ABSTRACT
Three decades after the end of the Cold War, the rationale that legitimises France’s arms-export policy remains in place. No anti-arms-trade actor – whether in the bureaucratic, civil or political arena – has yet managed to dent it. According to this doctrine, arms sales are indispensable to French sovereignty because domestic orders are not sufficient to sustain the broad range of independent, technologically advanced defence companies whose products make France sovereign in the security realm. The absence of political debate about the direction of France’s arms-export policy means that to a large extent the bureaucracy has been allowed to become the arbiter of export control. This situation has gradually led the defence establishment – politicians and civil servants alike – to conflate two aspects of the arms-export system: the rigorous bureaucratic procedures, and the policy orientation. Between 1997 and 2002 the Socialist government adopted a more restrictive approach, albeit only by making the bureaucratic process more complex.
