The White Paper offers a sobering assessment of the likelihood of major wars breaking out in the near future. It argues: In an uncertain and unstable international environment, French involvement in an inter-State war cannot be ruled out. The possibility of major conflict must therefore be taken into account when setting forth the force structure of the next 15 years.

Although the White Papers authors do not explicitly mention the US war drive in the Middle East, the global scramble for oil and strategic advantage is clearly on their minds. They write: Future tensions involving energy, food, and water, as well as strategic raw materials, can lead directly to major crises in one or several parts of the world. The same applies to the long-term effects of global warming, if preventive action is not taken in good time.

They add: Many potential major regional contingencies have the potential to degenerate into a world-wide strategic upset. Given current US global military hegemony, this somewhat euphemistic phrase allows only one meaningful interpretation: the French ruling elite is concerned that the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have weakened Washington to the point that its power will be challenged, and that the US will not be, in the long term, a reliable guarantor of the world political order and French imperialist interests.

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