Returning to the École Militaire for a former IHEDN auditor always has a certain flavour, that of the 'Proust's madeleine' of a session - a truly enchanted interlude - devoted, for some, to defence policy or, for others, to maritime issues, armaments and the defence economy, cyber or economic security. So, to return to it for the launch of a new publication entitled L'Année de la Défense Nationale (ADN), on Thursday 7 December, under the prestigious double stamp of the IHEDN and La Documentation française, is like returning to the source: precisely that of the "DNA" of the IHEDN, which is to bring together around the issues of defence and national security a panel of military and civilian actors from French society, as diverse as possible. It is also a publishing event made possible by the support of the Direction de l'information légale et administrative (DILA).
The name of this first annual issue, ADN 2024, is well chosen because, as General Benoît Durieux, Director of the IHEDN and President of the Defence Academy of the École Militaire, said in his introduction, it reflects the Institute's vocation to take a critical but forward-looking look at the upheavals in the strategic context since the outbreak of war in Ukraine on 24 February 2022. It is an attempt, through rigorous analysis, to go beyond the simple description of the present to anticipate new forms of conflict and contribute to the wider dissemination of IHEDN's vocation, which is to "understand in order to act".
In concrete terms, the first edition of ADN 2024 provides a new framework for reading the chronicle of events in 2022. The first quality of this grid is that it is not dated. In fact, the magazine is organised around the four following themes the concentric circle of national defence and security (military defence, national defence, national security and international security). For each article, it sets out a three-point analysis (context, analysis, perspective), which allows Guillaume Lasconjarias, Director of Studies at the IHEDN, to offer the reader a projection of events over the coming years, whether it be the military lessons of the war in Ukraine, the repercussions of this 'special military operation', the international order or defence strategy through the prism of the climate.
A CONFERENCE TO START THE DAY
Their respective authors, Major General Vincent Breton, Director of the Centre interarmées de concepts, de doctrines et d'expérimentations (CICDE), Isabelle Facon, Deputy Director of the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique and Nicolas Regaud, Climate Advisor to the Major General of the Armed Forces, discussed the strategic shift that 2022 will bring for the decades to come, through the implementation of the European strategic compass, the general military strategy outlined by the Chief of the Defence Staff to the French Parliament, and the international negotiations on climate change.
Exciting though it was, this launch conference was merely a sort of appetiser, a call to readers to immerse themselves in a much broader spectrum of thought, consisting of 19 thematic articles on NATO, France's strategy in Africa, cyber, the national strategic review and, without being exhaustive, the annual report to Parliament on France's arms exports.
The aim of this ADN 2024, published under the direction of General Durieux and with a preface by Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Chairman of the IHEDN Scientific Council, is to provide an understanding of strategic orientations in a changing world, with the ever-present feeling that you will come away from the École Militaire even more passionate, if not intelligent!
Jean Pouch, member of the AA-IHEDN, auditor of the 2th national session and chairman of the 75th Defence Policy" promotion
