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Has the French system delivered excellence? The nuclear power switchover, that was done well. High speed rail and infrastructure buildout, that was done well. The glorious years. But that's in the past.
What has the French system delivered more recently? Not joining the Iraq War, that's about it.
France has serious demographic and terror issues. There are troops constantly patrolling Paris with machine guns. This is not a sign of a well-managed society. The French economy is extremely indebted and lacks dynamism. Where is France in AI? Mistral is on the level of a single second-rate Chinese AI firm. Where is France in aerospace? The Rafale is at or below the level of China's export-grade 4th gen light fighters with export-grade missiles, as seen with India and Pakistan. France doesn't do 'export-grade', that's the best they've got.
Where is France in semiconductors? Nothing of great significance. French cars? Second-rate at best. Heavy industry and machine tools? That's Germany's department, France is behind Spain.
Only Airbus really stands out as top-tier performance. And Louis Vuitton I suppose (handbags do not matter). French nuclear power has slipped, skills have been lost and costs have soared.
French elites could have chosen to focus on uniting Europe, creating a power-bloc to rival America and China. Yet they constantly leave pan-European projects like the Eurofighter, they're arrogant and uncooperative. Instead they've focused on bringing in low-performance Africans and raising taxes punishingly high, crippling economic development. France has seriously ugly problems with pensions and spending because of the inadequacy of its leaders, the ethos and approach and ends they pursue. There's no issue with the French people, they've shown excellent abilities throughout history.
American governance can and is constantly faceplanting and they'll still be doing better than France or Britain. The US can make terrible decisions with terrible consequences but retain the core wealth-generating machine of their society, their huge technological base and be fine. The US also has all kinds of serious self-inflicted demographic problems too. But if you build and maintain the wealth machine then these are all manageable.
There's a fallacy where people see smart people running country A and dumb people running country B and assume that country A is better run. That need not be the case! Smart people can do tremendous damage to a country, as can the stupid. Well-ordered, mature, serious legal institutions with all this beautiful jurisprudence and meticulously educated officials executing well-formulated plans can absolutely crush and wreck a country like France. They'll just do it in an orderly, mature, serious, sophisticated way.
Having smart people running the country isn't at all necessary and may even be undesirable on average. Occasionally you get a Lee Quan Yew or a De Gaulle. But you might also get a skilful, cunning, sophisticated wrecker like Blair or Macron. Better an intellectually mediocre leader who sincerely loves his country than a 160 IQ genius who went to the very best schools, if he is in love with some grand ideological scheme, foreign power, personal profit or whatever else.
Regarding French aerospace: Ariane and Airbus are largely French. They're nominally "European" but in a very French dominated way.
I take your other points, but the French are capable at aerospace and military production. They're the example of a non-feeble European nation.
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It bears mentioning that the French have chewed up and spit out three dynasties, two emperors, four republics and fifteen constitutions so far. On one hand, I think this explains many things about both the ENA and your points as well. It also means that the French have the innate ability to politically regenerate themselves from time to time.
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