The G2S is proposing to you a dossier on our country's high expectations in terms of defence in the run-up to the 2017 elections.

This is the record of the hopes that our association carries, and that it wishes to find in the commitments that the candidates will make in view of these deadlines. It is the file of an expected rise in power. In the end, the terms are quite simple: "aggravation of the threats, thus increasing defence, protection and security needs, therefore increasing resources"

This could also be the case for the illustration of a budget target of 2% of GDP. This figure is probably only one step, an intermediate step, on the way to upgrading the defence tool....

It is in fact not an end in itself, but a means: the means to provide defence with the resources it needs in the short, medium and long term to carry out its mission for the benefit of the nation. Let us not reverse the terms of the equation: it is not "what more can be done with 2%? "but "what percentage to meet the real defence needs? ».

Can we set an objective percentage?.

There is the "duty" figure: that of the resources owed to defence to enable it to become fully consistent with the role that the country wishes it to play on the international stage; it is probably close to 3%.

There is the figure for "power": the amount of effort that our citizens can devote to their protection and security; it is also of the order of 3%; in any case it has already been at that level in the past.

Finally, there is the figure of "will": it will be the political will of the man or woman who will take the destiny of our country into his or her own hands; it must be materialized by an objective and by an upward slope to reach it. We would find it hard to understand, in the current context, that this figure should be less than 2% of GDP excluding pensions in 2025.

In the end, this is the case of a wise manager who has been entrusted with the destiny of a community. He knows that he must periodically review his protection systems and adapt them: measuring risks, taking into account changes in the value of the property to be protected and evaluating the resources that the community can devote to provident planning in the broadest sense. It is this objective review that is the major expectation of the G2S members for 2017.

The year 2016 will have been that of a positive inflection of defence policy; this reorientation taken under the influence of emotion and under the pressure of the security emergency must now be confirmed by a more exhaustive analysis and fixed in the texts, in particular in that of the forthcoming military programming law. For it must now be a long-term process.

Happy reading.

By Lieutenant General (2s) Alain Bouquin