ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews France's security policy after the Revolutions of 1989, single out the challenges France has to face in the long term, and discusses some possible options for the years to come. Since 1989, two recurrent themes have pervaded most discussions of French security policy after the collapse of the "Yalta System." First, policy has generally been assessed against the yardstick of the Gaullist experience. Second, building on that assessment, it has become commonplace to argue that France has fluffed its entry into the post-Yalta period. In the period immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, French security policy, to be sure, was essentially reactive. France's main security problem today, it can be argued, is that there no longer is much of a French problematique in security. In the light of the Euro-crisis, one is forced to ask whether Maastricht has been a failure for French diplomacy, and, more specifically, for French European security policy.
