The French Armed Forces are the military forces of France. They consist of four military branches – the Army, the Navy, the Air and Space Force and the National Gendarmerie. The National Guard serves as the French Armed Forces' military reserve force. As stipulated by France's constitution, the president of France serves as commander-in-chief of the French military. France has the ninth largest defence budget in the world and the third largest in the European Union (EU). It also has the largest military by size in the EU. As of 2021, the total active personnel of the French Armed Forces is 270,000. While the reserve personnel is 63,700, for a total of 333,000 personnel. Including the active personnel of the National Gendarmerie, the total men power of all the French Armed Forces combined is 435,000 strong. A 2015 Credit Suisse report ranked the French Armed Forces as the world's sixth most powerful military.
Military doctrine is the expression of how military forces contribute to campaigns, major operations, battles, and engagements. A military doctrine outlines what military means should be used, how forces should be structured, where forces should be deployed, and the modes of cooperation between types of forces. "Joint doctrine" refers to the doctrines shared and aligned by multinational forces or joint service operations.
The law of war is a component of international law that regulates the conditions for initiating war and the conduct of hostilities. Laws of war define sovereignty and nationhood, states and territories, occupation, and other critical terms of law.
The Allied military phonetic spelling alphabets prescribed the words that are used to represent each letter of the alphabet, when spelling other words out loud, letter-by-letter, and how the spelling words should be pronounced for use by the Allies of World War II. They are not a "phonetic alphabet" in the sense in which that term is used in phonetics, i.e. they are not a system for transcribing speech sounds.
A blockade is the act of actively preventing a country or region from receiving or sending out food, supplies, weapons, or communications, and sometimes people, by military force. A blockade differs from an embargo or sanction, which are legal barriers to trade rather than physical barriers. It is also distinct from a siege in that a blockade is usually directed at an entire country or region, rather than a fortress or city and the objective may not always be to conquer the area.
Military operations other than war (MOOTW) are military operations that do not involve warfare, combat, or the threat or use of violence. They generally include peacekeeping, peacebuilding, disaster response, humanitarian aid, military engineering, law enforcement, arms control, deterrence, and multilateralism.
Humanitarian intervention is the use or threat of military force by a state across borders with the intent of ending severe and widespread human rights violations in a state which has not given permission for the use of force. Humanitarian interventions are aimed at ending human rights violations of individuals other than the citizens of the intervening state. Humanitarian interventions are only intended to prevent human rights violations in extreme circumstances. Attempts to establish institutions and political systems to achieve positive outcomes in the medium- to long-run, such as peacekeeping, peace-building and development aid, do not fall under this definition of a humanitarian intervention.
The term military medicine has a number of potential connotations. It may mean:
Air warfare must comply with laws and customs of war, including international humanitarian law by protecting the victims of the conflict and refraining from attacks on protected persons.
In international relations, violent non-state actors (VNSAs), also known as non-state armed actors or non-state armed groups (NSAGs), are individuals or groups that are wholly or partly independent of governments and which threaten or use violence to achieve their goals.
The International Institute of Humanitarian Law (IIHL) is an independent, “non-profit, humanitarian association having social values as its objectives”, founded in 1970 in Sanremo, Italy. Its headquarters are situated in Villa Ormond, while a liaison office of the Institute is established in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Geneva Conventions are international humanitarian laws consisting of four treaties and three additional protocols that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term Geneva Convention colloquially denotes the agreements of 1949, negotiated in the aftermath of the Second World War (1939–1945), which updated the terms of the two 1929 treaties and added two new conventions. The Geneva Conventions extensively define the basic rights of wartime prisoners, civilians and military personnel; establish protections for the wounded and sick; and provide protections for the civilians in and around a war-zone.
The HPCR Manual on International Law Applicable to Air and Missile Warfare was formulated by a multi-year project that was set up to restate the existing international laws applicable to air and missile warfare. The project was created in 2003 by the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard University (HPCR) after consulting with scholars and governmental experts.
Many legal assessments of the Gaza flotilla raid were published subsequent to the event. International law experts differed over the legality of the action by Israel. The force necessary to respond to violent resistance and whether the force that was used was proportionate were disputed.
The San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea was adopted in June 1994 by the International Institute of Humanitarian Law after a series of round table discussions held between 1988 and 1994 by diplomats and naval and legal experts. It is "the only comprehensive international instrument that has been drafted on the law of naval warfare since 1913."
The Tallinn Manual, originally entitled, Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare, is an academic, non-binding study on how international law, especially jus ad bellum and international humanitarian law, applies to cyber conflicts and cyber warfare. Between 2009 and 2012, the Tallinn Manual was written at the invitation of the Tallinn-based NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence by an international group of approximately twenty experts. In April 2013, the manual was published by Cambridge University Press.
Michael N. Schmitt is an American international law scholar specializing in international humanitarian law, use of force issues, and the international law applicable to cyberspace. He is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Reading, the G. Norman Lieber Distinguished Scholar at the Lieber Institute of the United States Military Academy at West Point, and the Charles H. Stockton Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the US Naval War College.
Lt. Col. Richard Brennan is a Barrister-at-Law in the Legal Service of the Irish Defence Forces (IDF) and former National Legal Advisor to the IDF during United Nations peacekeeping operations as a United Nations Military Observer. He is a legal scholar on international humanitarian law and the legal basis of peacekeeping missions.
The Stockton Center for International Law is an American research center at the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College. The center is focused on original research and analysis in international law and military operations. Predominantly, the Stockton Center has been involved in the review of various military manuals under international law, including the Tallinn Manual 2.0, the San Remo Manual and the Woomera Manual. Additionally, the center is responsible for the International Law Studies Journal, the editor-in-chief of which is the current Charles H. Stockton Professor of International Law, Professor James Kraska. The center routinely organizes workshops and seminars on contemporary issues in international law.
