The world is moving ever faster. There is no time for reflection, for putting things in perspective, for relativising. The return on investment has to be immediate, whilst in the breathless rhythm of elections the Western democracies are losing that influence conferred on them only yesterday by virtue of the depth of their culture and their global vision. Decision-makers are losing their freedom of manoeuvre. Chasing ever faster after the need for solutions, they are often abandoning policy in favour of communication. They are forced to favour instant recipes for strategic management, something that requires cool-headedness and a long-term view.

Our major military commitments are symbolic of these new difficulties. Yesterday’s ability to impose our will on the world was based, to a certain extent, on our military power. Alas, notwithstanding the considerable financial efforts devoted to it, that power seems to have reached the limits of its technical effectiveness, and no longer provides the service that we so recently expected of it. The harsh reality of the world is imposing itself on us, however scornfully it has too often been regarded by our West European democracies, spared for long years from the world’s violence. War is a fact of life for mankind, and denying it changes nothing. We have entered into a period of conflict and permanent commitments.

However, until such time as we have managed to restore the usefulness of military force, we must, at least, seek to avert crises; knowledge and anticipation have a major role to play here. But we will never be able to avoid completely deployment abroad. To make a principle of doing so would, moreover, be particularly dangerous. It is therefore appropriate that we should consolidate the resources we have, but even more, in the light of the complexity of our military commitments we should reinvigorate strategic thinking, neglected today in France, and give it the means that its renewed importance merits.