The beginning of 2024 has been marked by international tension. The number of crises is increasing, along with the risk of escalation or spread. Such a point in time calls for reflection: How can we take action while adapting the military to the missions of tomorrow? As the chief of the Army Staff, my aim is for the power demonstrated by our forces to influence trends, to help resolve conflicts and create solidarity, and to deter attacks against France, its people, territory and interests.
Let's take a look at the world from a clinical perspective. Several decades of peace, punctuated by limited deployments of expeditionary forces on crisis management missions, have led Western societies to underestimate the reality of the balance and drive of power. The wars unfolding before our eyes prompt us to question the hope that was also an ambition since the end of the Cold War: marginalizing war to the point of outlawing it, focusing armies on crisis management and putting violence to the side. The project of a world order based on the sovereignty of states, international law and settlement of disputes through negotiation is being presented as conditional and Western, or even defeated. Contrary to the peaceful aspirations of European countries, the conflicts taking hold at the edges of our continent bear witness not so much to the return of war as to its permanence as an accepted mode of conflict resolution. This is an observation that we must share with our fellow citizens.
Conflict analysis is rich in lessons. On the ground, the return of warlike violence mirrors the weakening of international rules. This warlike violence is changing with technological development. The fantasy of a modern war fought entirely at a distance, thanks to new technologies, has dissipated. New forms of conflict are added to the old ones without replacing them: electronic warfare does not exclude hand-to-hand combat in the trenches; there are both cyberattacks and artillery duels; information manipulation does not rule out house-to-house urban combat; we see both hypervelocity missiles and low-cost drone strikes.
Change of scale
Today's conflicts require us to reconsider the notion of force size. Gone are the days when you could change the course of history with 300 soldiers. With access to certain cutting-edge technologies democratized, there are no longer any "small wars." Iran-backed Houthi militias are a case in point, challenging free movement in the Red Sea with high-tech anti-ship missiles.
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