Strategy, rigorous as we might wish it to be, is sensitive to the way the wind blows. Today it is blowing on our overseas operations. Clearly these are a matter for debate, which is timely at this moment, as our Republic changes government. Défense nationale has echoed this new debate. In the April issue, ‘Les Sentinelles de l’Agora’, mysterious but watchful observers, wrote a vigorous critique of the peace missions in which our Armed Forces are embroiled. In the following month, General Vincent Desportes offered a justification of those operations, defined the context and placed on record the significant role which our ground forces play in them. The Air Force is not left out, and in the last issue of the journal, Étienne de Durand and others highlighted the role of our airmen in these strange conflicts. Durand works at the IFRI (French Institute for International Relations) on this general theme, under the lucid heading ‘L’impasse’ (seminar of 14 June). Lastly, Les Cahiers de Mars (191, I/07) have discussed the management of African crises. Here we have made something of a cocktail of all this, seasoned according to our taste.

Impotence . . .

It is easy enough to mock the latest military practices. The pacific tendency of our doctrine is a non-strategy. It does not seek victory. Its aim is modest: stop the wild men from fighting each other. In so doing, it denies the decisive force of war which was, until now, and however shocking it may seem, its effective function. Success in this modest ambition, according to the official line, is achieved solely by control of the use of force and by compromising it in civil tasks that pervert it.

Besides, the equilibrium we are seeking in this way is constantly threatened. Guided by experience, we do a pretty good job of preserving it, and let us hope that that continues to be the case. The problem is that early over-strong action against a visible enemy can quickly turn into another type of action, where a faceless enemy is waging a different kind of war–asymmetric warfare, of which Iraq today is the classic illustration. In this outcome, the defeat of the strong, encumbered by his power but lacking a real objective, faced with the weak, encumbered by little, is guaranteed. The reasons for the impotence of the powerful are, in truth, blindingly obvious.