Edouard Philippe's speech to the national sessions of the IHEDN and INHESJ institutes

Address by Mr Édouard PHILIPPE, Prime Minister, to the 2019-2020 national sessions of the Institut des hautes études de défense nationale (IHEDN) and the Institut national des hautes études de la sécurité et de la justice (INHESJ)
Military school
Friday 18 October 2019
Only the pronouncement is authentic



Ministers,

Madam Secretary General for Defence and National Security,

General Chief of the Defence Staff,

The Directors and Chairmen of the Boards of Directors of the Institutes,

Ladies and gentlemen, general officers,

Ladies and gentlemen, listeners,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

"They all had grimy faces, hollow cheeks overgrown with beards (...); rough patches marked their clothes at the knees and elbows; hardened, dirty hands protruded from their grated sleeves (...). Yet they were the ones who had just fought with more than human energy (...); they were the victors!

Never before in our history has the French army - the one described in the lines I have just quoted by Maurice Genevoix in "Ceux de 14" - been so closely intertwined with the Nation. This army of '14 was that of the shepherd, the butcher, the shoemaker, the clerk, the sailor, the student and the family man. And this army was in no way inferior to that of Valmy. "To those great fraternal legions - in the words of Jules Michelet - that sprang from the earth (...); those heroes of patience, soldiers of the Rhine, of Sambre-et-Meuse, who knew only duty". The army of Valmy would remain "the mother of all the armies of the Republic" for many years to come.

From the outset, our Republic has seen itself as a "Nation in arms" where, to quote Michelet, "All swore to defend all". A Republic which, from the outset, has had to fight for its ideal of freedom and equality. And the mythical figure of the citizen who defends his homeland lies at the heart of our history. As with all myths, the reality has been more complex. Conscription and compulsory military service did not affect everyone in the same way. But for many years, they were the counterpart to universal suffrage; the "duties" that were placed alongside the rights of the citizen.

It is here that we can also measure the revolutionary nature of the decision taken by President Jacques Chirac - with his then Prime Minister Alain Juppé - to suspend conscription and to launch the professionalisation of the armed forces. This major political decision may have inspired a degree of nostalgia in some people. But no one is seriously questioning it. The French armed forces implemented this decision with a discipline and a sense of adaptation to which we can never pay enough tribute. Today, our professional army is our main bulwark against the threats we face, and a considerable asset for our sovereignty.

The consequence of this decision was to sever the "organic" link that had bound the army to the nation for more than two centuries. With various consequences. Over the last twenty years, the number of overseas operations has increased. Each time, the French have given them massive support. The army is now a "popular" institution. The French love their army. They cheer when it marches. They mourn their heroes with them. They trust it. They are prepared to ask a lot of it. Despite all this, there has also been a drift away from what we might call a "military culture". Quite simply because there are fewer opportunities to meet them. The trust I mentioned has been accompanied by a kind of ignorance. It's a lack of understanding of what the military does, how it works, its missions, its reflexes and its values.

For years, this distant yet trusting relationship posed no problems. Theoretically, that is. Until the emergence of a new, permanent, diffuse and indiscriminate threat, with ramifications both inside and outside the country, led us to re-examine the link between the nation and the forces that contribute to its security. At the heart of the matter is this question: how can and should a peaceful democracy, which has in a way broken with the "republican vigilance" of its origins, react to this threat?

How can we fight it? What role should citizens play in this fight? As we have seen, there is far from unanimous agreement on this question. So we need to ask this question. And we need to debate it. That's the whole point of the debates you'll be having this year at both the IHEDN and the INHESJ. Not to stop there. But to provide a reasonable, effective and clear response.

It is clearly not a question of "remilitarising society", which would be neither desirable nor feasible. Each era has to build its own response. I'm a great lover of history, but that doesn't mean I'm nostalgic. I've always thought that the past was an excellent source of inspiration, but a poor advisor. Especially when it comes to defence and security. It's up to us to invent the tools we need to rebuild the links, including the cultural links, between the nation and its armed forces.

The first of these resources - and forgive me for starting here, but we are in the middle of a budgetary debate - is financial. As you know, in line with the commitment made by the President of the Republic, we have decided to provide our armed forces with the material and human resources they need to carry out their missions. The armed forces budget will therefore be increased by €1.7 billion in 2020. This is the third consecutive year of increases. This is a considerable effort, especially given the budgetary context. This effort is necessary. It is fair because it is part of a catch-up approach. Above all, it is understood by the French, which is an opportunity for our country. Not all nations have the same awareness of what is at stake.

We sometimes forget that another important link between the nation and its armed forces is the "reserves". The operational reserves - 40,000 people in 2020 for the armed forces, of whom 40% are active and 20% are students - and the citizen reserves of the armed forces. Police reserves too. As you know, following the attacks in 2015, the State brought together the operational reserves of the armed forces, the gendarmerie and the police in the National Guard, which now has 70,000 members. The debates we are having could be an opportunity to stress the importance of these reserves and the richness of this commitment. What it brings to the nation, of course, but also to the individual who makes the commitment. We could, for example, consider ways of facilitating recruitment and reconciling it with family and professional life. We'd welcome any thoughts you might have. Yours in particular.

We wanted to strengthen this link through universal national service. Its aim is obviously not to call up age groups for military service, but to emphasise the notion of commitment. And the idea that a Republic is about values, rights and duties. And remarkable missions in the service of the community. However, we rarely want to get involved in something we don't know. Commitment often begins with an encounter or an experience. And by the very real satisfaction you get from being useful to the community. If we don't create the opportunity for this encounter, we run the risk of creating vocations. This universal service is therefore not a replica of compulsory military service. We have adapted it to our times. It provides for a period of one month between the ages of 16 and 18, which can be supplemented by a longer voluntary commitment between the ages of 16 and 25. An experimental phase began at the end of June 2019. It involves around 2,000 young people in 13 départements. In 2020, we will continue to extend the scheme.

This link between society and the army is what you represent today, you who, in this assembly, have chosen the IHEDN. I don't know what prompted you to enrol on such a demanding course. Whatever it was, you felt, at some point in your career, that you lacked this defence culture. As a citizen, in your understanding of the world. As a decision-maker too, in your professional life. Some of you may have wanted to revive old memories of military service. I loved mine. In fact, that's the only significance that can be drawn from the presence of a sabre on my desk. At first, my colleagues were a little surprised, but also a little worried. Having done this service in the conditions I experienced was one of the great opportunities of my life. I learned an enormous amount.

I enjoyed my service so much that I ended up doing it all over again! Let's just say that I took part in a programme aimed at pairing up young senior civil servants with young senior officers. We met some very good people. Me, for example, or my partner, General Jean-Pierre Metz, currently head of operations in the European Corps. The aim of the programme was to get us working together, to take us to theatres of external operations. To try and understand, through personal immersion, the nature of the issues at stake. This seems to me to be a very effective way of developing links between circles that don't often come into contact with each other, and yet are destined to get to know each other. Of course, the institutional framework is important! But there's nothing wrong with having ideas, showing initiative and sometimes even being a bit daring. I am deeply convinced that in the Ministries of the Armed Forces, the Interior, Justice or any other place where security issues are at stake, we can set up inventive programmes, adapted to ecosystems that allow people to meet and get to know each other. This is an urgent appeal to all those with responsibilities to ask themselves, including in their daily lives, what they can do to develop this cross-fertilisation of issues, cultures and knowledge. I'm convinced that everyone can set up this kind of useful and important system. As you know, the President of the Republic has asked Frédéric Thiriez to consider the future of training for senior civil servants. I would like this to include training in defence issues. Including from a practical angle; why not by spending some time in a regiment, on board a ship or at an air base. And the IHEDN would seem to me to be the ideal place to do this. I would have a lot to suggest. I have a feeling that generations of civil servant students are going to love me! One day, they'll thank me.

Society therefore needs to reappropriate military issues because, unfortunately, the times and the geography demand it. But also because, as the President of the Republic has said or, in my view, rather reminded us, in our Republic, citizens are called upon to defend their values of freedom and equality.

The question is how? Within the IHEDN, as within the NHESJ, I invite you to think about this in a broad way. There are many ways of defending these values, starting with education, culture, the promotion of equality between men and women and the defence of the rule of law, which you will be focusing on. There is also secularism, with its dual requirement of freedom and neutrality. And I would add to this professional integration and the fight against poverty, particularly child poverty. All these policies are essential. And we are making the necessary changes to ensure that they produce their full effects. Because as we know, religious fanaticism and the anger that leads to terrorism thrive against a backdrop of ignorance, poverty and a lack of education. But these, I would say, are long-term responses. In the shorter term, defending our values means doing at least three things.

First of all, we need to stand together. You remember Georges Clemenceau's famous phrase: "Revolution is a block". Well, the Republic is also a block. Let's say that it must know how to "stand together". Behind the victims of the attacks and their families. Behind our soldiers who, far from home or nearby, risk their lives to protect ours. We must also stand shoulder to shoulder with our intelligence services, who every day, every week, make progress and foil terrorist plots. Their victories are discreet, but very real. Unfortunately, we only realise their importance when they fail, and the consequences are always tragic. Finally, to stand shoulder to shoulder with the political leaders - and I'm obviously not talking about myself - who have had to deal with extremely serious situations. I have always refused to place myself in the position of pointing the finger of blame at someone who, in the past, may not have been sufficiently vigilant. Since 2015, all the governments have done their best to deal with these formidable and unprecedented threats. And I have to say that the national unity that was created around them in those tragic moments proved that even when cruelly wounded, our Republic was much stronger than those who attacked it. We both showed our strength and became aware of that strength.

Defending our values also means being vigilant, as the President of the Republic reminded us.

This vigilance is obviously directed first and foremost at us, the public authorities in the broadest sense, in the performance of our duties. My own. In those of the ministries, of the central departments, right down to the levels closest to the ground. In the missions of every public service employee, in every area of public action. Because safety is at the heart of the civil pact between the State and the population. Immediately after the attack on 3 October, I asked the Intelligence Services Inspectorate to determine as precisely as possible the alerts and measures that had been taken. I have also asked for a general review of all the intelligence services, one by one, to detect any weak signals. We owe it to the victims and their families to do this. We owe it to the French people, who are rightly asking questions. We owe it to those who will succeed us and who will have the necessary procedures in place to prevent such tragedies from happening again.

But we know that the threat we face is permanent, hybrid and diffuse. And the nature of the security requirement has changed. It is no longer just a question of finding and punishing the perpetrators of terrorist acts, but also of preventing them. We have deployed a large number of material and human surveillance resources. But by their very nature, these resources have their limits. Technical limits. Legal limits too, and that's fine, because they are there to guarantee individual freedoms. When I say vigilant society, I'm thinking more of a civic-minded society than a society of generalised surveillance. From this point of view, the vigilance of all of us seems to me to be the best bulwark against excesses that are far more dangerous for our public freedoms. Especially when this vigilance is exercised within the framework of a procedure that respects the rights of individuals and their presumption of innocence. And which relies on the conscience of each individual. We have also always been aware of the importance of human intelligence in thwarting threats of all kinds to the security of our country. Being vigilant, being civic-minded, means being attentive to what is going on and never considering that security is a matter for the security forces. It's a difficult cultural shift, and one that can be risky if need be. But it is a necessary evolution if we want to provide credible and effective responses to protect ourselves against the attacks we could be subject to.

Defending our values means showing discernment.

Discernment to designate without false modesty the enemy we are fighting. This enemy is radical Islamism, which attacks our values while holding a religion and millions of its followers hostage for political ends. Radical Islamism that exploits or serves as a receptacle for individual violence. It defies us and seeks to organise a form of secession. But this same discernment must also lead us to fight without weakness the amalgams and stigmatisations that threaten the cohesion of the national community and therefore weaken it at a time when it is under attack.

This discernment must be exercised in the way we achieve the goals we are pursuing: that goal is the preservation of freedom, equality and fraternity. And the means we use to defend them must never undermine them. I used to be an administrative judge; I used to be a lawyer. I'm sure I'm not the only one in this room who is either one or the other. I have immense respect for these two professions. Because they are difficult and necessary professions. Without them, we would not hear what Montesquieu called "the noise of conflict within the State", without which, according to him, there could be no real freedoms. The price of security is not freedom. The price of security is courage, composure, attention, organisation, rigour, civic-mindedness and vigilance. And there is something rather paradoxical in wanting to fight for freedom, while silencing those same freedoms.

This discernment must finally prevail in the definition of what comes under defence or national security and what does not. Fortunately, not all security forces are part of national security. Some are tasked with ensuring public peace and quiet, while others, such as the Sentinel units, are involved in the fight against terrorism. The important thing is that everyone exercises their powers at the right level. Some of these responsibilities are interdepartmental; others, on the other hand, benefit from being exercised as close as possible to the reality on the ground. Our collective effectiveness depends on the proper distribution of tasks and the way they are coordinated. This organisation necessarily evolves over time. That's why it's important that we think about these major issues - today within INHESJ, tomorrow within the Ministries of the Interior and Justice - in the most operational way possible. And it is also for this reason that the IHEDN will be transformed.

Do you know what military strategy and veterinary medicine have in common? There isn't any. Not logically, that is, except perhaps in the cavalry. What they do have in common is a high-ranking Roman official from the late fourth and early fifth centuries, by the name of Vegetius. As it happens, Vegetius wrote two treatises. One on veterinary medicine and the other on military tactics. In the latter, entitled "DE RE MILITARI", he wrote: "Military knowledge feeds the soldier's daring: no one is afraid of doing what he knows so well". I'm not asking for much, of course! But I do believe that collectively, we are better able to apprehend risks when we know them, when we measure them, when we have thought about them, when we have debated them. That being discerning is much easier when you know than when you don't. That being a good citizen is much easier when you know the constraints and values of community life than when you don't. The universal national service, the exchanges that you can have, the development of a common culture, all these elements should enable us to have a better understanding of the risks, the skills and the issues. To better apprehend the threats, to develop these faculties of discernment, of civic-mindedness, of strength to which I invite us collectively to overcome many ordeals.

Irrespective of the individual and intellectual interest you may derive from your experience at these two institutes, there is something beyond you in the commitment you have just made. What goes beyond you is having to collectively produce an effect on society beyond the individual effect of your commitment. Better knowledge, better thinking on the subjects I have mentioned.

In conclusion, you have a huge responsibility in this collective and national exercise. And I am sure that you are aware of this.

Thank you very much.