In an international environment where the threats are increasingly global, the idea of national defence is not what it used to be. A notion of defence that is meant to be increasingly vague and wider is today overshadowed by the idea of national security, and one talks of the ‘defence-security continuum’. The highly compartmentalised ‘French Capharnaum’ of government departments must adapt to this new notion of defence as a component of security itself. However, far from changing the traditional function of defence, the renewal of the idea of national power can only reinforce the importance of the Armed Forces’ defence mission.