ABSTRACT
Sovereignty has been a key word in the vocabulary of French political thought for centuries— one immediately thinks back to the writings of Jean Bodin. Although traditional debates focused primarily on internal sovereignty and its institutional expression, all parties thus saw a direct link between internal arrangements and the protection of external sovereignty. One of the most important messages the French received from the first president of the Fifth Republic was the idea that the defense of French sovereignty was a matter of will, and that it could be safeguarded without sacrificing those interests whose protection or promotion could no longer be ensured by France alone and required international cooperation. Defending French sovereignty is thus becoming once again an important motto of French policy. An attempt at recovering sovereignty could only lead to isolation, which would spell not independence, but, in fact, increased dependence on outside currents— increased irrelevance.
