Ethnocentric vs. Regiocentric Consolidation in the Aerospace and

charted its own foreign and security policy, engaged in the 1956 Suez adventure, established its
independent “force de frappe” nuclear deterrent (ironically with US technological support) and
pulled out of NATO’s Integrated Military Structure (IMS) in 1966. 114 In the post-Cold War era,
French President Chirac became not only the chief proponent of the EU’s autonomous ESDP; he
also seized on the controversial 2003 Iraq War to forge a Paris-Berlin-Moscow-Beijing coalition in
an effort to counter the perceived unilateral exercise of American military power and Washington’s
blatant disregard for international law, including the primacy of the UNSC. 115 Apart from
geopolitical rivalries between Paris and Washington, Franco-American / transatlantic A&D
industrial collaboration has also been hampered by different approaches to export controls, raising
US concerns that American state-of-the-art defence / dual-use technologies shared with France or
other mainlined European countries could ultimately find their way to US adversaries around the
world. 116 Ultimately, mutual trust and a perceived congruence of foreign and security policy
objectives as well as the strategies to achieve them are they key reasons why America’s defence
industrial collaboration with the UK is so much closer than with any other European country.
Before the creation of EADS and BAE Systems, DASA and BAe had been in advanced
negotiations about a potential merger. For DASA, the option to join forces with BAe – also
privately owned – was much more attractive than to merge with AM, a company controlled and
partly owned by the French state. It is important to emphasise France’s state-centred A&D
industrial structure and management strategy. A 1992 report commissioned by the US Congress put
it bluntly:
“Nearly four-fifths of the French defence industry is owned directly or indirectly by the
state, either in the form of government-owned and operated arsenals, nationalised
companies […] or firms in which the government owns a large share of the stock […]. 117
The DGA (Délégation Générale pour l’Armement) has long served as the French government’s
main vehicle to shape and structure the country’s defence industrial base. 118 As a centralised
is a permanent member. Such a role will not only strengthen international law, but also confirm France’s great power
status.” van Herpen (2003)
114
“In France there exists a certain nostalgia for the Cold War era. In this period the world was not ideal, because not
multi-polar, but its bipolarity offered (Gaullist) France a relative independence vis-à-vis both superpowers.” Ibid.
115
The 2007 election of President Sarkozy dramatically improved French-American relations as exemplified by
France’s reintegration into NATO’s IMS in 2009.
116
For example, during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), France alone accounted for about 20 percent of Saddam
Hussein’s major weapon systems imports. While these strategically-motivated arms exports were authorised by the
highest political authorities in Paris, they subsequently came back to haunt France (and its Western allies such as the
US) in the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait. During “Operation Desert Storm”, France’s Mirage fighter jets had to stay out
of combat because of concerns that they might be confused with Iraq’s French-built Mirage fighters. OTA (1992)
117
Ibid.
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