Plans for UK-France defense alliance driven by new strategic realities

Traditionally and historically, in most spheres, Britain and France have been fierce rivals for centuries.

Necessity, however, is the mother of invention and as the world changes and the state of global security continues to remain in flux, these unlikely partners are considering facing the contemporary demands of asymmetrical warfare and the shadowy threat of terrorism together.

High-level meetings between senior figures in the British and French defense establishments over the past few months have begun to lay the foundations of what could be a new defense alliance between the European Union's two major military powers.

This possible collaboration between the EU's only nuclear powers - and its only members with permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council - is a strong indication that European attitudes toward alliances, joint security and defense spending are being forced to change by external factors.

Budgetary pressures pushing UK, France together

One of the most pressing issues driving this possible defense alliance is the effect that significant budgetary pressures are having on British and French military spending.

Two simultaneous wars have drained the UK's coffers

Britain and France are the only EU member states who spend more than 2 percent of their national income on defense. But this is unlikely to remain the case for much longer.

Britain has been involved heavily in two major conflicts in that last decade - Iraq and Afghanistan - both of which have gone on for longer than expected. The state of military funding in the UK cannot go on at its current rate and it is expected that whoever wins the general election penciled in for May will slash the defense budget by up to 15 percent over the next six years.

France has been forced into a similar move with the government recently agreeing to a miniscule 1 percent-a-year budget increase for defense between 2012 and 2025.

"France and Britain are being pushed together by a number of challenges, one of them being military budgetary needs," Anthony Seaboyer, a European and Transatlantic security expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, told Deutsche Welle. "The financial crisis has lead to a clear focus on other issues. Other budgetary needs appear to be far more pressing."

"The lack of comparable terrorist attacks to September 11 over the past nine years shows that either what has been done was effective enough or the threat of international terrorism is simply lower than originally assumed. Both perceptions allow the conclusion to focus spending on other issues. Given these developments, the willingness to save money through cooperation has increased."

The move toward this entente nouvelle is also being driven by the changing relationship between Europe - specifically Britain - and the United States.

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