The planned withdrawal of French forces from Afghanistan has intensified talk of defeat, which casts the shadow of undeserved disgrace on our soldiers, their families and ultimately the nation. Rediscovering national solidarity will enable us to concentrate on our collective willpower. Only a realistic perception of the complexity of the State’s decisions will allow us to free ourselves from incessant utopian public criticism.

A historian presents a realistic vision of the issues concerning Atlanticism and sees it as the West’s keystone. By demonstrating the current limits to Euro-Atlantic solidarity he identifies those of the future Western system.

Conducting a war with robots is no longer in the realms of fiction but a real prospect. Starting from the axiom that thought precedes action, the thesis of this article is that consideration of the algorithms determining the individual and collective behaviour of robots must precede and inform the design of the devices themselves. The corollary of this idea is that ethical considerations must be incorporated into wider conceptual thinking on the subject.