France’s National Security Strategy

France is one of the EU member states with a most highly-developed national strategic culture. Victory in the Second World War, its role as a member of the United Nations Security Council, the development of a nuclear programme that gave the country the status of a nuclear power, united to the historical development of a sense of a global mission on the world stage, contributed to the development of a global vision for France’s role on the world arena. The exercise of setting out a global description of a long-term vision and strategy for defence policies in white books (Livre Blanc) had been conducted twice before, in 1972 and 1994. The latest 2008 White Paper on Defence and National Security preserves some of the basic patterns of its forerunners but introduced the concept of a national security strategy, that had not been developed before.