The continuous change in the strategic situation since the end of the Cold War has been analysed at length both in this publication and in research institutes. The change has given greater importance to our military policy, witness our continued high level of operational activity, the constant evolution seen in cooperative structures and the growing importance given to military and defence issues in international relations. In its Defence Staff, France has a valuable asset which supports this policy, yet it is one which has still to be fully recognised. Received wisdom long held that a staff had a critical role to play in time of war but was largely unemployed in peacetime. This is no longer the case. It is true that the Defence Staff is the descendant of organisations which for several centuries presided over the destiny of our defence assets, yet it is today an entirely new organisation within the Ministry of Defence (MOD), whose very raison d’être it embodies. The novelty of this organisation stems from the very special nature of military action, which now determines the two principal roles of the Defence Staff: to ensure both today’s and tomorrow’s operational successes.

The Defence Staff is driven by the Special Nature of Military Action

French forces have for long planned their action as a function of one major threat: it was intended to stop an invader coming from the east from putting national independence at risk. This requirement, little changed by several distant expeditionary operations, has more recently given way to more varied and well-publicised aims. Deterrence, prevention of conflicts, protection of our population at home and abroad and participation in peacekeeping as part of our international responsibilities are the best known of our forces’ missions. Additionally, society’s expectations are ever more pressing with regard to an institution which directly represents our national identity and our republican values. This is why we rightly put some emphasis on their contribution to social cohesion and on the assets that they make available to the civil power in emergency situations.

This necessary multiplicity of political aims which have to be fulfilled, together with the diversity of conflicts to which our forces are committed, has tended to cloud the whole issue of the nature of military action. One source of confusion in particular has arisen between the most recurrent political aim of our commitments, that of peacekeeping or peace restoration, and the type of military action on the ground necessary for this aim to be achieved. The appearance of ‘blue helmets’ in conflicts has seemed to be the proof of the increased value of an entirely new and reassuring mode of use of an armed force. Nevertheless it is probably an error of perception. Military action is not really any different whether its ultimate aim is related to peacekeeping or something more coercive. Today, as ever, it is determined by the single principle of using, or threatening to use, force to modify an armed adversary’s intentions or to force his hand.