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Power Under Dependency: Vulnerabilities in France’s Strategic Posture

Jonathan Thébaud
4 June 2026clockLong Read
French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech at the French Navy base of Toulon.

France's resilience: French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech at the French Navy base of Toulon. Image: Abaca Press / Alamy Stock

Beyond holding assets, France’s resilience depends on establishing credible access, prioritisation, and substitution mechanisms for critical materials.

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Jonathan Thébaud

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Footnotes

1.:

Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), Georgetown University, ‘Ministry of Commerce Notice 2024 No. 46’, 3 December 2024.

2.:

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, ‘China Suspends Export Controls on Certain Critical Minerals and Related Items’, November 2025.

3.:

‘US and Allied Radar Sites in the Middle East Struck’, ABC News, 3 March 2026; ‘Iran Is Hitting the Radars That Underpin U.S. Missile Defenses’, Wall Street Journal, 2026.

4.:

US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, ‘Qatar – AN/FPS-132 Block 5 Early Warning Radar’, 11 December 2024.

6.:

On logistics redundancy and contingency planning, see UK Ministry of Defence, JDP 4-00: Logistics for Joint Operations, 4th edition (Shrivenham: DCDC, July 2015); CICDE, DIA-4(C)_SOUT(2018): Doctrine du soutien, promulgated 5 July 2018, amended July 2022.

7.:

Macdonald Amoah, Morgan D. Bazilian and Jahara Matisek, ‘Over 5,000 Munitions Shot in the First 96 Hours of the Iran War’, Foreign Policy Research Institute, 16 March 2026.

8.:

Ministère de l’Économie, des Finances et de la Souveraineté industrielle, Plan national de résilience: terres rares et aimants permanents (Lacq, 5 May 2026), p. 8; SGDSN, Revue nationale stratégique 2025 (Paris: SGDSN, 2025).

9.:

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), ‘Beyond Rare Earths: China’s Growing Threat to Gallium Supply Chains’, 17 July 2025.

10.:

MBDA, ‘MBDA on Track with its Acceleration of Aster Missile Production’, 2025; ‘Royal Navy Deepens Aster 30 Air Defence Missile Stocks’, Navy Lookout, 22 June 2025.

12.:

European Commission, ‘European Critical Raw Materials Act’, March 2024.

13.:

Ministère de l’Économie, des Finances et de la Souveraineté industrielle, Plan national de résilience: terres rares et aimants permanents (Lacq, 5 May 2026), pp. ;10–13.

14.:

SGDSN, Revue nationale stratégique 2025 (Paris: SGDSN, 2025).

15.:

SIPRI, Trends in International Arms Transfers 2024 (Stockholm: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, March 2025).

16.:

UK Ministry of Defence, Defence Nuclear Enterprise 2025: Annual Update to Parliament, 22 May 2025.

17.:

UK Ministry of Defence, ‘Lancaster House 2.0: Declaration on Modernising UK-French Defence and Security Cooperation’, 10 July 2025.

18.:

‘Musk Ordered Shutdown of Starlink Satellite Service as Ukraine Retook Territory from Russia’, Reuters, 25 July 2025; Amritha Jayanti, ‘Starlink and the Russia–Ukraine War: A Case of Commercial Technology and Public Purpose?’, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, 9 March 2023.

19.:

Airbus Defence and Space, ‘Syracuse IV: Military Satellite Communications’, n.d.

20.:

‘Eutelsat and France’s Armed Forces Ministry Reach Landmark Agreement’, Euronext, 18 June 2025.

21.:

NATO Allied Command Transformation, ‘Federated Mission Networking’, n.d.

23.:

Ministère des Armées, ‘Operational Commitments of the French Armed Forces’, 2026.

24.:

CSIS, ‘Safeguarding Subsea Cables’, 2023.

25.:

Atlantic Council, ‘How the Baltic Sea Nations Have Tackled Suspicious Cable Cuts’, 2025.

26.:

Nokia, ‘Nokia Completes its Sale of Alcatel Submarine Networks to the French State’, press release, 3 January 2025; Agence des participations de l’État, communiqué, 31 December 2024; Alcatel Submarine Networks, ‘Our Fleet’, company website, n.d.; Louis Dreyfus Armateurs, ‘Alcatel Submarine Networks Renews its Trust in Louis Dreyfus Armateurs for Two New Cable Ships’, 26 July 2021.

27.:

Institut des hautes études de défense nationale (IHEDN), ‘ZEE française : comment sécuriser l’immensité?’, 2023.

28.:

Sénat, Rapport d’information No. 755 sur la protection et la sécurité des câbles sous-marins (Paris: Sénat, 2022).

29.:

Internet Society, 2024 East Africa Submarine Cable Outage Report (Geneva: Internet Society, 2024).

30.:

UK Ministry of Defence, ‘Lancaster House 2.0: Declaration on Modernising UK-French Defence and Security Cooperation’, 10 July 2025, section on maritime hybrid threats and critical undersea infrastructure.

5.:

Thierry Burkhard, Vision strategique du chef d’etat-major des armees (Paris: Ministere des Armees, October 2021); CICDE, CIA-01(A)_CEF(2020), Concept d’emploi des forces, 2 December 2020. The French military framework uses the triptych competition–contestation–affrontement, rendered here as competition–contestation–confrontation.

11.:

Sebastien Lecornu, ‘Declaration sur la situation au Moyen-Orient’, Assemblee nationale, 25 March 2026, in Vie publique, ref. 302589.

22.:

European Commission, ‘IRIS2: The EU Secure Connectivity Programme’, 2024.

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