File 03
Two summits, eleven years apart, and a reading that has not needed correcting.
In April 2008, at Bucharest, a Franco-German move coordinated with Moscow denied Ukraine and Georgia official candidate status for NATO. That same year, Henri de Grossouvre read the episode as showing America's relative geopolitical decline.
This is the most checkable file on the site, because it deals with dated events whose sequel is known.
The largest summit in NATO’s history is held in Bucharest. President Bush opens it by setting Ukrainian and Georgian membership as a priority for Washington. A Franco-German move, coordinated with Moscow, denies them official candidate status.
Henri de Grossouvre publishes his analysis the same year, in Revue Défense Nationale. The journal’s official English summary gives the conclusion: the episode is a historic event illustrating America’s relative geopolitical decline.
It matters where that phrase comes from. It is not a retrospective restatement by this site: it is the text the journal published in 2008, in its English version, and which remains consultable online.
Two consequences follow from the article, and both belong to the register of proposal.
The first is that Europe has more room for initiative than it grants itself. Bucharest demonstrates it: a coordinated Franco-German position produced an outcome contrary to the stated American priority.
The second is that this room only means something if it is organised. That is the thread he pulls the following year with Pierre Pascallon, holding that Greater Europe exists from the Atlantic to the Urals, that it therefore includes European Russia, and that it falls to the OSCE to carry the question of pan-European security — within an international conference still to be convened.
Eleven years later, in Revue Politique et Parlementaire, he reads the sequence running from the August 2019 Brégançon meeting to NATO’s London summit as the start of a French strategic shift.
Two lines are developed: re-engaging Russia as a European power, with a view to a common home from Lisbon to Vladivostok; and forming a political vanguard — France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg — in the service of strategic autonomy, in defence as in technology.
The article deals explicitly with Brexit and British defence cooperation: the United Kingdom’s departure from the Union is read there not as a loss for European defence but as a reconfiguration to be organised. One phrase sums up the diagnosis: Europeans have become the object rather than the subject of international relations.
The sequence finds an unexpected extension in June 2026, with a collective op-ed carrying thirty-two signatures. The subject is no longer NATO as an organisation, but the procedure by which a state commits itself.
Nine measures are put forward: constitutional reinforcement of Article 35, a legal definition of co-belligerence, a mandatory parliamentary debate on vital interests, and the possible use of a referendum for major strategic commitments. This is applied constitutional law, co-signed with parliamentarians, general officers and academics.
The transatlantic relationship is never handled through the lens of hostility. It is handled through the lens of asymmetry: who decides, who follows, and on what terms an ally stops being a client. That is a question of the balance of power, not of sides.
Revue Défense Nationale, n° 713
At the Bucharest summit of April 2008, President Bush set NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia as a priority for Washington; a Franco-German move, coordinated with Moscow, denied them official candidate status. The journal's own English summary calls the episode a historic event illustrating America's relative geopolitical decline. Written in 2008.
Revue Politique et Parlementaire, Libre opinion
A reading of the August 2019 Brégançon meeting as the start of a strategic shift. The article develops two lines: re-engaging Russia as a European power, and forming a political vanguard — France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg — in the service of strategic autonomy, in defence as in technology. It deals explicitly with Brexit and British defence cooperation. One formulation stands out: Europeans have become the object rather than the subject of international relations.
Revue Défense Nationale, n° 716
The authors hold that Greater Europe exists “from the Atlantic to the Urals” and therefore includes European Russia. They call for an international conference to settle the continent's disorder, and for pan-European security to be handled within the OSCE.
Le Diplomate, 32 signatories
A collective op-ed bringing together thirty-two signatories — among them Pierre Lellouche, Jacques Sapir, general officers and academics. The text calls for stronger parliamentary oversight of military commitments and puts forward nine measures, including constitutional reinforcement of Article 35, a legal definition of co-belligerence, and a mandatory parliamentary debate on vital interests. An institutional proposal, not a commentary.
Revue Défense Nationale, n° 694
A report on the symposium held at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg on 5 October 2006, organised by the European Academy, the Forum Carolus, the Rhine-Volga association and la Lettre Sentinel. The proceedings addressed the concrete instruments — industrial, technological, institutional — of European autonomy.
Revue Outre-Terre, n° 5 (2003/4), p. 263-274
Published in November 2003 in the geopolitics journal Outre-Terre. France is described as Europe in miniature: the only country belonging to both northern and Mediterranean Europe, with three seaboards. The article argues for a Europe able to defend its own vital interests rather than rely on the United States. The author returns to this France of both the North and the Mediterranean in 2021, speaking of a Rhine vocation and a Mediterranean vocation, and again in 2026 in the Nice op-ed.