Missions entrusted to the Armed Forces

“Each French soldier engaged in operations will be serving in a useful manner, for a legitimate cause and to implement a clearly defined policy” (President Nicolas Sarkozy, July 14, 2007)

The French Armed Forces model is tailored to French military strategy which, while preserving the fundamental role of nuclear deterrence, and ensuring the protection of the territory, stresses prevention, limitation, or, if necessary, the resort to force to settle crises and regional conflicts.

Since our security and defense policy falls within a European and international framework, our Armed Forces are increasingly led to carry out their missions as part of multinational endeavors: UN, OSCE, EU, NATO, coalitions of contingency, various co-operations… However, the protection of our vital interests and the implementation of our defense bilateral agreements requirethat a certain degree of national autonomy, particularly in the field of situation assessment, be preserved.

In addition, given the global character of defense, military action is always conceived in partnership with other ministries.

In this context, here are the missions entrusted to our armed forces:

- To continuously defend France's vital interests against any form of aggression;

- To contribute to the security and the defense of the European and Mediterranean spaces, from the point of view of a long term policy of common European defense;

- To contribute to peace and international law enforcement initiatives;

- To ensure public service tasks, especially by reinforcing on request the civilian defense assets and organizations.