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Defense Policy and Armed Forces

Description

As military competition increases, nations are adapting their defense policies and transforming their armed forces. Doctrine, organization, equipment and training are key to understanding the evolution of land, air and naval forces.

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Aircraft carriers sailing at sea (with fighter jets and helicopters, conducting exercises)
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Publications
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High-Intensity Warfare: What Challenges for the French Armed Forces?

Date de publication
12 July 2023
Accroche

The new French Military Programming Law for 2024-2030 resolutely commits the French armed forces to the path of high intensity. However, this term continues to be the subject of debate and confusion within the defense community. 

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After the success of its army in Mozambique, Rwanda expects economic rewards

11 July 2023
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Companies affiliated with the powerful Crystal Ventures holding company, the financial arm of Kigali's ruling party, are already present in Mozambique.

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France’s Place Within NATO: Toward a Strategic Aggiornamento?

Date de publication
27 June 2023
Accroche

With a rapidly deteriorating security environment, a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, internal disputes exploding into public view, and questions being raised about the scope of its security responsibilities, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) seemed to be in dire straits at the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

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Strategic Signaling: A Lever for France in the Competition Between Powers?

Date de publication
16 May 2023
Accroche

From the joint and combined Orion 2023 exercice to the deployment of Leclerc tanks in Romania, through the qualification fire of new missiles, the French armed forces conduct many manoeuvres and activities that are now described as falling under the "strategic signaling".

Jérémy BACHELIER Heloïse FAYET Alexandre JONNEKIN François RENAUD
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Imagining Beyond the Imaginary. The Use of Red Teaming and Serious Games in Anticipation and Foresight

Date de publication
30 March 2023
Accroche

The Red Team Defence demonstrates the Ministry of the Armed Forces' desire to appropriate new foresight tools. Thus, brain games or serious games aim to bypass the weight of the military hierarchy, the standardisation of thoughts and cognitive biases in order to avoid strategic unthinking.

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France's Macron Set For Four-nation Tour Of Africa

01 March 2023
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President Emmanuel Macron kicks off a tour of Central Africa on Wednesday in a diplomatic drive to test out a new "responsible relationship" with the continent as anti-French sentiment runs high in some former colonies

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France's strategic thinking in the Middle East is at a standstill

20 December 2022
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French President Emmanuel Macron was poised to arrive in Jordan for a two-day visit starting on Tuesday, December 20. French troops are deployed in the country as part of the Chammal military operation. Héloïse Fayet, a researcher with the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (French Institute of International Relations) who specializes in the armed forces present in the Middle East, told Le Monde that the terrorist threat in the region was almost eliminated. This, she said, should lead Paris to rethink its strategy. Ms. Fayet published a study in mid-November examining France's strategic posture in the Middle East.

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Self-defense Groups, the Pyromaniac Firefighters of Sahel

Date de publication
14 December 2022
Accroche

Since 2012, the proliferation of jihadist groups across the Sahel has monopolized the attention of the authorities.forced by the threats they represent and the weakening of their regal power, states are gradually withdrawing from their peripheral rural territories. As a result, populations have organized themselves to become local security providers.

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How Rwanda Became Africa’s Policeman

21 November 2022
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From Benin to Mozambique, President Paul Kagame is flexing his small country’s military muscle—and transforming the continent’s security landscape.

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What Strategic Posture Should France Adopt in the Middle East?

Date de publication
17 November 2022
Accroche

France has a historical presence in the Middle East, where it has many interests to defend: the fight against terrorism, the promotion of the arms industry, the dissemination of humanitarian values, etc. To this end, it has a number of resources at its disposal, notably military: French forces are deployed in Iraq, Syria and Jordan as part of Operation Chammal, in Lebanon for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), and in the United Arab Emirates.

Helicopter Warfare: The Future of Airmobility and Rotary Wing Combat.

Date de publication
06 February 2012
Accroche

Military helicopters have evolved into technologically sophisticated weapon systems. Originally designed to counter Soviet armor, attack helicopters now have to cope with a wide spectrum of threats, some of them bringing them back to their counterinsurgency roots.

Digital Hoplites: Infantry Combat in the Information Age

Date de publication
29 December 2011
Accroche

FELIN, the world's first "integrated soldier system", will enter service in the French Army this year. Throughout history, infantrymen have sought to capitalize on technology while seeking the best compromise between three basic requirements: mobility, firepower and protection of combatants.

Toward the End of Force Projection? II. Operational Responses and Political Perspectives

Date de publication
29 September 2011
Accroche

For more than a decade, US defense circles have been concerned about the emergence of capabilities and strategies, which, as they spread, risk imperiling the United States" position in the world by their ability to disrupt or prevent force projection operations. Though most of the literature on such “anti-access” strategies focuses on the military aspects of the threat, this Focus stratégique - the second and last part of a two-part study - adopts a different perspective.

East Asian Regional Economic Integration: A Post-Crisis Update

Date de publication
09 September 2011
Accroche

To the surprise of many analysts, the outbreak of the global financial crisis (GFC) in 2008 did not leave East Asian economies unscathed. The objective of the paper is to examine the implications of the GFC for the regional economic integration process in East Asia, taking into account both the de facto and the de jure dimensions.

Toward the End of Force Projection? I. The Anti-Access Threat

Date de publication
13 July 2011
Accroche

Force projection has become a general posture and a fundamental dimension of the influence Western powers intend to exert over the world by means of their armed forces.

Economic Constraint and Ukraine's Security Policy

Date de publication
27 May 2011
Accroche

Since winning the 2010 presidential elections in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych has worked hard to repair Kyiv's relationship with Moscow.

Dominic FEAN

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