Setting the Tone
The 2013 French defence White Paper presents a strategic analysis and capability assessment that address the pressing concerns posed by austerity cuts to defence budgets, instability in Europe's neighbourhood, and US rebalancing towards the Asia-Pacific. It proposes ways in which France – and Europe – can remain strategically relevant in this changing environment. In doing so, argues Luis Simón, the White Paper provides a useful blueprint for the European Council meeting in December 2013.
Quel format d’armée pour la France ?
Avec les experiences multiples de l’apres-guerre froide, les appareils militaires des puissances voient reapparaitre la guerre limitee, et decouvrent l’asymetrie entre les protagonistes de ces guerres limitees. Pour le format futur de nos armees, il faut donc privilegier une logique d’emploi et une logique d’action, par opposition a de simples exigences de demonstration diplomatique. Des logiques qui doivent se traduire par un modele composite couvrant tout le spectre des engagements possibles a l’avenir.
Europe's strategic ambitions: the limits of ambiguity
By any measure, the European Union's efforts to forge a new European security and defence policy (ESDP) have made remarkable progress. The essentially intergovernmental nature of the project, which thereby is not a frontal challenge to state sovereignty, is one of the reasons for this progress. However, a certain studied imprecision about the eventual destination has also been essential. This is not an unusual feature of the European integration process, in which progress has often depended on defining practical objectives first, and deferring to a later stage the consideration of issues of principle and of implementation. However, the virtues of ambiguity are now reaching their limit: the force planners charged with fulfilling the 'headline goal' will need some guidance as to what the force is supposed to do; and the corresponding budget input will have to be defined.