emblem of European cultural influence and normative power. The thronging crowds during the Trooping of the Colour or Bastille Day, often tourists from foreign countries, look on in awe at the parades before them, while many nations’ armed forces have copied European militaries, particularly those in the Americas, Africa and Oceania. As such, European military displays are not just moments of glory for our soldiers, sailors and airmen—they are for all of us: Citizens, after all, sustain their armed forces, by providing the money, armaments and support to keep them vigorous, deployed and strong.

More than that, however, Bastille Day in 2007 raised again the prospect of an integrated European Union security and defence policy. The European Union’s quasi-foreign minister, Javier Solana, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and the current president of the Council of the European Union, Jose Socrates, attended the parade, showing a clear political presence on the part of the European Union. And that seems to be exactly what the French president had in mind by inviting the other European contingents along. Speaking on the eve of the parade, he told a delegation of the French general staff: ‘The basis for a European defence exists. We must make it grow...I want Europe to be capable of ensuring its security autonomously.’ The European Union, once a weak ‘civilian power’—unable, even, to prevent outbreaks of chaos and murder in the Balkans—is now finally getting itself some combat boots.

The French president is correct. Without integrated armed forces sustained by the economies of scale the European Union can produce, European militaries will fade away, even those of Britain and France. We are confronted by raised defence spending in Russia, China, India and Japan. We are threatened by chaos and disorder throughout the European Neighbourhood. And we are challenged by what might be called a loss of the ‘will to power’ by many people throughout Europe, not least in the political elite. A people unwilling to defend themselves, or who come to believe that the application of armed force is ‘old fashioned’, ‘immoral’ or ‘unethical’ will soon be swept away by those that do. And it is likely that those who do will not hold the same moral and ethical principles now held by many throughout our continental homeland. This is why in an increasingly insecure and dangerous age, it is imperative that we maintain the ability to defend our homeland and project outwards an image to the rest of the world of indefatigable determination and military strength. As Robert Cooper, the Director-General of Politico-Military Affairs at the Council of the European Union, says: ‘Soft power is the velvet glove, but behind it there is always the iron fist.’