Topic:
Country: France
Delegate Name: Krishna Mano
United Nations Disarmament & International Security Committee
Reduction of Military Budgets
France
Krishna Mano
City High Middle School
When used properly, the militaries of our world have brought safety and security to the world. In the status quo, the French military and similar capabilities of our military partners serve to protect those who need support in the tense global arena. When our political and economic allies don’t receive the support they need, the hostile environment we live in today is only exacerbated at a much larger magnitude. France strongly affirms that a reduction in military budgets will only destruct our relations with foreign nations and, therefore, we do not favor any strict regulations of such budget cuts. We also urge our fellow members of this committee to join our standpoint and consider the grave global repercussions of a reduction of military budgets.
As a founding member and key player of many multilateral alliances including the United Nations (UN), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and European Union (EU), France finds it of utmost importance to help protect our allies from any aggression they may face in order to ensure a safe, peaceful, and sustainable future. We have taken it into our own hands to further our policy of strengthening our own military capabilities and those of our allies so that we can eventually reach a safe and secure world in which these militaries are not necessary at the levels they are at now. The United Nations’ Charter of 1945, a founding document that France contributed to alongside various other nations, consistently agrees with this message. For example, Article 1 of the Charter states that the main purpose of the UN is to “maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace”. France has also joined multiple treaties and alliances with other nations to further these goals for a peaceful and safe future including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), through which we have provided our allies with military funding, weaponry, and training as they face times of conflict and uncertainty. Furthermore, we launched the Alliance for Multilateralism in 2019 alongside Germany with the mission of understanding how military capabilities can impact nations in not just a pure, militaristic standpoint, but also have a substantial effect on other aspects of their diplomatic pursuits. More recently, in July of 2023, French President Emmanuel Macron successfully lobbied our Parliament for an increase in military spending, amounting to a total of 413 billion euros (or 450 billion United States dollars), the most significant boost in our budget in half a century. This money was specifically geared towards implementing a revolutionary project to modernize the French military with an updated nuclear arsenal, effective intelligence collection efforts, and more remote-controlled weapons.
Although France has clearly expressed the importance of continuing to ensure a secure future with substantial government spending, we have made it clear that we support addressing any concerns relating to the level of transparency of what these national military budgets would include. We, like many others, value peace, but ask all delegates to consider the fact that it is necessary to maintain strong levels of military spending in order to uphold the security of our allied countries during these times of increasing hostility with foreign adversaries. We seek to work with the committee to form a solution that makes clear that the safety of our citizens and our allies are prioritized above all else.
