Unpopular opinion. France is going to go into decline.

Most of you will be wondering, but anon, we all hate France and want it to collapse, so how is this an unpopular opinion. To which I respond, the failure of France as a nation state is an unpopular opinion due to it being considered a strong great power in geopolitical circles, where some players even believe that France will one day overtake Germany, and lead the EU, or at the very least lead the fully formed EU army when the time comes. To all of which I say. Bullshit.

There are many reasons as to why France is today considered to be one of the most viable, healthy, and strongest economies and territories within Europe. Let us take a look at these reasons and why they will never lead to France surpassing Germany below:

1 ) France has one of the highest GDP's in Europe and is still growing - France has managed to surpass its GDP peak in 2008 and come out with a 3.13 GDP which is continuing to grow. It is also the third biggest economy in Europe and the second biggest economy in the EU, which obviously makes it a major player. This is the simplest reason for why people believe that France has a bright future ahead of it.

Downside - France's GDP has continued to grow at a rate slower than that of the UK which pretty much signifies that France is stuck in place and can either remain at its current level or fall further down, but never improve and rise above any further.

2 ) France has the strongest military presence outside Europe and the most military experience - France has had many military adventures in Africa with many nation states in Africa still trading using the CFA Franc, which is pegged against the Euro with the backing of the French treasury. The amount of French military involvement in places outside Europe in current times makes it the most well experiences military in the world.

Downside - There has been an ever increasing push coming from the African nation states to further themselves from French involvement and activity on their soil. Over time French influence in Africa has been continually on the decline. The French military while more well experienced is still not big enough to be able to defend or train the EU military all by themselves and so only a collective EU military remains relevant to the military strength issue of the different nation states in the EU. Places like Germany have too begun to prefer purchasing American equipment over French military equipment, which further shows how far devalued French military tech is in any place where American military tech is an option.

3 ) France has the healthiest population growth rate in Europe - France has managed to maintain a consistent 1.8 and above fertility rate for decades while the fertility of the rest of Europe has continued to move down over time. While German population growth rate continues to show signs of stopping the moment there are no mass immigration waves into Europe, France itself continues to keep growing in population at a healthy rate with current levels of immigration and higher than average birth rates for the region.

Downside - While France has some of the best demographics in the EU out of all the nation states in the area, France remains behind Germany when it comes to being the largest population country in the region. France's population growth rate has also continued to go down glacially over time and is now just 0.3% and falling about 0.1% per decade, which makes it impossible for France to ever overtake Germany in terms of total numbers unless Germany has a mass depopulation event occur. Another downside is that Germany generally gets the best quality of immigrants that move to the EU, so France will always be getting second pickings when it comes to immigrants within the region. French romanticism, which often led to people wanting to be French in the future, has also died down over time, with people losing faith in the idea of the romantic French landscape. France is in this manner in a position where it can never demographically surpass Germany.

4 ) France has the strongest social identity out of all the nation states to be found in Europe - In France the government says there is no black or white or brown people. There are only Frenchmen and they are those people who are French citizens. France places a very high weight on French culture over French genetics and have continued to maintain a very strong sense of French identity. This gives France power in the sense of holding all the people together as Frenchmen holding up their country.

Downside - The French identity is pretty much useless in the modern era beyond stopping minority communities from forming ghettos and from external cultural influences changing French society. That is only useful to defend against the refugee wave crisis that Europe suffered from. Beyond that it acts as a disadvantage as the French people have frozen their lifestyles and ways of thinking in time, making it impossible for them to evolve and adapt at rates anywhere close to the US, China, or India, to a changing world order.

The strong French identity has also led to a French ego that more often than not bites them in the foot as the French end up hating one another, and become very protectionist when it comes to their businesses which stifles any competition from abroad and from within. The moment a better cheese is made outside France they ban it or label it not real cheese. The moment a better wine is created they label the wine not real high quality wine from the right place or made in the right way. The French have in this way created a protectionist system where the businesses can do nothing else but decline over time. Similar to what happened to French military exports which fell behind in quality over time as the US military tech kept advancing and they could offer better product when competing for weapons sales against the French.

Even the German economic system is nowhere as protectionist as the French one and they are drowning in bureaucracy.

The above reasons is why France is never going to surpass Germany and take over reign of the EU.

Will France fall into decline though?

Absolutely. One of the key challenges facing the west today is that of dealing with immigrants and France continues to suffer from ever lowering immigration rates as nobody wants to become a Frenchman in the 21st century. As France continues to show an inability to evolve and adapt, it is a given that between the declining population growth rate, and being out competed in he international market by pretty much everybody else, that France will fall into a very slow decline where France does not die out because everybody left, but because nobody outside of France sees any benefit in embracing French culture. As they continue to get pushed out of Africa, France has becoming an irrelevant middling power to look forward to, similar to Russia and the UK.

Conclusion:

It doesn't matter what the geopolitical experts say, France is going to go down like Italy and Spain, just later down the line, with Germany as the final leader of the EU.