The recently announced defence restructuring measures constitute a new wave of consolidation on the human and territorial levels, as well as in terms of functions and the effects on the public. This new process forms part of a tendency of reducing the military to its function of basic soldiering, at the same time as this function itself is subject to changes. The particularity of the profession of arms thus finds itself under discussion. War is now far-off and localised: it poses risks of course, but not threats. The reduction of the military to its ‘core business’ implies a dismembered institution. Ultimately, this is a process leading to the ‘dumbing down’ of the military, its condition, its world, its ethos; and hence possibly to a trivialised defence.
Towards a Secularized Defence
The General Review of Public Policies (RGPP) heralds a new restructuring for our armed forces, affecting their capabilities, their structures, their territorial deployment and their organization. Although this new reform is of a piece with the structural instability which has characterized this ministry for over 40 years, it could also be an opportunity to question the trend which it embodies.
Although the military institution has long been one of the pillars of the State and the nation (since the days of Rome, to be a citizen was also to be a soldier), military talent, formerly a major aspect of kingly power, conferring a valuable aura in terms of public and institutional opinion, is nowadays confined to more restricted fields. It is no longer the object of public or academic interest. In the current state of affairs, where individual comfort and immediacy take precedence, where war seems far away and confined, and where differences between groups are downplayed in favour of egalitarianism, the particular features of the military, its conditions and its world, are unappreciated and disregarded.
This situation can be explained by the changes in the relationship of our societies to war and the threats which weigh on them, and by the short-term organizational and human measures taken, sometimes purely symbolic or non-essential, but which together constitute a trend towards structural change. In the end, these result in liberties taken with what remains the ‘core function’ of the soldier: to fight and be prepared to take the ultimate risk.
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