Young people and war: a renewed patriotism?

How do French people aged 18 to 25 per­ceive war and the army? Would they be ready to enlist in the event of a major con­flict involving France? Anne Muxel answers these ques­tions, draw­ing in par­tic­u­lar on the study “Les jeunes et la guerre, représent­a­tions et dis­pos­i­tions à l’engagement [Young people and war: rep­res­ent­a­tions and will­ing­ness to enlist]” pub­lished in April 2024¹, which she con­duc­ted between Feb­ru­ary and Decem­ber 2023 at IRSEM at the request of the Centre d’études straté­giques aérospa­tiales (CESA/Armée de l’air et de l’espace).

Anne Muxel. For them it is some­thing that is both abstract and yet nar­rowly defined. This gen­er­a­tion has not exper­i­enced any peri­ods of war on French soil, but their close­ness to the mil­it­ary world is palp­able: 52% say they are inter­ested in mil­it­ary mat­ters, and 15% say they are very inter­ested. Vari­ous inter­me­di­ar­ies enable them to devel­op a good know­ledge of the army and of war – fam­ily trans­mis­sion of war memor­ies, the wider envir­on­ment when it includes mil­it­ary per­son­nel, school know­ledge, cur­rent events, but also films, TV series and video games that depict war in a some­times very real­ist­ic way. Con­spir­acy the­or­ies, to which a third of young people sub­scribe, also exert a real, if less expli­cit, influ­ence. These the­or­ies main­tain a con­flic­tu­al view of the world, and this view, even if based on dis­tor­ted reas­on­ing, seems to encour­age a large minor­ity of young people to become more curi­ous about armed con­flict. Para­dox­ic­ally, it gives them a cer­tain lucid­ity about the mil­it­ary world.

In their eyes, the mil­it­ary insti­tu­tion clearly embod­ies sev­er­al pos­it­ive val­ues: com­mit­ment, cour­age, and pro­tec­tion. The IRSEM study “Obser­vatoire de la généra­tion Z” pub­lished in 2021² shows that 82% of young people – though this is also true of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion – have con­fid­ence in the army, at a time when there is a gen­er­al crisis of con­fid­ence in insti­tu­tions: 80%, for example, express dis­trust of polit­ic­al parties, 60% of the gov­ern­ment and 42% of the police. The anti-mil­it­ar­ism that pre­vailed among the young­er gen­er­a­tions from the 1970s to the 1990s, par­tic­u­larly among young left­ists, has clearly dis­ap­peared. From this point of view, the end of com­puls­ory mil­it­ary ser­vice in 1997 marked a real turn­ing point. But oth­er factors have strengthened the cred­ib­il­ity of the armed forces, such as their involve­ment in the face of ter­ror­ism, or their inter­ven­tions in the human­it­ari­an field and dur­ing the COVID-19 health crisis. Today, 98% of young people con­sider the army to be use­ful (versus 78% in 1998). 62% of them also think that the intro­duc­tion of a new com­puls­ory mil­it­ary ser­vice would be a good thing.

It’s not absent from their minds, even if it only ranked 6^th out of their con­cerns, far behind glob­al warm­ing – which a large major­ity asso­ci­ate with an increased risk of war in the world. Most young people believe that war is likely in the com­ing years, and almost half of them believe it is pos­sible on French soil. Wor­ry­ingly, 6 out of 10 young people believe that a civil war could break out in France. This fig­ure shows that they are acutely aware of frac­tures with­in our soci­ety. They have also taken on board the nuc­le­ar threat: 69% of them fear it, includ­ing 27% who say they are very wor­ried. When asked what forms of aggres­sion France could be sub­jec­ted to, ter­ror­ism and nuc­le­ar attack come out on top.

It’s true: the Second World War is still the main frame of ref­er­ence for them. Their por­tray­al of war thus evokes very con­ven­tion­al forms of con­flict between nation-states, fea­tur­ing ground battles, tanks, deaths and the anni­hil­a­tion of cit­ies, and the images con­veyed by the media of the wars in Ukraine or the Gaza Strip rein­force this idea. Their vis­ion of war is one of destruc­tion and death. It is strik­ing to note, for example, that very few of them believe in “zero death” wars. At the same time, through fic­tion and sci­ence fic­tion, they have taken on board the threats posed by new theat­ers of oper­a­tion, such as cyber-space, but they don’t seem to regard them as wars per se.

Yes, young people say they want to play their part in defend­ing their coun­try and pro­tect­ing civil­ians. 57% of them say they would be pre­pared to join the army if France were involved in a con­flict, and 63% would fight as civil­ians if the coun­try were attacked. Just under half even say they would be pre­pared to sign up to defend a coun­try oth­er than their own, like the young people who left to fight in Ukraine.

Nat­ur­ally, these aver­ages con­ceal diversity. The gender divide is still a major factor: young women are still less inclined than young men to sign up for mil­it­ary ser­vice, par­tic­u­larly in the con­text of war (46% of young women say they are pre­pared to do so, com­pared with 70% of men). But 46% is already a sig­ni­fic­ant pro­por­tion! This rel­at­ively recent devel­op­ment among women is in line with the real increase in the num­ber of women in the French armed forces, which is one of the highest in the world.

The polit­ic­al-ideo­lo­gic­al divide also still exists, but it has become much more diluted, par­tic­u­larly with the dis­ap­pear­ance of anti-mil­it­ar­ism. So the tra­di­tion­al cleav­ages are still there, but they are smoothed out by a strong desire for engage­ment, com­mon to all social and gender cat­egor­ies and all polit­ic­al persuasions.

No, because I’ve shown in oth­er stud­ies that a will­ing­ness to get involved is char­ac­ter­ist­ic of this gen­er­a­tion. Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, they are not just turned in on their private interests and indif­fer­ent to pub­lic affairs. Recent sur­veys have shown that they are even more involved than older people, for example in envir­on­ment­al causes or in self-help net­works. These young people are the bear­ers of ideals that they want to see put into prac­tice: free­dom, justice, atten­tion to human rights, but also order and secur­ity. We often hear it said that they need dir­ec­tion; I would say more pre­cisely that they need a dir­ec­tion for the future. They lack a nar­rat­ive for the future, both in envir­on­ment­al terms and in terms of a vis­ion for soci­ety. Involve­ment remains a land­mark that makes sense in the way they see cit­izen­ship and their use­ful­ness in society.

Anne Orliac

To find out more:

• CEVIPOF ‘polit­ic­al con­fid­ence’ baro­met­ers: https://​www​.sci​encespo​.fr/​c​e​v​i​p​o​f​/​f​r​/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​l​e​-​b​a​r​o​m​e​t​r​e​-​d​e​-​l​a​-​c​o​n​f​i​a​n​c​e​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​q​u​e​.html

• Anne Muxel, Flori­an Opil­lard and Angélique Palle, L’armée, les Français et la crise sanitaire. Une enquête inédite [The army, the French and the health crisis. An unpub­lished sur­vey], Étude 95, IRSEM, June 2022: https://www.irsem.fr/media/5‑publications/etude-irsem-95-anr.pdf