To achieve strategic surprise, Clausewitz insists on the importance of speed and discretion. Faced with the opacity of future events, we have to admit that not only do we know little about what is going to happen, but also that no one really knows what is happening at the moment experienced. The financial crisis is, unfortunately, the most perfect and implacable illustration of this.

Captain (R) Xavier Boniface details the reasons for the resilience of the French population during the Great War and explains how the attitudes of resilience of French society in 1914-1918 can, if not inspire, guide or influence current behaviour, at least enlighten it and help to understand it?

In 2019, Japan will have a new emperor.

Professor Françoise Thibault details the necessary and expected changes in traditions and specifies the challenges that Japan must take up in the coming decades, whether military or economic, in the face of "powerful" neighbours that prefigure another "Pacific" world.

Whether in Afghanistan, Mali or the Central African Republic, recent interventions have shown that the Army has been able to acquirerir, in order to defend France and its interests, a recognized skill in projecting troops at short notice and anywhere in the world. It thus accounts for nearly two-thirds of the deployment of our soldiers outside metropolitan France and on national territory. Yet, while the very meaning of the profession of arms requires each soldier to be ready immediately, would we be capable of projecting a force without notice if circumstances required it?

The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) is not yet a strategic partner for the countries of the European Union. Despite legitimate reservations against its authoritarian political regime, marked by its ideological legacy and the legacy of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran remains a player of the future in the stabilisation of the Middle East. Indeed, it constitutes one of the keys to mitigating the instability that is shaking the region, whose epicentre straddles Iraq and Syria.

Since 2013, a debate has been raging in Germany about armed drones. For the author, however, it is not the drones as such that have given rise to this ethical debate. The substance of the public discourse reflects a paradoxical reality: Germans find it difficult to see the commitment of their armed forces to their main vocation: coercion. This is the result of a demilitarized and ambivalent strategic culture, stuck in the "trap of multilateralism".[1]

1] See Kaim Markus: "Auslandseinsätzeder Bundeswehr in der Multilateralismusfalle", in: Mair Stefan, "Auslandseinsätze derBundeswehr", SWP, Berlin, September 2007, p. 43 ff.

The debate is already raging about the use of combat drones in ground strikes, for reasons of international law, humanitarian law and ethics. There is, however, one emerging area that will undoubtedly trigger a controversy that is at least comparable: the use of land-based weapons systems capable of deciding alone on the life or death of their own target. This is what the author of this article convincingly presents to us.

Are Autonomous Lethal Weapon Systems on Land (ALWS) an ethical aberration?

Azincourt (1415), Dien Bien Phu (1953-1954): Honour and courage alone are sometimes (often?) insufficient in the face of cold determination and efficiently used technology!

There are more and more satellites in space every day and their use has become a daily occurrence in a wide variety of applications and fields such as Earth and space observation, cartography and mobile telephony, but also geolocation and positioning, in particular with the Galileo system. The author shows us that the latter, which is entirely European, will bring significant added value to civilian users as well as security and defence actors.

The French defence industry suffers from a poor public image. However, it has never been doing better and has even broken export sales records, with an impressive figure of 14 billion euros in 2016. France thus became the third largest arms exporter in 2017, behind the United States and Russia. And in 2018, Paris could even outstrip Moscow, in a context of contraction of the world market after years of growth.