The year 2022 marks thirty years since the creation of the Commandement des operations spéciales (COS, Special Operations Command). Those three decades have been dominated by missions carried out in volatile environments, most often against irregular adversaries, primarily terrorist groups.
Security and Defense
The relative simplicity of the Cold War has given way to a series of crises and conflicts involving heterogeneous actors and unpredictable situations. Today, security studies require an integrated approach that takes into account both regional and global dimensions, as well as political trends (coalitions, pressure from the media, strategic rivalries and limited wars) and military dynamics (nuclear and conventional capabilities, reduced force structures, types and methods of intervention).
Since the 1990s, Ifri’s Security Studies Center has stimulated debate and contributed to the improvement of strategic thinking in France through its conferences and widely read publications (in French and English). The Center also works on behalf of public and private policymakers through briefs and closed-door seminars.
Ifri's Security Studies Center analyzes traditional defense issues as well as the evolution of the broader field of security. The Center’s programs are designed to be enduring and cross disciplinary, and are conducted with the help of other Ifri research units. Through its innovative work, the Center has two objectives: influencing a wide public with its publications – in particular its two electronic paper series “Focus stratégique” and “Proliferation Papers” – and making recommendations to all the actors involved in public security. Accordingly, various reports and projects are realized on behalf of the Ministries of Defense, the Interior and Foreign Affairs.
Research Fellow, Director of Ifri's Security Studies Center
...Military Fellow, Security Studies Center
...Research Fellow, Security Studies Center
...Research Fellow, Head of the Defense Research Unit - LRD, Security Studies Center
...Research Fellow, Security Studies Center
...Research Fellow, Head of European and Transatlantic Security Program, Security Studies Center
...Deputy Director of Ifri, Editor-in-Chief of Politique étrangère, and research fellow at the Security Studies Center
...Military fellow within the Defense Research Unit of IfriI’s Center for Security Studies.
...Associate Research Fellow, Security Studies Center
...Advisor, Security Studies Center
...Associate Research Fellow, Security Studies Center
...Cloud computing – or data management – is considered as one of the pillars of the digital transformation of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces.
In the summer of 2020, the Central and Eastern Mediterranean became the center of unusual tensions between France and Turkey. Given that these tensions were also military, which is uncommon for the two countries, the perception that the French military has of Turkey’s army and its doctrine is...
The increasing autonomy and digitization of battlefields implies a re-examination of Man Machine Teaming (MMT). While Artificial Intelligence (AI) has significant benefits, the human cognitive system remains unique until this day. Nonetheless, as demonstrated by the “centaur” approach, man...
Twenty years after 9/11, the assessment of the “War on Terror” is mixed: heavy financial and human costs, weakening of Al-Qaeda central and the Islamic State in the Levant, but creation of affiliates in different locations, fatigue of endless wars, etc.
As an essential platform for multilateralism, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has always been important to German diplomacy, although in varying degrees. Historically, Germany’s support for the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe...
Hypersonic Weapons: What Are the Challenges for the Armed Forces? Briefings de l'Ifri, June 18, 2021
Hypersonic systems are becoming attributes of power for the states that design and implement them, at the risk of reviving an arms race.
La Guerre de vingt ans was awarded the Prize for the best book on geopolitics in 2021.
What does future hold for the Franco-British defense partnership after Brexit?
In Germany's parliamentary democracy, political parties play an important role in mandating Bundeswehr missions abroad and in overseeing their deployment. The political debate on these deployments is polarized between opponents, who are called “pacifists”, and supporters, who are called ...
Robert Litwak is the Vice President for Scholars and Director of International Security Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker’s call for an EU army has been widely dismissed by defence experts. At a time, when several European countries are failing to meet their NATO defence spending commitments, many question how an EU army could be feasible. The former prime...
The speakers from the Annual Conference on the United States summarize their talks in short videos. Here, Frédérick Douzet discusses the "cyber" element of American power.
For the past two years, French experts on terrorism have felt anxious. They often emphasized: “The question is not whether France will be targeted by a terrorist attack, but when.” The dreaded attack took place on January 7th, 2015. That evening, various speakers across the...
The speakers from the Annual Conference on the United States summarize their talks in short videos. Here, Jeff Mankoff analyzes the strategies put in place by the United States with hopes of containing the situation in Ukraine.
Patrick Keller (Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung) and Christopher S. Chivvis (RAND International Security and Defense Policy Center) participated in the seminar “Germany, France and the United States: Towards a Renewed Transatlantic Dialog?” which took place on November 17 and 18,...
Il y aura un avant et un après. En Ukraine, en Russie, dans toute l’Europe, ailleurs.
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