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.