Vincent Hervouet 7:23 a.m., March 15, 2022

Every morning, Vincent Hervouët gives us his view of international news.

This Tuesday, he returns to Germany's preference for American rather than French fighter planes.

Germany decided to buy F-35, the American fighter plane.

35 aircraft will be ordered as well as 15 Eurofighters.

19 days ago, the forceful entry of Russian armor into Ukraine brought Germany out of its slumber.

Fear took away the old reluctance to arm themselves, 70 years of shameful pacifism were suddenly swept away.

Vladimir Putin will have succeeded in bringing about this mental revolution.

He reunited NATO and resuscitated Germany with his spiked helmet.

Chancellor Scholz took out his checkbook, promised to devote 2% of GDP to defense and put a hundred billion on the table.

And as war rings at the door, he rushed to buy off the shelf the best American aircraft, the one that gives him the best guarantee, the F-35 from Lookheed Martin.

The Italians, the Poles, the Dutch, the Norwegians, the Swiss, without forgetting the British, have already chosen the apparatus and the assurance offered by NATO.

The choice of Germany risks precipitating that of the Czechs and Greeks.

We look at the list and we think that Europe is stealing from America.

That the war in Ukraine establishes American domination over Europe.

Down-to-earth minds say the F35 spends most of its time grounded and expensive to maintain.

A financial and military disaster but a commercial triumph.

But that is its least flaw.

The French especially fear that with the F-35s, Germany will bury the European combat aircraft project, the Scaf…

Scaf as the air combat system of the future… With this, Europe will be ready for war in 2045. The project was launched with great fanfare ten years ago.

Initially, with the British.

Brexit shot it down in midair.

The Germans and Spaniards took over, but the project quickly bogged down.

Why ?

Because of the quarrels between Dassault, in charge of the project management and Airbus.

Engineers put genius into their quarrels.

The French who protect their industrial secrets have come to wonder if the Germans really wanted to build this plane or if these tricksters were using it only to obtain technology transfers.

In other words, to make up for the delay they have accumulated since the war, since the Messerschmitts,

the Stukas and V2s were grounded and their inventors pilloried.

At the end of February, when the drums of war were already resounding on the borders of Donbass, the new Chancellor Olaf Scholz claimed that this European combat aircraft project was an absolute priority, even if it was not even mentioned in the contract. coalition with environmentalists.

It's been three weeks, it's like it's been three centuries.

Yesterday was the right day to put down the masks...

Germany will provide itself with the F-35 and even if it says the opposite, this plane, the only one approved by Washington to transport the nuclear bombs of the NATO deterrent force stored in Germany, will duplicate the Scaf.

It is the last nail in the coffin of the European combat aircraft.

Germany can always be blamed for imposing its short-sighted whims on its European neighbors, be it the refusal of all debt yesterday, Russian gas and coal today and the F-35s tomorrow.

Basically, the inconvenient truth is elsewhere.

The Europe of the 1960s united France, strong in its deterrence and its place on the Security Council, with Germany, which weighed heavily economically but remained a political dwarf.

Reunification has upset this balance.

And in the future,