(1) An Introduction to French Strategic Culture
France is one of the EU member states with a most highly-developed national strategic culture. Victory in the Second World War, its role as a member of the United Nations Security Council, the development of a nuclear programme that gave the country the status of a nuclear power, united to the historical development of a sense of a global mission on the world stage, contributed to the development of a global vision for France’s role on the world arena. The exercise of setting out a global description of a long-term vision and strategy for defence policies in white books (Livre Blanc) had been conducted twice before, in 1972 and 1994. The latest 2008 White Paper on Defence and National Security preserves some of the basic patterns of its forerunners but introduced the concept of a national security strategy, that had not been developed before.
The ordinance of 7 January 1959, which dealt for the first time with the general organisation of defence, provided the first national definition of ‘defence’ as the instrument ‘to ensure at all times, under any circumstances, and against any form of aggression, the security and the integrity of the territory as well as the life of the population’.[1] Consequently, by 1959, the French definition of defence included the aspect of constancy of action (defence of the territory at any time, in war as well as in peace) and of global action (ie, including all military and non-military aspects of the protection of the nation against aggression). This order was largely influenced by the political context of that time, with the return of General De Gaulle to power in 1958.