French Security Research Articles

Дани Червения, или как със 142 души се събаря Петата република

The present study draws on a wealth of documentary material on the activities of the French security services such as the Paris Prefecture, intelligence and counter-intelligence, the police and special anti-riot units, as foreign intelligence services such as the CIA, much of which was recently declassified well ahead of the usual term for such sensitive documents. It also includes in-depth interviews, conducted by the author with Bulgarian intelligence officers. This source base makes it possible to analyze in the historical context of the landmark events of May 1968, and the role and activities of Daniel Kohn-Bendit, leader of the March 22 Movement. It becomes possible to present day by day and hour by hour every step of this leader who grows up to be the leader of a nationally representative movement such as the National union of the French students. In addition, his connections with foreign intelligence agencies can be traced. The purpose of the study is to reject the elaborately layered notions and mythologies that Danny the Red was able to “pull the rug” from under de Gaulle’s feet and to destroy his Fifth Republic with only 142 men. Despite his undisputable charisma and qualities as a leader and orator, the cult of which constantly strengthens, this was not possible even for a moment

‘A promising playground’: IDEMIA and the digital ID infrastructuring in Colombia

ABSTRACT This article explores how IDEMIA, a French security company, constructed an infrastructure for the identification and authentication services of the Colombian National Civic Registry (NCR) for more than 20 years of contractual relationships. The paper is divided into two sections. In the first part, we detail the history of infrastructure identification development by the NCR. The contracting model imposed a state action that allowed IDEMIA to grow together with NCR to create an infrastructure that ties all types of agencies and institutions as users of their technological solutions and services. By controlling the infrastructure and expanding its reach to other sectors, IDEMIA has been able to experiment with new technologies, such as a facial recognition engine and digital ID wallet, to generate new dependencies. In the second part, we expose three controversies in which the NCR has defended its exclusive competence against the National Police, the Government, and the private sector. Thus, it secured IDEMIA’s position as a key provider of technological solutions for the NCR’s public service. This case shows the commodification of legal identity, the entanglement of public and private interests that makes it hard to differentiate them, and the importance of historical analysis to explore the infrastructure power of technology companies.

Significance of the Fezzan Region in French Policy in Libya and the Sahel

For a hundred years, since the French colonization of Chad and Niger, the Libyan region of Fezzan has played a significant role in the French strategy in Africa. The determining factor in the importance of the region for the policy of Paris was played by the transnational processes of the Fezzan border. The ethnic proximity of Fezzan and the northern regions of the Sahelian countries catalyzed the Franco-Libyan clashes in Chad in the 1900s, when the colonialists faced the resistance of the Senussi order, which was suppressed only with the beginning of the Italian conquest of Libya. The desire of Paris to establish control over the region to ensure the security of its possessions in the Sahel and their connection with the Algerian departments formed the basis of its policy in the middle of the 20th century. The significant influence of the region on the Sahel after decolonization prevailed, most clearly manifested in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Libyan Arab Republic tried to use ethnic contradictions in Chad to establish its hegemony in the north of the country, which, in turn, led to a conflict with Paris, in which the Fifth Republic, thanks to skillful work with the tribes of the Libyan-Chadian borderlands. After the outbreak of the civil war in Libya in 2011, Fezzan regained its importance for French politics due to the emergence in the region of terrorist structures associated with transnational Sahelian crime, the Chadian opposition and the forces of other great powers. The article examines the patterns of the French strategy towards Fezzan, in particular the French security policy in the Fezzan borderlands. The study of the historical retrospective of French politics allows us to more thoroughly determine the motives and intentions of the strategy of the Fifth Republic in southwestern Libya at the present stage.

Soviet Espionage in France during the Cold War: An Overview

During the Cold War, France remained a soft touch for Soviet intelligence. Among the large communist population—war veterans and about 25% of the postwar electorate—Soviets found fertile ground for recruiting agents and collaborators who would betray their country, although it is fair to say most philosophical and political communists did not engage in espionage. Spy rings led by the State Committee for Security (KGB) and Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) controllers in the Russian embassy’s rezidence overwhelmed French security precautions. In addition, the Soviet espionage apparatus maintained an extensive infrastructure in the Moscow Center that supported quantitative intelligence collected in France on a massive scale. The addition of agents from satellite countries stretched French counterintelligence beyond its limits. All this is not to say that French security was completely ineffective. Security agencies unmasked spies and arrested hundreds for espionage; so too, hundreds of Soviets with diplomatic immunity were expelled. French security also benefited from consequential defections of Soviet agents and the crowning but fortuitous achievement of a mole inside the KGB itself. But poor French security exacerbated deteriorating relations with the United States and compromised North Atlantic Treaty Organization secrets. Regardless of the détente between East and West, Soviet espionage continued unabated.

A Student’s Guide to Map Making: J. Parlier’s 1905 and 1907 Cartographic Manuals

ABSTRACT In 1905, Jacques Parlier, a former artillery captain in the French army, published the first of two Méthode(s) de cartographie, cartes à main levée et de mémoire tracés rapides to teach French students how to draw maps. Parlier had become convinced of the centrality of geographical knowledge to French national security and interests. His manuals brought geographical and cartographical literacy to a generation of students in France. This paper examines those manuals, specifically in terms of how they were designed to present the cartographic craft to school-aged children, a new market for this discipline. Parlier’s strategy involved simplifying continents and countries to appear as geometrical forms and going on to focus on their physical attributes, such as rivers, mountains and coasts, thus encouraging teachers to lecture less and students to draw more.

A Comparative Study of the Reusable Mortgage Systems in French Civil Code and Chinese Civil Code

The rechargeable mortgage created by French security law reform in 2006 and perfected in several following security law reforms, and the maximum mortgage contained in Chines Civil Code are both relatively new type of security interests for related parties. Both of them are reusable for parties to secure debt other than the debt designated in the constitution contract. These new types of security interests maintain the safety value of the traditional general mortgage systems on the one hand, and strengthens the superiority of mortgage system on the other hand, by simplifying the procedures of constitution and realization, remarkably reduce the costs of time and money of usage. From the point of view of economic analysis, these new types of security interests not only conform to the economic criterion of Karldor-Hicks efficiency, but also play an important role for improving the guarantee ability and financing ability of domestic enterprises from either domestic financial market or international market, and further affect the evaluation of performance of the countries in the frame of Doing Business of the World Bank.

Pulled East. The rise of China, Europe and French security policy in the Asia-Pacific

ABSTRACT This article delivers the first post-Cold War history of how France – the European power with the largest political-military footprint in the Asia-Pacific – has responded to the national security challenges posed by the rise of China. Based upon a unique body of primary sources (80 interviews conducted in Europe, the Asia-Pacific and the United States; declassified archival documents; and leaked diplomatic cables), it shows that China’s growing assertiveness after 2009 (and national policymakers’ perceptions thereof) has been the key driver of change in French security policy in the region, pulling France strategically into the Asia-Pacific. Specifically, growing threat perceptions of China’s rise – coupled with steadily rising regional economic interests – have led Paris to forge a cohesive policy framework, the Indo-Pacific strategy, and to bolster the political-military dimension of its regional presence. By investigating this key yet neglected dimension of French and European security policies, and by leveraging a unique body of primary written and oral sources, this study fills an important gap in the scholarly literature on both European and Asia-Pacific security dynamics. The findings of this article also shed new light on the political and military assets that France can bring to bear in the formulation of a common EU security policy toward the Asia-Pacific and on the implications thereof for the prospect of a transatlantic strategy vis-à-vis China.

MSA, The French Agricultural Social Protection scheme

As the second largest social protection scheme in France, the Agricultural Social Mutuality (fr. Mutualité sociale agricole, MSA) is responsible for providing all compulsory social security coverage for the entire agricultural population and its beneficiaries, whether it concerns health, family, retirement, work-related accidents or occupational diseases. The MSA is responsible for collecting social security premiums and contributions, but also unemployment insurance and conventional contributions for many organizations1. It differs from other French social security schemes in that it provides a one-stop shop for individuals and companies to deal with a single contact person for all matters relating to their social protection throughout their lives. In addition to its basic mission, it carries out a policy of health and social action adapted to its population and is also in charge of occupational medicine and the prevention of professional risks in the agricultural sector. It can support all actions aiming to promote the coordination and the offer of care in rural areas2. As a mutualistic organization, the MSA is the expression of a responsible and supportive democracy at the service and in proximity of the rural world. The representativeness of its elected delegates, its knowledge of the territories and their stakeholders, and its role as a professional agricultural organization give it an indispensable expertise that allows it to work for the cohesion of the territories while guaranteeing access to quality public services. This expertise also enables it to be present abroad as part of formalized exchanges in European networks and international cooperation projects.

Strategic Research and the State Security and Defense Policy

As strategic research plays an important role in shaping and implementing the state's security and defense policy there is a need for institutionalized capability in this field. Institutes of strategic studies serve as primary institutions providing states’ authorities with expertise related to strategic problems. The article discusses the mission, organization and activities of the Institute for Strategic Research of the Military School (Institut de Recherche Strategique de l'Ecole Militaire – IRSEM). The article attempts to assess the role of the institute for France’s security and defense policy. The research has been based on critical qualitative analysis of publicly available sources on IRSEM mission, organization and activities. The analysis was reinforced by a short term internship of the author to the Institute in 2020. The results of research suggest that the scope of the Institute’s activities is broader than research activities. IRSEM importance for French security and defense policy stems also from its support to professional military education, outreach activities and so called “strategic succession”.

Alcohol consumption, economic resource and League of Nations pressures in French Syria and Lebanon (1923–1946)

Syria and Lebanon were declared French mandates by the League of Nations just after the First World War at the climax of a global prohibition, especially in the United States. Contrary to North Africa, Levant was already a great land of wine and arak production, especially through religious congregations. In that context, especially during the 1930s crisis, the French authorities were asked to protect and sustain the Lebanese vineyards, and more generally the alcohol levant economy. However, at the same time the administrators were pressured by Muslim lobbies and the League of Nations to ‘improve the social situation’ in the territories they had to manage, which could mean a stronger control of alcohol consumptions. In that context, alcohol regulation was a part of the paternal Republicanism that, according to Elizabeth Thompson, characterized the social policy of France in the Levant. How could the authorities manage these two different stakes? To try to answer, I have analysed the Lebanon newspapers from the nineteen-twenties in Saint-Joseph University and special issues on alcohol control, from French security services of the mandate, at the French Diplomatic Archives of Nantes (CADN).

Paris vs. Beijing: Confrontation on the African Continent

The subject of this study is the competitive relations in the political and economic spheres that have developed on the African continent in the 21st century between the French Republic and the People’s Republic of China. The author focuses on the main conflict-generating factors that caused the latent confrontation between the two countries that arose in the face of a changing geopolitical situation in the world in general and in Africa in particular. The methodological basis of this study is the comparative historical method; the work is based on the principles of historicism, reliability and scientific objectivity. Using the method of historical reconstruction allowed the author to trace the dynamics of relations between France and China over the past two decades. The work is based on the study of factual historical material, a chronicle of the events of the last decade; analytical materials published on the pages of French and Russian mass media were used. The author concludes that the basis of the conflict between Paris and Beijing lies in the desire of the Champs Elysees not only to preserve the political, economic and military-strategic preferences of France in the countries that were formerly colonies of the French Empire, but also to protect French interests in the English-speaking countries of East Africa. The rapid growth of China’s influence on the African continent, the ever more obvious expansion of the Heavenly Empire into the economies of African countries, forces France to change the paradigm of its foreign policy. If the predecessors of E. Macron, denying in words the policy of “Françafrique”, relied on the use of military force and covert operations of the French security services then the current head of the Fifth Republic in his relations with African countries prefers to use his resources on “soft power” politics. The experience gained by E. Macron during his first (not very successful) African tour in 2017 prompted him to change the tone of communication with the leaders of African countries from patronically arrogant to friendly and trusting.

Memeing and Speaking Vernacular Security on Social Media: YouTube and Twitter Resistance to an ISIS Islamist Terror Threat to Marseille, France

AbstractThis article intervenes in critical terrorism studies and conceptions of vernacular security to argue that social media has become an important arena for everyday constructions of terrorism and (in)security. Rich, multimodal, social media data provide important means to understand digital forms of everyday constructions of (in)security that discuss, subvert, and parody dominant terrorism and security narratives in the wake of the rise of the Islamic State group. Methodologically, this argument is pursued through a thematic analysis of a YouTube video authored by a French Muslim that defies an ISIS threat to his hometown of Marseille and the resulting, multiauthored Twitter response. By tracking this vernacular discussion of (in)security across social media platforms, this article demonstrates that, while some intertextuality exists, the crossing of platforms changes both the form and substance of security discussions. Within this, symbols, features and properties of the local urban environment of Marseille are the dominant symbolic resources that are utilized, reconstructed, and deployed to structure and subvert everyday discussions of (in)security. The dominant theme that crosses both YouTube and Twitter is that users perceive the French security services as impotent, and that resistance to ISIS can paradoxically only come from local vectors of insecurity, crime, and violence linked to the ongoing proliferation of organized crime in Marseille. This demonstrates not only that the ability of political satire to enable the powerless to resist the powerful applies in the context of (in)security but also that it enables the powerless to resist “powerful” coercive nonstate actors.

Проблема безопасности Франции после окончания Первой мировой войны

The article examines the scarcely-studied aspects of the phenomenon of the German-Bolshevik partnership as the main threat to French security after the end of the First World War. The nature of the disagreement between the right, moderate (centrist), and left parties regarding the understanding of the essence of security and approaches to its maintenance is analyzed. The author connects them with the specifics of the moment, the presence of dissimilar programmatic and ideological attitudes, as well as increased confrontationality, due to both external and internal factors.

French Cyber Security and Defence: Strategy, Policy-Making and Coordination

From Ministries to national agencies and cyber commands, the amount of public institutions involved in cyber security and defence matters is multiplying in most states, in a trend that reflects the pervasive nature of the domain. France is no exception, and it has in a few years conceptualized and adopted a comprehensive framework involving dozens of institutions and policy documents. Who does what? How are decisions made? How can we make sense of it all? The foundational work of Allison and Zelikow (1999) on decision-making adopts, for a specific set of events, three distinct models analysing respectively the state as a rational entity, its institutions, and their decision and policy processes. Applying these models to the current apparatus of the French government, the paper seeks to provide a preliminary toolkit for future case-studies. Although incomplete and imperfect, it would provide scholars, practitioners or journalists with a better understanding of: 1) the current French cyber security and defence apparatus and its funding political principles, 2) how policy-making in this area happens in practice, and 3) why policy decisions in that domain were taken. To do so, we combine an extensive review of the literature with a series of interviews with senior officials.

Great Britain in French Policy Conceptions at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919

ABSTRACTDuring the First World War, France and Britain forged the most intimate and comprehensive political, economic, and military alliance in history. The contributions of Britain and its Empire had been vital to France’s survival as a Great Power. A continuation of the wartime Entente was therefore pivotal to a wider strategy of embedding French security in a trans-Atlantic community of democratic Powers including the United States. But neither Britain nor the United States were ready to commit to using force to uphold the European order established at Paris. British political and policy elites reverted to pre-war cultural reflexes that prioritised Imperial considerations and assumed that France posed the chief threat to British interests.

Domestic and external sectoral portfolios: Network structure and balance-sheet contagion

This paper uses a unique comprehensive database on French security assets and liabilities to study the dynamics of domestic and external sectoral portfolios, their network structure, and their role in the propagation of shocks. We first show how the sharp deterioration of the net external portfolio position of France between 2008 and 2014 was driven by sectoral patterns such as the banking sector retrenchment and the increase in foreign liabilities of the public and corporate sectors, but was mitigated by the expansion of domestic and foreign asset portfolios of insurance companies. We also provide a network representation of the links between domestic sectors and the rest of the world, and document their evolution between 2008 and 2014. Second, we put forward and estimate a model of balance-sheet contagion through inter-sectoral security linkages. The estimation of the model through GMM shows that the financial sectors of the economy (banking, mutual fund, and insurance sector) are affected by balance-sheet contagion.

CHANGES IN FRANCE’S STRATEGIC CULTURE AFTER THE COLD WAR

The author of the article attempted to examine the main conditions and characteristics of the French strategic culture, a country with huge arms traditions and the high social authority of the armed forces in society. All this means that France has made a huge contribution to the development of theory and practice in the field of military art and strategy, as well as in shaping the order of international security. The main strategic documents of France and its activity in the international arena confirm the traditional line of French security policy and strategic culture. It is a political culture of a superpower conscious of its great past which still radiates into current and global relations of France.

Lydia Stahl: a secret life, 1885-?

ABSTRACTLydia Stahl was a spy for the Soviet Union’s military intelligence service known as the GRU. A polyglot who spoke at least five languages, Stahl was active in Helsinki, New York, and Paris from the early l920s until December 1933. At this time, French security agents of the legendary Deuxieme Bureau arrested her in Paris as part of a large spy network that included a married American couple. Despite her denials the French Court of Corrections sentenced Stahl to five years in prison, subsequently reduced to four on appeal, and then, after serving her sentence she disappeared from the historical record. On the eve of World War II her disappearance coincided with Stalin’s wholesale purge of Soviet institutions and organizations, including officers of the Red Army and its GRU. This article reconstructs Stahl’s life mainly based on extensive files of the FBI that reveal details of her espionage activities in New York and Paris. Additionally, the article corrects many errors and myths that unfortunately have been taken at face value and perpetuated in espionage literature.

Preserving Power after Empire: The Credibility Trap and France’s Intervention in Chad, 1968–72

France’s 1968–72 intervention in Chad constitutes a forgotten turning point in the Fifth Republic’s foreign relations. Interconnected institutions and treaties gave France a disproportionate influence over its African ex-colonies. French security guarantees underscored this system, however, whereby francophone African leaders continued to accept French economic and political leadership. French leaders discovered in Chad, however, that they had fewer choices and needed to dedicate more resources to fulfilling these commitments than President Charles de Gaulle had intended. Prosperous ex-colonies’ leaders judged French commitments’ value according to how France responded to crises in its least-valued ex-colonies. Thus, although French analysts viewed intervening in Chad as irrational from a cost–benefit perspective, they found themselves pressured into it.

Evaluation of the impact of terminating the reimbursement of a therapeutic class of drugs on the French health system: The example of symptomatic slow-acting drugs for osteoarthritis (SYSADOAs)

Introduction The French social security has had a balanced budget as a recurring objective for several decades, with a specific target on the National Health Insurance (NHI) branch. Over the past several years, efforts have intensified, with a continuing policy on decreasing drug prices, developing ambulatory care to limit hospitalizations or reducing the reimbursement of some specialists. Decreasing the reimbursement rate of drugs reduces, as a direct effect, the prescription and delivery of the targeted drugs. However, the substitution effect in favor of still reimbursed drugs should not be forgotten, because it could minimize the intended effect in economic terms as well as in terms of public health. The recent French decision to terminate the reimbursement of Symptomatic Slow-Acting Drugs for Osteoarthritis (SYSADOAs) is an interesting case study for the impact of terminating the reimbursement a drug from a collective perspective. The aim of the present study was to investigate prescription substitutions in favor of analgesics and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), both in terms of volumes and costs, as well as the occurrence of their potentially associated adverse effects (AEs) using a methodology based on access to national administrative databases. Methods To quantify these effects in the most exhaustive manner, French medico-administrative databases were used (EGB - general sample of beneficiaries; PMSI - program for medicalization of hospital information systems). Three study periods were considered to cover a potential historical bias: the primary period was defined around the date of reimbursement termination (2015/03/01), considering one year both pre and post cutoff; the secondary period was defined in the same manner around the date of the reimbursement rate decrease (35% to 15% on 2011/12/01); a control period was considered with a cutoff date (2009/03/01) chosen to reduce seasonal variations impact as comparator of the primary period. We defined the population on each of these periods on two criteria: they were at least 40 and had had at least one SYSADOA delivery in the year prior to the cutoff. We considered subgroups on the delivery persistence and prevalence. We performed comparisons for the following events, quantified in volumes and in costs: NSAID deliveries, analgesic deliveries, hospitalizations for cardiovascular or gastric causes, or for renal insufficiency, and surgery for arthritis. Results The analyses concerned respectively 19,345, 20,066, and 16,200 patients in the control, secondary and primary periods. Among the patients, 4345 were present in all 3 periods. The classification of patients according to delivery persistence remained stable over the three periods. We observed a decrease of incident patients. The volume of NSAID deliveries decreased over the three periods from a total of 40.5 (± 76.3) defined daily dose (DDDs) per patient in 2008 to 29.6 (± 66.4) DDDs in 2015. The number of analgesic DDDs increased constantly over the three study periods, from 70.2 (± 108.9) DDDs in 2008 to 76.9 (± 123.1) DDDs in 2015. Regarding the costs, there was an overall decrease over the three study periods of the amount reimbursed by NHI for all deliveries and for hospitalizations. The effects being quantitatively comparable in all three periods, it was not possible to conclude from these data that terminating the reimbursement of SYSADOAs had an impact on the French NHI. Conclusion The information available in medico-administrative databases makes it possible to study the impact of a change of policy in the reimbursement schemes by allowing the constitution of large representative cohorts at the national level. However, our results underline how the measured effects were restricted to those impacting NHI: OTC deliveries or out-of-pocket expenses were not evaluable with these data sources alone. Thus, the impact in terms of public health can only be partially measured.