NATO will soon take control of the flagship of the French fleet. The aircraft carrier Charles-de-Gaulle will come under the operational control of the Atlantic Alliance for the first time for a 15-day mission in the Mediterranean, a symbol of Paris’s reinforced commitment to the politico-military organization facing to Russia. This mission bringing together ships from several nations (United States, Greece, Spain, Portugal) will take place from April 26 to May 10 under the command of the StrikforNato maritime staff, comprising fifteen nations including France, and led by an American vice admiral, the Joint Chiefs of Staff announced Thursday.
“This is the first time that the nuclear aircraft carrier Charles-de-Gaulle and its entire escort, including a nuclear attack submarine, have been placed under the operational control of NATO for 15 days,” underlines French Vice-Admiral Didier Maleterre, number two in NATO’s maritime command. But “at any time we can recover the mandate, and in a snap of the fingers recover the national command during operations if necessary”, specifies the senior officer.
Formerly seen as a difficult ally, still the subject of mistrust in Brussels, France has reinvested in NATO since the return of the Russian threat, in parallel with its military disengagement in Africa. A founding member of the organization created in 1949 to face the Soviet threat, she left the integrated military command in 1966, under the leadership of General de Gaulle, due to disagreements with the United States. She returned there in 2009, without however joining the Alliance’s nuclear plans group.
The Charles-de-Gaulle, with its Rafale Marine fighter jets on board, will resume operations at the end of April after eight months of work. Escorted by a nuclear attack submarine, specialized frigates and a supply ship – all constituting the French “carrier group” – it has already participated in NATO exercises and operations but always under national control. The mission will allow France “to fall into line by putting itself on the same level as our allies. We will also learn a lot,” said the commander of the French naval air group, Rear Admiral Jacques Mallard.
“Message to the Russians”
It “is a message to the Russians. Faced with the growing threat, being collectively effective takes precedence,” comments Pascal Ausseur, Director General of the Mediterranean Foundation for Strategic Studies. The message is also aimed at the other nations of the Atlantic Alliance, once critical of French support for kyiv, which they considered too light following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. But France has recently multiplied strong declarations towards Moscow, its president Emmanuel Macron having notably called in mid-March for a “defeat of Russia”.
“There is a fairly significant turning point in the French approach. In Brussels, the allies are watching all this very closely, and the more concrete gestures like this there are, the stronger their perception of a credible French change will be,” underlines Robert Pszczel, former NATO official and researcher. at the Center for Eastern studies. This mission “reflects our shared commitment to strengthen cooperation and ensure interoperability in a difficult security environment,” said NATO spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah.
Since the return of the Russian threat, France has deployed more than 1,500 men to the border of Ukraine, in Romania, where it has taken on the role of NATO framework nation. In France, several political parties are opposed to the presence within the integrated NATO command. But the president of the National Rally (RN, far right), the main opposition force, recently qualified his position by affirming that there was no question of leaving it, as long as the war in Ukraine was in progress.
In response to the war in Ukraine, NATO significantly increased its maritime presence in Europe. The United States placed one of its aircraft carriers under NATO operational control in 2022, for the first time since the Cold War, while the British did so in 2023, also a first for them before France , according to NATO.