From our strategic environment as it will be in 2040, we can only detect the premises today. Therefore, the ambition of this new edition of the geostrategic and geopolitical prospective report is to explore the major trends that should structure the international system around the middle of the century, and to identify the possible implications for France and its defence tool.

Three main trends can be identified:
- the end of Western domination
- the acceleration of globalization
- increasing instability and volatility

Innovation seems to have become a particularly important theme in recent statements by the authorities of the Ministry of the Armed Forces: the speeches made illustrate both a strong ambition and a will to move the lines. Rightly so, because it is the primary condition for change, for questioning and for progress to be made in order to remain able to fulfil the missions entrusted to us in an environment that is constantly changing.

"War is a chameleon whose face surprises us every time," this quote from CLAUSEWITZ is to be compared with his many attempts to define the very essence of war. This human activity is therefore at once eminently contingent, while at the same time having perennial characteristics, insensitive to fashions. The soldier remains and will remain an essential actor in the act of war. Keeping the French Army at the forefront of European armies requires French soldiers capable of controlling its invariants and adapting to its changes.

For several years now, armies have enjoyed a very positive image and broad public support, which is no doubt a factor in the success of recruitment. However, this situation is based on a paradox: society tends to move in the direction of relativism and permissiveness, while the virtues of the soldier are based on personal commitment and a sense of the absolute.

To claim in 2018 that an army of excellence must have retained all the ingredients that make up the military specificity of its members may seem like a truism. And defending this point of view is sometimes considered superfluous... so much has already been said on the subject!

However, military leaders, when they speak out, like to recall with great constancy the existential nature of this notion.

The foreseeable evolution of the global security environment makes it more than likely that future military operations will be international. For both political (changes in the balance of power) and economic (cost of resources and operations) reasons, France, despite the recovery of its defence budget, will see its ability to engage alone in heavy and long operations curtailed.

Considering the future cannot, particularly with regard to the use of armed force, be done seriously without considering the past and its lessons, since it is true that those who ignore the lessons of history condemn themselves to relive the expected ones, if not the modalities. And if no commitment of forces is, strictly speaking, identical to previous ones, the fact remains that constants, principles and references are passed down through the ages with mutations in form that most often conceal a great durability of substance.

In the summer of 2015, as soon as he took office as CEMAT, Army General Jean-Pierre BOSSER wanted a major transformation of the Army. Known as the "army in contact", the army is now in a phase of consolidation.

In a world of perpetual change, where changes are increasingly rapid, we cannot rest on our laurels. We need to take the next step now and think about what the next model might look like.

To think about the army of the future, do we have to start from a blank page?

Recent statements by our political and military authorities set an unprecedented level of ambition for our armed forces:

The President of the Republic, on 1 March 2018^, on the occasion of his visit to the Champagne camps, declared: "We are at a turning point for our armies, particularly the Army. My objective is simple: that our army should be unquestionably the leading European army, in terms of capabilities and technology".

The CEMAT, on 11 October 2017, during its hearing before the National Assembly's Committee on National Defence and the Armed Forces, noted: "The President of the Republic has set us an ambition and given us the means. He wanted us to be the first European army. Today, the French army is undoubtedly the first in Europe, but how will it remain so? What are the criteria that will enable us to tell the President how we are going to keep it that way? »