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This article introduces the key tenets of French foreign and security policy during the Cold War, and illustrates the deep challenges to the French consensus raised by the emergence of a unipolar system. There is a growing gap between the rhetoric of French security policy, emphasizing ‘autonomy’ and ‘sovereignty’ out of habit from the Cold War, and the actual security practices showing a gradual embedding within the transatlantic security structures. In the absence of a new transpartisan grand narrative relevant for the contemporary international system, such embedding is easily portrayed in France as a ‘treason’ from a romanticized Gaullist foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The French doctrine towards peace operations has, over the last two decades, reflected the ambivalence of France’s position, stretched between on the one hand a military culture that places the use of force at the centre of strategy and on the other hand multidimensional operations that by their nature integrate a large range of activities. As a consequence France has evolved as a ‘reluctant peacekeeper’: while it has been significantly involved in peace operations since the end of the Cold War, the military has never felt comfortable with the peacekeeping concept, seen as a dilution of their primary function of fighting wars. This tension has shaped both doctrinal development and operations. Twenty years after the French engagement in former Yugoslavia, lessons have been learnt, and policy-makers have become aware of the evolution of conflict management and the subsequent necessity to integrate the military dimension into a broader framework. Yet France’s policy is still shaped by a certain aversion towards the concept of long-term multinational peace operations, and a parallel preference for more focused and reactive operations. The merits of the use of force are central to these debates. While these policy preferences are responses to legitimate concerns about both the efficiency of foreign interventions and the soldier’s identity, they also raise questions as to their compatibility with the long term and multidimensional requirements of bringing sustainable peace in fragile states. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Evaluates the rationale and the content of strategic dialogue between India and France and assesses the benefits it generates for both countries in light of the expectations both sides may entertain. Visit of Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao to France in 1992; Willingness of India to strive for an independent nuclear force; Relationship between the Indian Space Research Organization and the Centre National d'Études Spatiales.

This article focuses on Great Britain's ambiguous stand over Algeria and the uncomforts it brought to the British embassy in France. For the first four years of the Algerian War, British ministers and officials reciprocated that while supporting the French position in North Africa they will not support their policies. But with successive conservative governments, there was a shift in the policy as they sought to sustain France in North Africa because of the impact that long term insurgency in Algeria would have on Western defense. Concerned about the prospective decline of Western influence in North Africa that could open the way for the communism and further add humiliation for France coming on the heels of Indochina, the whole scenario could lead to a "neutralist" government in Paris, which was unfavorable to Western alliance. Besides this, Britain's own foreign interests led it to wish to limit the spread of Arab nationalism and to avoid being tarred with the colonialist brush. The ambiguity of Britain's position led to shifting policies, which made the job of UN Ambassador in Paris, Gladwyn Jebb particularly difficult.