The description ‘English edition’ for this part of the website of Revue Défense Nationale, given its content, may seem grandiose. It may also be thought misleading, because it will not necessarily reflect the main themes covered in a given month in the French version of RDN. So some explanation is called for. As we mentioned in our issue of November last year, each month we will publish translations of a handful of articles appearing in the French edition; this essentially for budgetary reasons (ours is not a subsidised publication). And because the number of pieces is modest it will not always be possible to satisfy all our criteria for choosing what to translate. But we will always try to present alternative views, and of course a French perspective.

It is perhaps worth reminding visitors to this site that English abstracts of all articles appearing in the French edition can also be accessed, so that even without any knowledge of the language they can see the issues of concern to us. This month the emphasis is on two themes: firstly, the practical consequences in France of developments in the defence community imposed by today’s domestic and international circumstances. Second, Europe: this publication believes that European security, after the Lisbon treaty, simply has to move forward.

Our main article in English, the first of two by the same author, looks at Iran from the viewpoint of historical continuity to explain its current policy. The second compares the state of information technology and its defensive and offensive capabilities to those of the aircraft used at the beginning of the First World War. And a piece on terrorist acts reminds us that technical protective measures will inevitably have leaks in them, and underlines the importance of collective responsibility: ‘neighbourhood watch’ on an international scale.