After the Second World War, France regained its ability to make its voice heard thanks to its status as a nuclear power, acquired at the beginning of the 1960s. As a member of the UN Security Council, it proclaimed its democratic values and its world outlook, even though its demography, economy, language and all the conventional indicators of influence placed it firmly in the bloc of medium powers.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the mastery of space is incontestably the favoured sign of an established power. It is within the scientific and technological reach of a small number of countries, including France, which have grasped its significance. It remains to get our principal European partners to share this ambition, one which is taking shape after an excellent Green Paper on space and a project in gestation, Galileo. The time which man has devoted to space since the era of Spinoza, in spite of his inability to master it, has become a parameter of power thanks to information technology and instantaneous communications which have overturned classical asymmetries.

The space which comes most naturally to mind is airspace, from the troposphere to the mesopause. At the same time, there exist the vast maritime regions of our planet, oceans and seas which cover two-thirds of its surface and embody the physical continuity of human life from land to land. The importance of the sea is an obvious reality. The national maritime product⁽¹⁾ is estimated by the OECD as 5 per cent of GNP on average. More than 120,000 vessels flying 198 different flags transport 90 per cent of world commerce; 16 giant ports⁽²⁾ handle 17 million containers used ten times per year. As one would expect, the order of naval fleets by tonnage of 172 states roughly corresponds to their economic power, with the rapid emergence of China, Japan and India.⁽³⁾ However, with the natural exception of those countries which, in the past, and to their great benefit, were great maritime powers, the overall understanding of maritime matters by the public at large derives from vague ideas which it would be as well to clarify.