Once upon a time, Britain and France ruled half the world between them. Now, they’re barking away at each other in the English Channel – or “La Manche” – over post-Brexit fishing rights off the coast of Jersey.
After around 80 French fishing boats gathered off the island to protest restrictions imposed on them by the Brexit deal, and France threatened to cut off Jersey’s electricity supply, two British Navy boats were sent in, followed by two French patrol vessels. As of Friday, everybody seems to have relaxed a bit and conflict has been averted. But what if it hadn’t been?
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To find out a bit more about the military capabilities of these two fallen giants, I spoke to military expert Nick Watts, deputy director of the UK Defence Forum, who was keen to point out that he was speaking in a purely personal capacity and didn’t want to alarm anyone about the prospect of The Hundred Years War, Part Two: This Time It’s About Fish.
VICE: The French have said they were responding to Royal Navy gunboats arriving in Jersey. This is all quite reminiscent of the Napoleonic age – is it all symbolic?
Nick Watts: It’s mostly diplomatic posturing. It’s down to politics and it’s down to personalities. Emmanuel Macron is running for re-election next year. He wants to be seen to be strong. Boris Johnson, now that we have “Global Britain”, wants to be seen to be strong. The politics and the personalities are colliding over a matter that ought to be addressed diplomatically.
To move into more fanciful territory: two NATO allies go to war, how does the North Atlantic alliance respond?
Don’t forget there are several disputes around NATO, particularly Greece and Turkey, which is long running and has nearly resulted in war several times. Usually it’s the big beasts, the Americans, who come in and say, “Look guys, just calm down, stop it.” And everybody sort of says, “Alright then.”
Given we have a new US regime, and Great Britain in particular is trying to make nice to them, the US is in a good position to tell everyone to calm down. Britain is also hosting the G7, so there’s a diplomatic forum for us all to be talking. There might be an exchange of gunfire between the gunboats, but they’ll go through all sorts of protocols – warning each other, firing blank shots and all that good stuff. Then it’s really a question of who blinks first.
In situations like this, it is possible for wires to be crossed, isn’t it? Shots can be fired…
Yes, they can be. It’s not the military who start wars, it’s politicians, so the politicians would have to escalate and the military would have to do what they are told. So if there was any local shooting, the politicians would very quickly have to say, “We don’t want to do this, let’s get round the table.”
These two allies – who, historically, have been at each other’s throats – who has the bigger military these days?
Both militaries are of a similar size, but are adapting their force structures to respond to changes in technology. The UK has chosen to reduce some capability now, to fund investment in ships and its air force. There could be some gaps in the force needed right now, though.
It also depends on what you call local superiority. If you think of the geography, France is closer to Jersey than we are, so they have the possibility of gathering forces in the Cotentin Peninsula. Britain would have to send forces from mainland UK. So France could quickly assemble a local superiority, and they can fly aircraft over quite quickly. It could be a Falklands situation, where France does something and Britain has to retrieve the situation.
What are some of the relative advantages and disadvantages for the two forces?
The French have more surface vessels than the Brits, and they have more fast jets, so they’ve got the slight edge in terms of numbers, for all the UK’s expenditure. They’ve got the numerical superiority, but of course we are cleverer than they are.
Is that just you editorialising, or is there a reason for you saying that?
In terms of absolute numbers, we just announced cuts in our air force, and we’ve announced cuts in our helicopter force, and we’ve announced cuts in our army. That’s at odds with the way the French are going – they are increasing their forces, certainly their armoured forces. It could be an interesting quandary for the Ministry of Defence.
Again, it’s reminiscent of the Falklands. We announced we were going to withdraw our patrol ships and the Argentines took advantage. The paradox is that we’re announcing a slightly larger Navy, but we haven’t built it yet, so the absolute numbers are in favour of the French in the short-term, and in the longer term they are probably about equal. Right now, the French could take advantage if they wanted to.
Jersey is the focal point here. Where does that fighting happen at the beginning?
Initially, it would be air and sea. Again, the French have the local advantage, because basically it’s their backdoor. In terms of invading, you would always go for the airport, because that’s the way you can fly in your follow up forces. If the French wanted to do a quick surprise attack, they would fly into the airport and we would have to do something to retake the island, and that would involve a mixture of marines and airborne forces. Then we would get heavier forces on land through our amphibious capability.
Which military outfit – France or Britain – is the most sophisticated?
We would say we are, because we’ve got more operational experience. The amphibious forces are very good. The French are operating in the Sahel, but British marines have got operational experience in Afghanistan. They are in the process of restructuring themselves, so they might be able to deploy at short notice.
Again, being British, I would say we’ve got a better edge in terms of fighting ability, if it comes to that. We just fight differently. I don’t want to get into the details. But when I say we’re cleverer, we are more sophisticated than the French are, because they just believe in sort of kicking the door in and smacking everybody, whereas we come through the window and skewer you while you’re still sleeping.
What would a naval battle between these two forces look like today?
It would be long range missiles and they would be using the same sort of equipment, because it’s made by the same company, MBDA, which is a Franco-British-German company! They’ve got aircraft, we’ve got aircraft, and the forces would be using a lot of electronic warfare to spook each other’s radars.
Britain has nuclear-powered submarines. Do the French as well?
Yes, they do. I mean, we are quite similar in our force structure – nuclear just means nuclear-powered, it doesn’t mean they have nuclear weapons. We both have ballistic missile submarines. We cooperate quite a lot. We have a Combined Joint Task Force. It would be torpedoes against ships, not nuclear rockets.
A lot of British air bases are in the east of the country – is that any use for the Channel Islands?
They are facing the wrong way. I mean, we’re looking towards the north and the east for the Russians to come down the North Sea, they’re not looking for the French. The stations down in the south-west have been closed.
So the British are still set up for a Cold War scenario with Russia?
We haven’t really changed that much. We have an air station in Scotland. Not much in the north. Nothing facing the west or southwest.
Could you perhaps hazard a guess as to how a putative Battle of Jersey would end up?
Well, I think it would be a small-scale replay of the Falklands, because if the French seized sovereign territory, we’d have to seize it back, and it just might be it gets to a point where both sides agree that this is stupid and the French withdraw, so I think the British would win diplomatically and militarily.
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