F1IS 5215 - Understanding Today’s Security Challenges, a French Military Perspective

In recent years, military affairs have regained a prominent position at the forefront of the global leaders' agenda. They are not only reshaping the dynamics between the Western bloc and other major powers such as Russia, China, and India but also influencing relationships within the Western bloc itself. This includes the role of NATO, the revamped EU defense policy, and the position of Turkey within the Alliance. This trend has gained momentum since the invasion of Ukraine. The great power competition is also impacting the NATO allies' relationships with other nations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The Western withdrawal from Afghanistan and France's exit from Mali signify a shift in the Western military posture.

The emergence of new domains of warfare, such as cyber, space, seabed, and information, is expanding the spectrum of war, with hybrid warfare posing challenges to democracies.

Understanding the variety and complexity of today's military challenges is imperative for any graduate in security studies. However, due to inherent factors like access challenges, security concerns, and confidentiality, what occurs on the frontlines or beyond the military's curtains is often concealed from students. Our goal is to change this by assisting PSIA students in international security to access firsthand accounts from senior officers with substantial and recent field experience acquired in Europe, Africa, or the Middle East.

This course, developed and led by a seasoned consultant in international affairs and a senior active French officer, aims to openly discuss all key dimensions of military action in today's and tomorrow's world. It leverages the recent or current experiences of the two instructors and their guest speakers. In the classroom's "Chatham House" setting, officers will have the opportunity to help students decipher the realities of military engagement in today's world, encompassing various forms such as counter-terrorism, nuclear deterrence, and great power competition.

Learning Outcomes:

• Enhanced awareness and understanding of military matters (predominantly from a French perspective)
• Increased capacity to assess the “defence” perspective on major geopolitical/social challenges
• Capacity to display nuanced and data-backed positions on debates involving military actors
• Increased capacity to write concise, clear memos to facilitate decision-making of senior political leaders

Professional Skills:

The skills mentioned below have been selected from the “Annex A” of the PSIA Guidelines document. They are the ones which are the most likely to be improved thanks to the class.

Team Work

Oral Communication

Written Communication

Understanding Stakeholders

Research & Analysis

Critical Thinking

No prerequisite apart from a genuine interest for contemporary security issues and military affairs, along with a desire to know about the French perspective on those affairs.

This course is predominantly a practical course. Students should not expect that much time will be allocated to theoretical content.

Two important points related to scheduling:

1/ Unless there is no other option, all the courses will take place on campus, even if this means postponing the classes i.e. should access to campus be prevented for whatever reason (strikes, etc.) students should expect that the teachers will reschedule the day’s class to ensure it can take place on campus.

2/ The two teachers are both professionals with professional obligations. While they do their best to sanctuarize the scheduled time in the week for the class it should be expected that over the course of the semester 2 classes (out of 12) may need to be rescheduled because of lack of availability of teachers

Participation - 10% of the grade

Exposé - 35% of the grade - 20’ exposé on a topic chosen by the teachers - groups of 2 or 3

Mid-course written memo - 20% - one-pager on a topic/question chosen in a list submitted by the teachers (specific format: note to a senior political or military authority)

Final written memo - 35% - two-pager on a topic/question chosen in a list submitted by the teachers (specific format: note to a senior political or military authority)

Apart from the exposé and written assignments, we anticipate that the course will require a maximum of 45 minutes of homework per week (consisting in reading a selection of papers/articles related to the upcoming class put together by the teachers)