Youth in France are lining up to join the military following the devastating Paris attacks Nov. 13, which resulted in 130 dead and 300 injured.
French President Francois Hollande declared that the attacks perpetrated by the Islamic State constituted an act of war and pledged that France’s response will be pitiless, Bloomberg reports.
Still, nothing about the attacks has prompted Hollande to reconsider allowing 30,000 more refugees into the country.
Widespread sentiment among youth is that something must be done to strike back against ISIS. Incidentally, the French government recently admitted that some of its soldiers had deserted to fight for ISIS. Some of the soldiers included special forces.
Daily applications to join have tripled from 500 to 1,500, though the French military acceptance rate stands at only about 10 percent. There are 15,000 open slots for the military in 2015 and 16,000 in 2016. Visitors to the French Air Force website have jumped from 2,000 a day to 20,000.
“It is a completely unprecedented phenomenon,” Col. Eric de Lepresle, head of marketing for Army recruitment, told Le Monde, a French newspaper.
Though France is in the middle of budget reductions, the recent incident has prompted Hollande to set cuts aside in favor of boosting security spending. While Hollande already dropped planned cuts following the Charlie Hebdo shootings earlier this year in January, on November 16, he froze personnel cuts through 2019.
This represents a reversal of a 25-year trend, in which defense spending fell by around 20 percent.
The 2015 military budget is $33.5 billion dollars, which is second highest in Europe after the United Kingdom.
France also launched Rafale jets from its aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle on Monday. The carrier is currently deployed to the eastern Mediterranean and has 26 fighters on board.
“We will intensify our strikes, choosing targets that will do the most damage possible to this army of terrorists,” Hollande said, according to AFP. Russia already has several ships in the region and has shared information with incoming French commanders.
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