The French have a reputation for aggressive intelligence operations to support their economic and industrial needs. They are acting in their own interests, as Charles de Gaulle said, “The French do not have friends. We French have interests.” . Their actions have a historical precedent as you can see from some of the previous articles about the French during the Industrial Revolution. A review of recent history further explains the French approach to Competitive Intelligence.
The French suffered through inept and vain monarchs, emperors, craven governments, and war after war. In 1870, the Germans invaded. Then they did it again in 1914. This horror revisited the French in 1940.
After WWII, France looked like an exhausted, depleted version of itself. Paris was empty of vehicles. Electrical service in most homes was a mere 3 amperes. Indoor plumbing and bathtubs were rare luxuries.
After the war, France dusted-off Colbert’s dirigisme, [a term derived from French word diriger (to direct)], and with work, education, and determination, they rebuilt the nation. Colbert, the Minister of Finance under King Louis XIV, first instituted dirigisme. This is “sponsored capitalism” where government exerts a strong directive influence and sponsors industries with the best prospects. After WWII, this policy strove to strike a balance between the laissez les faire of the American system and the command economy of the communists.
After WWII, the French government encouraged the formation of large industry groups backed by government capital to correct the fragmented nature of their economy. Dirigisme also brought about the École Nationale d’Adminstration to supply high-level government leaders and administrators. The École Polytechnique and École Nationale Supércure des Mines de Paris produced industry leaders and engineers. The École de Guerre Économique is an extension of this state-sponsored method of training skilled leaders.
The 30 glorious years (1945 - 1975) after the war showed the world what the French were made of. In spite of François Mitterrand, the socialist President of France from 1981 to 1995, by 1990 France boasted one of the world’s highest standards of living, surpassing the UK by almost 25%.
The Mitterrand’s socialist government tried to implement more state control. However, after 1983, Mitterrand abandoned dirigisme due to poor performance under his socialist regime, and successive governments have not attempted to resurrect it. The spell had been broken. Even so, many of the traits of this policy remain, as do the personal and business connections it spawned.
Today, the use of national intelligence assets to support economic objectives continues to be part of the French economic and business landscapes. Jean-Marie BANTHOUS stated in Understanding intelligence across cultures, in International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Volume 7, Issue 3 Autumn 1994 , pages 275 - 311; “The French business intelligence system faces few pressures from lawmakers or from constituents: the wide popular consensus is that in matters of intelligence, morals and ethics do not apply. French companies do not maintain codes of ethics, perceiving them as an irrelevant Anglo-Saxon concept.”
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