In February 1996, President Jacques Chirac surprised even the military by announcing the move to a professional army and the suspension of national service. The problems inherent in such an in-depth change and the solutions that have enabled it to be implemented have been widely debated: the impact of wage costs on military operating and equipment budgets; how to maintain the bond between the armed forces and the nation; the status of the military and the exercise of authority. The reform’s greatest success has without doubt been the acceptance by the military themselves of the substantial changes they have undergone. Their broad approval of the process was less informed by their natural duty of obedience than by hopes of creating more effective armed forces. They also expected greater recognition of their role in national defence. In short, it was a matter of creating a valid defence tool, adapted to the true demands of the new strategic situation. The great enemy no longer existed, and the call-up of all male French citizens for national service had ended. In future, French armed forces would depend entirely on volunteers and ‘career personnel’.

Most of the reforms that have followed the publication of the White Paper on defence and national security (2008) can thus be seen as a furtherance of this policy: having drafted the broad outlines of the new armed forces, this ‘instrument’ has to be refined (statement of our aims, tasks and means assigned) so that it can be incorporated in the catalogue of national assets aimed at ensuring the security that the general public expects. The key is to sustain technological progress, funded by a realistic reduction in size. Taking the logic of a ‘professional army’ to its limits, national defence could only be the exclusive concern of highly trained men and women. That which is valid at operational level, the ‘front line’, also applies to senior commanders, the almost exclusive repository of defence doctrines. As such doctrines become more complicated, they become unfathomable to both the citizen and his representatives, who cannot understand them and lose interest.

Hyper-professionalism of the armed forces grew out of this change, unremarkable as far as the citizen is concerned, but of capital importance for the military and decisive for our political masters, for whom the military tool has evolved more profoundly than they might sometimes have imagined.