Is Covid accelerating the eclipse of France and the UK as ‘great powers’? For over two centuries Paris and London have been seated at the top table in world affairs. The essential element of their power has been economic, allowing both states to maintain powerful defence budgets, pursue active foreign policies and in the last resort, to wage war.
Since 1945, although their power has in relative terms continued to decline, they have remained great power players as two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and as two of the five official nuclear powers able to project force to all regions of the globe by dint of nuclear armed navies, notably submarines. This continues to be possible as long as they remain the fifth and sixth largest world economies. But this weekend French official GDP figures showed a shocking 13.8 per cent contraction of the French economy in the second quarter of 2020 (Eurozone 12.1
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