Ukraine and the transformation of French strategic imaginaries: The discursive reconfiguration of European strategic autonomy under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron (2017-2026)

European strategic autonomy before 2022: An aspirational project

Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron defines ESA in many ways, which evolve through his speeches. In fact, after his first election in 2017, the term “sovereignty” is much larger preferred to “autonomy” and is described as a necessary step to reach, in the context of a continent plunged in institutional and political torpor. He mostly focusses on identity claims of what Europe was or is (section A of the codebook), and what it should become, often opposing a vision of Europe seen and perceived as only a market, to the historical legacy of being a sovereign, united and democratic continent. In the early stages of his mandate, the central idea is one of shared values. Emmanuel Macron was elected after a series of major terrorist attacks in Europe, and in the context of general European political splits, accompanied by the rise of far-right parties across the continent. This debate around sovereignty is an important one, that has gained a lot of renewed interest in recent years. The literature mostly approaches the question from a post-functionalist perspective, focusing on the tensions created by the pooling of sovereignty between EU member states (Bora and Lequesne, 2023). In the context of European Integration being perceived negatively among conservatives in France, and those same parties holding an anti-European elite rhetoric, the strategy of Emmanuel Macron is interesting. Indeed, in these early stages of Macron’s presidency, sovereignty is still presented by various political forces as a political shorthand, a rhetorical device or a metaphor. From a constructivist perspective though, the analytical importance of those concepts does not lie in whether they have a clear institutional or legal meaning, but in the political claims they articulate. Whether European sovereignty is equivalent to “real” national sovereignty is irrelevant in that theory set. In the French case, the discourse takes a distinctive form, where European integration is not a dilution of national sovereignty, but rather a mean of preserving it and reinforcing it. The main threats identified by Emmanuel Macron in his 2017 speech are nationalism and “identitarian” political movements. In this framing, nationalism weakens the capacity of EU states by fracturing and fragmenting their strategic power. Isolationism makes them vulnerable in an international environment dominated by larger actors. European sovereignty or autonomy is therefore not a post-national project understood as an alternative to the state, but a collective framework through which national sovereignties are strengthened.

ESA is therefore largely described in those early stages as a project that would rebuild a certain idea of Europe and create a home for the values of its countries: democracy and unity among people. It is framed through an inward-looking diagnosis of Europe’s vulnerabilities. Macron frames the necessity for a “European refoundation” (refondation européenne in the text) (Macron, 2017) built around six key domains through which sovereignty will be built. Those six domains are security, migrant crisis, common foreign policy (mostly towards Africa), climate change, digital revolution and Europe’s industrial and monetary power (Macron, 2017). He described these as the keys to restoring Europe’s capacity to act in a changing environment. What is interesting here is that the emphasis is not on an immediate external threat, but on the need to strengthen internal political, economic and technological bases in Europe. At the same time, this early speech contains an important geopolitical premise: the gradual and “inevitable” disengagement of the US from European Security. While not framed as an abrupt rupture of transatlantic relations yet, this expectation is made unavoidable and presses the notion that Europeans should be in greater control of their strategic environment. In this sense, the early interpretation made by Emmanuel Macron of ESA is one where national strength is entirely tied to collective European capacities. Although it is described by him in this early period in relatively aspirational and institutional terms, this framework provides us with the conceptual base that will later be reshaped, as the European security environment deteriorates.

This evolution of the idea of presenting Europe as a collective aspirational project, towards a materialized security architecture is mostly visible through direct comparison between the Sorbonne speeches of 2017 and 2024. Moving away from the “refoundation” of Europe that would occur through collective ambition, the 2024 speech adopts a far more urgent vocabulary and a much more obvious solution to the threats identified. Macron states that “Our Europe today is mortal. It can die”, portraying Europe as a vulnerable strategic community whose continued existence can no longer be assumed. The evolution is significant because it shifts the scale of the threat, but also the referent object of security itself. The evolution is equally visible in the role attributed to France within this European framework. France is positioned as a political initiator, and propositional force. Macron rejects the historical image of French domination over Europe: “The time when France claimed to decide for Europe may have existed, but that is not what I wish to do. However, the time when France proposes in order to move forward with Europe and with all Europeans who wish to do so, that time has returned” (Macron, 2017). By rejecting this historical framing of France, Macron subtly rejects the idea that any new European framework that France would join, would be equal to French domination. In fact, Macron frames France more as catalyst for European political imagination, one among many countries who contribute to this refoundation. By contrast, as we will explore further in the last section of this article, the tone is drastically different from the 2024 Sorbonne speech. France is not just a state proposing institutional projects, but an important enabler of continental defense. The French military capabilities are directly integrated into the discourse surrounding ESA. In a few sentences, Macron conveys the central role that he envisions for French assets, not only to provide security, but to build this new security community: “France will play its full role in this. We possess a full-spectrum military model […] and we are also equipped with nuclear weapons […] Nuclear deterrence lies at the heart of French defense strategy. It is therefore by essence an indispensable element of the defense of the European continent. It is thanks to this credible defense that we will be able to build the security guarantees expected by all our partners across Europe, and which will also serve to construct a common security framework, providing security guarantees for each and every one.” (Macron, 2024) Here, the French strategic singularity is no longer framed as existing alongside European defense, but more as one of its foundations. The shift from “the France that proposes” in 2017, to “the France that materially underpins Europe’s security” in 2024, shows how ESA moves from an aspirational framing, into a operationalized continental security architecture.

By 2019, the discourse evolves and become more geopolitical. In an interview with the Economist (that will be mirrored with a follow up in 2024) Macron shift slightly for this inward-looking logic of refoundation, toward a reflection on strategic positioning in the international arena. The interview marks a turning point through two different shifts. Firstly, Macron calls for a “grammar of sovereignty”, which he ties to the idea of owning the tools that makes states sovereign, and that are only tools of sovereignty if they are somewhat in the hands of the state, as opposed to the hands of businesses (Anon, 2019). To illustrate this point, China and the United-States are presented as truly sovereign in that regard, showing how Europe risks becoming a spectator in the emerging competition between superpowers. In this framing, the threat is still not existential, and depicts more a gradual disappearance of European power, where European states slowly lose the ability to shape their own environment.

The second shift is in regard to the relational positioning with NATO. In spite of what is largely assumed, France is not only an important actor within NATO, but also one of its biggest contributors both financially and ideationally (Młynarski, 2024). France still plays the same card it has been playing since De Gaulle: solidarity with the Alliance is unquestionable, France’s level of autonomy does not allow it to secure its own interests, and any “European Defense” project is complementary to NATO. However, the quest for operational and technological autonomy should never stop (Młynarski, 2024). This is on this point that Macron tries to center his argument for ESA to exist. His controversial statement regarding the “brain death” of NATO (Anon, 2019) does not question the alliance itself, and its reason for existing, but the dysfunctional synergy and sometimes absence of coordination between its members. That comment came to be in the context of renewed tensions with Turkey in the Mediterranean, and its military operations in Syria which did not generate any meaningful consultation between NATO members. From a constructivist perspective, this remark signals an attempt to redefine the conditions under which European security is organized and how Europe can achieve the levels of autonomy Macron described. One can assume the objective was not to fragilize the alliance (already fragilized in that particular context, in France’s eyes at least, by the actions of Turkey) but to suggest that automatic reliance on the transatlantic alignment of European states, can no longer be assumed by the United States. Thus, marking the existence of not only a European military pilar within NATO, but also a separate European geopolitical perspective that needs to be heard. To push his argument of a stronger geopolitical Europe, Macron identified the return of competition in its periphery, notably with Russia. It is important to note that even if Russia is not seen as a direct immediate existential threat for the continent, Macron indirectly acknowledges the risk it poses, by acknowledging the historical threat perception of Poland and the Baltic states, thus at the same time acknowledging the importance of the US nuclear umbrella. However, Russia still appears at a revisionist regime whose assertiveness exposes the weakness of Europe in many different aspects. The emergence of the Russian threat (for western observers) in 2014, with the annexation of Crimea, is still not taken seriously. It serves to reinforce the argument for European Sovereignty, but within a framework where the main risk is marginalization, not continental survival.

A further evolution of the meaning of ESA appears in 2020, in Emmanuel Macron’s speech at “l’Ecole de Guerre” (War College). While the general meaning of ESA remains mostly the same as in the earlier discourse, one specific dimension begins to shift more clearly: the place of nuclear deterrence is this European strategic imaginary. Here, Macron explicitly makes French national sovereignty an “indispensable prerequisite” for genuine European power (Macron, 2020). As it is tradition in French nuclear doctrine, he emphasizes the importance of France’s role, situating its interests in a broader continental context. Ever since the “Livre Blanc” of 1972, it is known that the French nuclear arsenal exists firstly to protect the national territory, but also to protect “French vital interests” which always remained vague in their scope but have always been stated to go beyond national borders. In fact, before this official document, already in 1964 in instructions given to the French armies, Charles de Gaulle was stating that France would already be threatened if the territories of western Germany or Benelux were attacked (Tertrais, 2000). Here, Macron further broadens the scope of ESA, by inviting partners to a strategic dialogue to reflect on the role of French deterrence. In hist first “deterrence speech” of 2020, his proposition does not amount to transfer or sharing of nuclear authority, but it begins to symbolically Europeanize a traditionally national asset. By doing this Macron reinforces two of his arguments: firstly, that European power truly only exists through French power, and secondly that European sovereignty and national sovereignty do not exclude each other but actually reinforce one another. It is through its own national sovereignty, rooted in nuclear independence, that France can become stronger on the European stage. And it is only because France is a key actor in European defense, that its sovereignty as a national state can be respected by other major powers. To further strengthen the importance of nuclear deterrence, Macron uses the argument of the collapse of the INF Treaty posing a major threat to the continent and potentially re-opening the door to nuclear competition. France has always backed the United States on the question of the INF and has called out Russia when it violated it. France also does not take part in the NATO Nuclear Planning, even though its forces contribute to the overall security of the alliance (Młynarski, 2024). This ambiguity has always served France, allowing it to push this notion of a European pillar within NATO while, already in 2017, stressing how Europe’s capacity for action is only complementary. This rupture deepens the tone that Macron has been developing since its first election, while remaining in the broader pre-2022 conception of ESA. The threats identified are systemic rather than immediate, and the proposed response continues to revolve around augmenting Europe’s capacity for action. But the speech marks an important moment in the reconfiguration of strategic autonomy. Because even if, as we it was presented earlier, a European dimension of French nuclear power has always existed and its importance was recognized in the Ottawa declaration of 1974, it is now very publicly not a “national sanctuary” any longer, and it is cautiously inserted into the other merging debate of the Europeanisation of nuclear power (North Atlantic Council, 1974).

The war in Ukraine as a discursive turning point

The speech delivered by Emmanuel Macron in Strasbourg in May of 2022 marks a turning point in his discursive participation in the defining the meaning of ESA. This speech is his first long public discursive act after the invasion of Ukraine. It is a turning point, not because it fundamentally introduces many new elements into the understanding of ESA but because it transforms the status of those elements. In other words, what has been previously articulated as a political project of refoundation, centered around gradual change and negotiation, is now an immediate responsibility. The language of strategic preference is replaced by the language of obligation. ESA is not a possible path for Europe, it becomes in the words of Emmanuel Macron, a “historical task”, a “duty” (Macron, 2022). The war in Ukraine is therefore not the catalyst for a plurality of new initiatives or ideas, but it renders prior assumptions made on the necessity of strategic autonomy hard to argue against and forces the re-evaluation of what is required to ensure Europe’s security. In this sense, the turning point lies less in the emergence of new topics or deeper integration through a bigger pooling of common European assets towards strategic autonomy, but more in the reclassification of existing claims as urgent and necessary: vital rather than optional paths.

The shift is particularly visible in the way previously articulated themes have been reordered. For example, strategic independence, building Europe’s capacity to act or industrial and technological sovereignty are not replaced in the speech, but their importance is elevated by being moved from the periphery of a political aspirational ambition to the center of strategic necessity. The logic of European refoundation is therefore not gone, it is simply rephrased under new conditions of urgency. Instead of ESA being presented as an opportunity (that could be seized or not) born from within European states as a way for them to regain control over their strategic environment, it is now effectively imposed by external elements. Macron mentions a “Versailles Agenda” (Macron, 2022) which illustrates this point well: independence is domains such as energy, industry, technology or supply chains is no longer tied to efficiency and resilience in the face of great power competition, it is a direct condition to avoid being vulnerable. It is not just an adaptation to external events. It is a process of reconfiguration in which ideas that existed but that were framed as contingent are now framed as necessities. The war does not redirect the original trajectory of the discourse, rather it accelerates and stabilizes it, validating previous initiatives (at least from the perspective of French discursive actors) into imperatives. This catalytic moment allows for creating the conditions under which the meaning of ESA itself can be more profoundly changed, in the times that will follow.

Beyond the elevation of already-existing themes, Emmanuel Macron also extends ESA to new domains that were not very much tied to it before or were tied under the spheres of climate policies and general economic efficiency. It is particularly visible with the topics of energy and food security. While concerns were not absent from earlier discourse, they are now reframed through the lens of geopolitical pressure: dependance is not important because it creates inefficiency, but because it is a liability. This dynamic goes beyond the simple elevation of existing priorities, as it incorporates previously peripheral domains into the core meaning of ESA. Once again, the war does not generate an entire new pathway for what ESA is or should be, but it forces a reconfiguration of the scope of certain elements that were described as constitutive of ESA, in order to match the scale of the threat that Europe is facing.

At the same time, this particular discursive act seems to signal an initial reorientation of the strategic imaginary itself. Where Europe was before envisioned as a global actor who needed to regain economic strength to navigate international competition, the focus now shifts towards the defense of the continent. The speech still mentions competition and the necessity, for example, to reach carbon neutrality for the continent. But it also states that the war in Ukraine forces Europe to reimagine its geographical reality. The invasion asked the question of “what is Europe?”, forcing European leaders to ask themselves why their reaction was different now compared to the annexation of Crimea. The scale of the initial Russian attack in February 2022 forced a reimagination of the European security community, of its borders, both literally and figuratively. The necessity for the protection of Europe’s eastern flank signals an increase in emphasis on territorial security, as opposed to just contingency measures for hybrid attacks.

Another transformation can be observed in Macron’s evolving perception of strategic partners, a transformation we can imagine was precisely triggered by the invasion of Ukraine. By looking at his two interviews with The Economist conducted in 2019 and 2024, we can see similar interviews around similar strategic themes where discursive evolution can be traced comparatively. The coding conducted of those two interviews reveals a substantial increase in references to partners’ geopolitical positioning, particularly within the categories of Threat Framing (B1) and Relational Positioning (C1). This transformation reflects the broader shift in the proposed meaning of ESA made by France, redefining European security through a logic of political fragmentation and existential vulnerability.

This evolution is visible in Macron’s presentation of the United States. As already mentioned earlier, the 2019 diagnosis of NATO’s supposed “brain death” primarily reflected a crisis of coordination within the Atlantic alliance and the perception of US disengagement of European affairs. Therefore, the issue was not the relation with the United States or NATO directly, but rather the unpredictability of strategic consultation. By 2024, the diagnosis becomes more structural. And even though Macron adopts a warm tone towards Washington and the Biden administration, he presents the strategic divergence between Europe and the US as inevitable. He argues that “[…] the deep system does not take Europe into account” and concludes with: “in 10 years’ time, faced with these challenges, we Europeans must organize ourselves and be more autonomous, including vis-à-vis the Americans” (Anon, 2024). The difference is subtle but important: the US is no longer a failing guarantor of European security, but a distinct geopolitical actor who follows its own long-term strategic trajectory centered around competition with China, and whose interests might no longer align with the continent’s. This distinction reinforces the French attempt at defining ESA more as a structural necessity rather than a reaction to a temporary political tension.

Another drastic evolution can be seen in how Russia is framed. In 2019, Macron defends the idea of reopening a strategic dialogue with Russia to construct a new European “architecture of trust”. Russia is still largely imagined as a difficult but necessary interlocutor whose long-term interests could eventually meet Europe’s. By the 2024 interview, this entire conception is almost entirely gone. Russia is described as having adopted “a posture of non-compliance with international law, of territorial aggression and of aggression in all known domains of conflict.” Macron concludes unambiguously: “Russia, through its behavior and its choices, has become a threat to European security.” (Anon, 2024) This shift is the most important because Russia is no longer a challenge that exposes European weaknesses. The possibility of convergence is replaced by the language of open confrontation, the need for deterrence and the urgency of continental defense.

The same happens with European partners as well. Emmanuel Macron adopted in 2019 a more observatory tone. He expresses a form of general worry towards the UK regarding Brexit and the potential adoption of what he calls a Singapore-style model, he recognizes the way Germany handled the turn of the millennium better than France but also highlights that reforms are still needed for a system he qualifies as “not sustainable” (Anon, 2019). There is also a simplification is made in his analysis of Poland who he claims has, like Hungary, turned its back on liberal democracy. All of those considerations are completely ignored by the 2024 interview. The UK has become “a privileged partner of France”, and both Germany and Poland are framed as important defense actors: “We are seeing it today with the capability proposal put forward by the Germans, the European missile-defense shield. Or with Poland, which says it is ready to host NATO nuclear weapons.” (Anon, 2024) The importance of that evolution lies in the reconciliation of different strategic imaginaries. The French strategic imaginary developed by Macron imagines a lot more a common European security framework. ESA therefore evolves not simply through the projection of a French vision onto Europe, but through the gradual incorporation of multiple European threat perceptions into a broader continental strategic imaginary. In that sense, the invasion of Ukraine is the most important catalyst because it transferred a bit of the security imaginary of the states of the Eastern flank to the French one, with France acknowledging the threat perception of Poland and the threat that Russia is.

These elements confirm that 2022 is a turning point for the meaning of strategic autonomy. Not because new ideas emerged, but because already existing ones have been reordered and expanded under the pressure of crisis. While prior to 2022, European leaders could still perceive ESA as a contested political project, after 2022 it started to operate as a structuring necessity, setting the stage for a deeper reconfiguration, and giving the opportunity for France to push and potentially embed, its own strategic asset into the materialization of ESA.

European strategic autonomy after 2022: From discourse to security architecture

In the aftermath of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, ESA is indeed no longer articulated as political preference but as a condition for survival. The second Sorbonne speech given by Emmanuel Macron is 2024 is an excellent mirror to illustrate the shift. Not only of status and scale like in 2022, but in the core nature of ESA. Macron presents the war in Ukraine not just as an electroshock that should wake Europeans, but as an event that marks the end of a model that has been structuring Europe for decades. A model based on the assumption that Europe could delegate its security to the United-States, its energy on Russia and its production chains on China. The conflict being waged by a nuclear power whose landmass sits across Eurasia, Macron shift the perspective of Europe as an observer, to Europe as the place where the conflict happens, a new strategic environment where the continent itself is the place of confrontation. Following that logic, ESA is not an external goal to be reached, it becomes the only environment through which it will be possible for Europe to continue to exist, as political and security community. The reconfiguration that presented European states as “business partners” to then entities facing the same existential threats can be traced back to the vocabulary used. Macron refers to European states as one family, facing a common threat.

Indeed, prior to 2022, Europe is still very much described as a political and institutional construct: it is a market, a project, a collective initiative that needs to be improved upon. But then a qualitative transformation happens through a more existential vocabulary. It is no longer European interests that are in danger, but Europe as a political and social organization. The necessity of ESA becomes the necessity to protect a way of life, a specific community. It goes beyond the preservation of a political initiative. In Macron’s depiction of ESA, war targets the very conditions that make European democracies possible. Autonomy is no longer just an instrument of policy; it is a condition to a form of collective existence. This reconfiguration could be seen only as rhetorical. But by redefining the referent object of security, Macron reshapes the scope and legitimacy of the actions that can be taken it its name. In other words, the actions and initiatives that can be undertaken in the name of ESA can be of a greater scale if ESA is shown as a necessity on which the existence of European states depends.

Alongside the change in meaning, and referent object, the spatial imagination tied to ESA is also reconfigured. The need to defend Europe as a territory is increasingly present in the French president’s speech acts. A particular attention is given to the eastern flank of Europe and the identification of the Russian threat anchored on the continent itself leads to a reorientation of priorities: from global positioning to territorial defense. This does not mean that the ambitions that Macron has for Europe have been scaled down, but rather that they are subordinated to the immediate necessity to secure the European space. He also keeps pushing for the European Political Community initiative of May 2022 that has important geographical ambitions, in the sense that it would englobe many actors, such as the UK, the Balkan, the Nordics etc. Ukraine, is perceived as a central cog of this new meaning of ESA, positioned as an already-contributing actor of the defense of Europe. He even states that it is through this initiative that a new security paradigm can be built (Macron, 2024). This dual discursive move by Macron, territorial consolidation and geopolitical expansion, redefines ESA as a continental framework. It exceeds the institutional borders of the Union, and it is no longer just external projection of a common political and economic agenda: it becomes the organization and defense of a shared European space, a security community, built around a common security imaginary.

The transformation outlined above culminate in a final and decisive shift: the reconfiguration of French national strategic assets as constitutive elements of ESA. While most discourses made prior 2022 were putting an emphasis on the development of collective European capabilities, the invasion of Ukraine triggered a bigger transparency on the progressive integration of existing French assets into the conceptual and practical architecture of European security. Firstly, Macron invokes the national commitments made by France. Specific assets, such as the Rafale plane, are no longer presented as national industrial achievements, but as “European solutions”, that can serve as a base for structuring a common European defense.

However, the most important shift is the one surrounding nuclear deterrence. As already mentioned, the French nuclear deterrence assets have always been tied to a broader framework of European defense, both in the French national doctrine, but also by repeatedly stating that French nuclear assets participate to the defense of the continent through NATO, even though France is not part of its strategic command. However, in his 2024 Sorbonne speech, the link is made much more concrete. Macron describes it as being “by essence, an inescapable element of the defense of the European continent.” This contested idea (both within France and outside of it) of the “Europeanisation” of nuclear deterrence culminates in one of Emmanuel Macron’s most recent speech act made on the 2^nd of March 2026 on the French strategic nuclear base. This speech is the official “deterrence speech” of Emmanuel Macron’s second presidency, which contrasts with the first one in 2020. Here, Macron makes that Europeanisation process reach a new stage. Moving beyond the idea of strategic dialogue, he coins the term “advanced deterrence”, a new framework with direct material and strategic implications. At the doctrinal level, this shift is accompanied by a redefinition of the relation between France and European Security. Macron makes the distinction between “independence” and “solitude”, fully integrating European partners into the scope of French vital interests. Back in 2020, the discourse surrounding French deterrence was largely framed by logics of restraint and stability. Macron claimed that French nuclear policy remained tied to “our refusal of any arms race and the maintenance of our nuclear deterrent at a level of strict sufficiency.” (Macron, 2020) Similarly, he reaffirmed the centrality of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, describing it as “the only treaty capable of preventing nuclear war (Macron, 2020). Although France had already in the past hinted at the possibility of strategic dialogue with European partners, the broader framing still remained primarily defensive, stability oriented, and embedded in the traditional vocabulary of moderation. But in 2026, the speech shows a significant discursive evolution in the role attributed to French deterrence with a potential European defense architecture. It is no longer presented as a national tool that indirectly participates in European defense. Rather, it is articulated as a key component of a continental architecture. This shift is particularly visible in the formulation: “The advanced deterrence we propose is a distinct effort with its own value, perfectly complementary to NATO both strategically and technically (Macron, 2026). The vocabulary used here is significant. The notions of “distinct” and “own value” reinforce the specifically French and European character of the initiative, while the insistence on NATO complementarity seeks to reassure Atlantic allies and avoid presenting the idea of advanced deterrence as equating full rupture with NATO. The 2026 discourse marks a shift towards the operational extension of deterrence through European participation, joint capabilities and the integration of partners into a shared framework. The NVivo coding analysis reveals that the framing of French assets portrayed as enablers or European agency was absent from the 2020 speech, when it is quite central to the 2026 one. This includes not only the reinforcement and expansion of the French nuclear arsenal, (made in response to a deteriorating international environment, according to Emmanuel Macron) but also the proposal to spatially redistribute elements of French strategic forces across the continent, to create what he names “an archipelago of forces”. This would allow other states to directly participates in nuclear deterrence exercises.

In this sense, the evolution does not amount to an abandonment of the traditional French doctrine of independence, but rather a rescaling within an increasingly Europeanized security imaginary. This marks a switch between an implicit and an explicit Europeanisation of deterrence in which the protection offered by the French state is no longer just compatible with a European security framework, but it is constitutive of it.

Macron also uses his position to introduce new concepts around which the nature and architecture of ESA can be constructed. He mentions the introduction of a “épaulement stratégique” (strategic support/shouldering) where ESA would exist as a two-pilar model combining French nuclear capabilities, and shared European conventional capabilities. The proposed architecture would be centered around reciprocal security where partners would contribute through European initiatives like early warning (JEWEL: Franco-German initiative), air defense (SAMP/T: Franco-Italian system) and deep strike (ELSA initiative: multiple European partners, including France), among other things. This new configuration would allow Europe to manage conflicts under the nuclear threshold, while remaining anchored in the French deterrent. The explicit identification of a growing number of European partners willing to engage in this framework signals a shift from unilateral initiative to convergence. Taken together, these developments mark the reconfiguration of ESA into a more materially grounded and operationally structured security architecture. After this speech, it seems French national assets are not just aligned with European objectives, they are the central components of a continental system of defense and deterrence, through which the possibility of European sovereignty is articulated.