New Note 4 | On Wednesday, 15th April, an international aid conference for the support and development of Mali will be held in Brussels. This conference, co-chaired by France and the European Union, in the presence of the French President, the President of the European Commission and the Acting Head of State of Mali, aims at mobilizing the international community in view of the implementation of new development policies supporting the political and military aspects of the exit strategy from the Malian crisis. Indeed, following the coup d'état of 22nd March 2012, Europe and France both suspended financial aid to Mali. The European Union already announced its intention to resume its €250 million financial contribution to Mali. (...)

New Note 3 | On 29 April, the Commission in charge of the “Livre blanc de défense et de sécurité nationale”  ( White Paper on defence and national security) presented to the President the results of his work. The Paper is succinct and has a narrow perspective. This document announces another cuts in France’s military ambitions, thus jeopardizing its political status, its effectives power and its contribution to Europe | By Jean-Sylvestre MONGRENIER, Research Fellow at the Thomas More Institute | Available in French

| Un faible apport à la réflexion stratégique

C’est avec retard que la commission en charge du nouveau Livre blanc de défense et de sécurité nationale a présenté les résultats de ses (...)

New Note 1 | Since the Boston bombings happened, the attention of policy-makers and the media has suddenly zeroed in on Chechnya and the Chechens. We recall a war of independence that was started twenty years ago by one million of persons against the Russian Federation. After having been substantially Islamized and having extended to the neighboring regions in the early 2000's, this war still doesn't seem to be fully over. We mainly found out that more than hundreds of thousands of Chechen refugees have fled from this extremely violent conflict, have settled abroad, especially in Europe but also in the United States and in Canada and are beginning to organize a diaspora | By Laurent VINATIER, Research Fellow at the Thomas More (...)

NATO is much more than a mere defensive alliance.  The Alliance has been shaped like a security community and is the geopolitical expression of the West. NATO must be thought of in terms of global balance of power, and it has to deal with spaces and problematics on a world scale | Text of the speech of Jean-Sylvestre MONGRENIER, Research Fellow at the Thomas More Institute | 5th Festival “Géopolitique & Géoéconomie” | Grenoble (France), April 7, 2013 | Available in French

L’Organisation du traité de l’Atlantique Nord (OTAN) n’est pas une alliance de type traditionnel mais une alliance wilsonienne dont la légitimité repose aussi sur les principes de la sécurité collective. Dans l’après-Guerre froide, la « (...)

There is a reality that the on going intervention in Mali has reactivated the salience : these of the terrorist threat in France. This threat is developing on long term but can also know accelerating phenomenon on short term. In other words, if islamisation and radicalisation phenomena are relevant in France for many years, it is evident that the security situation in Sahel, the military intervention and more broadly the “Arabs uprisings” are likely to increase the threat in France. While the organisational framework of terrorist groups is in constant evolution, many issues accelerate this mutation. Decoding | By Florentin DEWASNES, Research Assistant at the Thomas More Institute | Available in French

Alors que (...)