The Chief of Staff of the Army expresses his “concern” about “rising risks and dangers”

General Pierre Schill, Chief of Staff of the French Army, announced on Wednesday April 3 on France Culture his “concern” in front of “the rise of conflicts in the world” and to “rising risks and dangers”. He fears that we are “experiencing a strategic shift”. This takes its origins, according to him, from “the end of the Cold War” and the fall of communist regimes in Europe. “These thirty [dernières] years were marked by what strategic analyzes in France described as a risk of weakness”he explains.

Pierre Schill thus evokes “failed states, or less controlled, lawless zones which allow the development of trafficking, demographic imbalances, terrorism, which accelerate migrations particularly taking into account the acceleration of climate change”.

A use of force “today uninhibited”

The Chief of Staff of the Army focuses more particularly on “the return of war to Europe”, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He observes that “Extremely powerful states or organizations, which have armed themselves before our eyes for years, have decided that the use of force is a lawful use to settle disputes between countries.” He deplores the use of force “uninhibited today”, “employed openly, including by a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council”namely Russia.

General Pierre Schill notes “a form of protest against an international order that we had collectively decided to build since the Second World War around the United Nations system, the resolution of conflict by law”. He considers that this questioning “is deeper” and comes from “from a certain number of actors from the South or Asia”without mentioning them.