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​ence​spo​.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