Macron plunged in crisis as humiliated general quits as forces' chief-of-staff

TheThe resignation of the General Pierre de Villiers as chief-of-staff of France’s armed forces represents the first major political crisis of Emmanuel Macron’s two-month-old presidency.

The general quit his post after his criticism of a government decision to cut military spending in 2017 by 850 million euros developed into a high-profile conflict with Macron last week, just two and a half weeks after the president had prolonged the 60-year-old’s mandate as army chief-of-staff, which he has held since February 2014, for an extra year.

In a statement released on Wednesday explaining his decision to quit the job, de Villiers said: In the current circumstances, I consider that I am no longer in a position to ensure the continuity of the model of the armed forces which I believe in to guarantee the protection of France and the French today and tomorrow, and to support the ambitions of our country.”

A source at the French presidential office, the Elysée Palace, said de Villiers had informed Macron and his defence minister of his decision on Monday, allowing for the appointment of his successor during Wednesday morning’s weekly cabinet meeting, when de Villiers was officially replaced by General François Lecointre, 55, a veteran of numerous overseas interventions, notably as part of UNPROFOR operations in the ex-Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

The resignation of de Villiers is the first by a serving officer of such high rank since that of General Jean Ollié in 1961, who quit as personal chief-of-staff to General de Gaulle over his reluctance to punish fellow senior French officers who had led a rebellion against de Gaulle during the Algerian War of Independence.

The public conflict between Macron and de Villiers began after the latter last week addressed a closed-door hearing of the defence committee of the National Assembly, parliament’s lower house. The general was speaking to the committee MPs shortly after the finance ministry had announced budget cuts for 2017 for a number of ministries, including the slashing of 850 million euros from this year’s defence budget.

De Villiers criticized the decision, and his comments were leaked, notably an earthy aside that he felt he had been “screwed” by the finance ministry.

“With the strictest respect and loyalty, which has never stopped being the foundation of my relation with political authority and national [parliamentary] representation, I deemed it to be my duty to inform them of my reservations, on several occasions, behind closed doors, in all transparency and truth,” said de Villiers in his statement released on Wednesday.

In the past, the general has intervened on several occasions, including in public, to defend or promote defence spending. In 2014, just months after he was appointed as armed forces’ chief-of-staff, he and leading officers of the French airforce, land forces and navy had discreetly threatened to resign over the then two-year decline of the defence budget, but they received the support of then-defence minister (and now foreign affairs minister) Jean-Yves Le Drian. Following that, defence spending was protected from new public spending cuts, amid French military intervention in Mali, the Central African Republic, Iraq and Syria and also the security ant-terrorist mission at home called Operation Sentinelle.

In December 2016, during the recent presidential election campaign, de Villiers wrote an opinion piece in financial daily Les Echos, a very rare move by a serving senior officer, in which he called for increased funding of the armed forces, which he said had reached the limits of their operational capacities. Citing then-French president François Hollande’s comment that France must prepare for a “long war”, de Villiers sounded the alarm, warning that “the slightest change in the coherence between the threats, the missions and the means would be like a grain of sand that jams the system and leads to defeat”.  

Subsequently, in a public hearing by the parliamentary defence committee in February this year, he underlined that the French armed forces were called on to act “on every front” in an unprecedented manner. “At this very time, more than 30,000 soldiers are engaged in an operational position, outside and within our borders, night and day, and this for more than two years now,” he told the committee.

He painted a stark picture of the state of the armed forces’ equipment, telling the MPs that regarding surveillance flights, the use of drones, refueling aircraft, combat helicopters and transport fleets “we are at breaking point”, adding that as chief-of-staff he had had to cancel operations because of “insufficient capacity”.

He described the planned increase in defence spending in 2018 as an “essential first step” if France was to reach the NATO target for defence budgets of its members to equal 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2025. “I will be frank,” de Villiers told the defence committee, “we have already done our bit, not to say we have already done all we can.”

Macron was therefore aware of de Villiers’ position, all the more so according to French daily Le Monde which this week reported that the two men had exchanged views during Macron’s presidential election campaign. Despite that, the president, who under the French constitution is the ultimate head of the armed forces, chose to take a tough stance towards the general last Thursday at the traditional armed forces gathering at the defence ministry on the eve of the Bastille Day parade. “I consider that it is not dignified to raise certain debates in the public place,” said Macron in a stunning rebuke of de Villiers’ before the audience of his fellow officers. “I am your boss,” Macron continued. “The engagements I undertake before our fellow citizens and before the armed forces, I know how to keep them […] In this respect I have no need of any pressure and no commentary.”

Then, in an interview with weekly Le JDD published on Sunday, he sharply commented: “If something opposes the chief-of-staff of the armed forces with the president, the chief-of-staff of the armed forces changes.”

On July 14th, Bastille day, in between Macron’s comments on Thursday and Sunday, de Villiers took to his Facebook account (which he frequently uses as a tribune), with a lengthy contribution entitled “Confidence”, in which he wrote:  “Beware of blind confidence, which you are given or which you give. It is stamped with the mark of easiness. Because everyone has their inadequacies, no-one deserves being blindly followed.”

Since the row with de Villiers erupted, Macron has announced that the defence budget will be given an unprecedented increase in funding in 2018 and has reiterated the goal of it reaching 2% of GDP in 2025.

Macron 'doesn't recognise parliament's right to be informed'

At his press briefing following the weekly government cabinet meeting this morning, government spokesman Christophe Castaner insisted that “the chief-of-staff of the armed forces is the subordinate of the head of the armed forces”, referring to Macron, and said the difference between the latter and the former centred on “divergent” strategic appraisals. “It’s a little the same as with the director of a central administration, with a prime minister, or a minister, with whom [the president] has a disagreement,” added Castaner, a former Socialist Party MP who joined Macron’s En Marche! party during the election campaign, who reminded reporters present that Macron had pledged he would review the positions of all central administration directors over the first six months of his presidency.

Under the French constitution, and as part of what is regarded as an essential republican principle, the president, elected by the people, has total authority over the armed forces. But Macron’s handling of the disagreement with de Villiers raises other issues.

Firstly, his decision to cut the 2017 defence budget by 850 million euros came as a major surprise for the military given the proclaimed goal of raising it to the equivalent of 2% of GDP by 2025, up from the current equivalent of 1.7% of GDP. The surprise was all the greater given the current context in which the armed forces are stretched to their limits.

Added to this, Macron has chosen not to reduce the demands on the military, but to maintain all the current operations the armed forces are engaged in, abroad and at home, as well as the breadth of France’s current nuclear deterrent. That has led to sharp criticism from a number of quarters, including Macron’s own parliamentary majority.

MP Gwendal Rouillard, a close ally of Jean-Yves Le Drian (Macron’s foreign affairs minister who was former socialist president François Hollande’s defence minister and reputedly popular among the armed forces), and who, like Le Drian, left the socialists to join Macron’s maverick centrist movement, said last week that he felt “outrage” over the cuts. “Either we guarantee our military the means for their missions and [the finance ministry] must be put in its place, or either we go about a retreat of French troops and we must take that on,” he wrote on his blog on July 12th. He paid tribute to de Villiers via Twitter (see below), declaring: “My general, I warmly address to you my consideration, gratitude and friendship. Our army is our pride!”

Another issue raised by the controversy is that of the rights of parliament. The crisis of confidence between Macron and de Villiers was prompted by remarks made by the general to a closed-door meeting of the National Assembly’s defence committee, and he is not believed to be behind the leaking of his comments. Macron’s furious reaction to them and his rebuke that “it is not dignified to raise certain debates in the public place” places in question his respect of parliament’s right to information, as underlined in a Tweet by former socialist justice minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas (see below) who wrote: “From this resignation of the chief-of-staff of the armed forces, one can take note that the head of state does not recognise parliament’s right to be informed.”

Meanwhile, the conservative Les Républicains party issued a statement saying it was “indignant about the manner in which the defence committee of the National Assembly was treated and considered in this very serious affair”, adding: “Parliament is sovereign. Speech there is free”.

Radical-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, took to his blog, in which he noted that while “the “duty of the military is to obey and serve […] in the precise case of the intervention of General Pierre de Villiers, chief-of-staff of the armed forces, the violence of the reprimand and its unnecessary humiliating nature prompt reflection […] his duty before the national representation [parliament] is to reply with frankness and sincerity to the representatives of the people. In such a context, one can’t rebuke him for saying what he thinks and what he believes is just about the situation of the armed forces.”

Government spokesman Christophe Castaner on Wednesday attempted to defuse the comments by claiming that the crisis was not prompted by the comments made by de Viliers to the parliamentary committee, referring to the general’s public comments made during the period of the presidential election campaign. Castaner’s suggestion however is undermined by the fact that, at the time, Macron never criticised de Villiers’ statements, and that he had just weeks ago prolonged the general’s post as head of the French army.

Macron, who chose to parade down the Champs-Elysées after his election in an army transporter, now faces the task of reassuring the military, from senior officers to servicemen on duty abroad, of his intentions, and to calm the clamour of criticism over his treatment of de Villiers from across the political spectrum. His first opportunity will come on Thursday, when he pays a visit to the airforce base in Istres, southern France, accompanied by the new chief-of-staff of the armed forces, François Lecointre, and newly-appointed defence minister Florence Parly.

-------------------------

The French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Graham Tearse