The wide consensus on the need for a new White Paper on defence and national security reflects growing awareness of the many dangers darkening the horizon of the coming decades and underlines how urgent it is to adapt our policies in these areas. To meet its objective, the debate that has begun must be deepened and thus broadly open and free of any preconditions. It will provide the politicians with the elements they need to draw up and implement a defence and security policy that meets our country’s present and future requirements.
The White Paper on Defence and National Security
The decision to draft a new White Paper on defence and national security represents a major event for our country and is especially opportune at a time when the world is experiencing fundamental change and is seeing a considerable increase in the sources of tension and conflict.
The directive from the President of the Republic takes full measure of these issues by an openness, vision and determination entirely appropriate to the magnitude of what is at stake.
The task is a weighty one: it risks encountering some serious difficulties that should be recognised. They include the short time given to the Committee for this work, the high daily workload of government departments and their relative isolation from each other, the complexity of the issues concerned and the imperatives for finding savings, not forgetting the convictions and interests of pressure groups intent on making their presence felt.
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