French military careers and European security integration: How internationalisation changes military socialisation

Abstract

This study uses qualitative data on the trajectories of French military officers to provide preliminary hypotheses on the internationalisation of military careers and the dynamics of international military socialisation. It is divided into three sections. The first section provides an overview of the structure of the French armed forces and gives details on the biographical qualitative methods used throughout the article. The second and third sections describe the types of internationalisation that occur during the first and second phases of military careers respectively. The article mainly contends that French officers are unprepared for the type of internationalisation they experience in the framework of European security institutions. In spite of prior experiences of international contexts, they are forced to learn most of their work on the job and to improvise in their handling of international interactions and negotiations. These findings are shown to have implications for debates in the sociology of professions and the study of European security integration.

Keywords

Biographical interviews European security France internationalisation military careers socialisation

Introduction

European security integration has puzzled social scientists for more than two decades (Krotz and Maher, 2011). Scholars disagree on the extent to which such integration has indeed taken place: some believe that European security cooperation has increased since the end of the Cold War; while others are ‘pessimistic that little, if any, meaningful security cooperation has occurred in Europe’ (Jones, 2007). There is also little agreement about the relevant explanations for these evolutions: neorealist scholars emphasise the role of the structure of the international system (Art, 2004; Jones, 2003; Mearsheimer, 2001; Posen, 2006; Rosato, 2011); neo-institutionalist authors focus on institutional mechanisms (Gegout, 2002; Güssgen, 2002; Howorth and Menon, 2009; Rayroux, 2011; Smith, 2004); and constructivist studies use cultural and normative dynamics as explanatory factors (Katzenstein, 1996; Meyer, 2007; Vennesson et al., 2009; Wendt, 1995).

While these theses all have their specific merits and limits, they tend to share a common limitation. By focusing on the ‘macro’ question of whether European security integration is indeed occurring, they tend to pay little attention to what happens at the ‘micro’ level of individuals. Sociological studies of the European Union (EU) have shown that, irrespective of the extent to which European countries are getting closer at the diplomatic and defence level, the careers and practices of some professionals have changed significantly over the last two decades. The creation of European institutions has led to an increase in the international mobility of experts (Robert, 2010), journalists (Baisnée, 2007), lobbyists (Michel, 2005), lawyers (Vauchez, 2007), civil servants (Georgakakis, 2013), diplomats (Buchet de Neuilly, 2009) and politicians (Beauvallet and Michon, 2010), thus altering the traditionally national patterns of their careers and socialisation (Hooghe, 2005). Working in European settings has also pushed these professionals to adapt their professional practices and norms to these new contexts. European integration has thus provided the impetus for a significant change in the structure of several professions.

These changes have also affected security professionals and particularly military personnel. Since the Second World War, European armed forces have been subject to a strong professionalisation (Genieys et al., 2001; Irondelle, 2011; Joana, 2012) and internationalisation (Cross, 2011, 2013; Mérand, 2008). Officers now work in a wide variety of international settings in the course of their careers (Table 1). These forms of internationalisation, which vary in their objectives (military training, institutional cooperation, and multinational operations) and geographical scope (from two to more than forty countries), have deeply changed the shape of military careers, socialisations and networks, which used to be strongly structured by the national framework.

Table 1.

Examples of forms of European military cooperation.

Military cooperation	Countries	Type	Creation
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation	Europe, North America	Institutional Educational	1949
European Union (EU)	EU	Institutional Educational	1999
Multinational operations	Variable (maximum of 44 nations involved in the United Nations Protection Force)	Operational	1990s, 2000s
Eurocorps	Belgium, France, Spain, Germany, United Kingdom, Luxemburg	Operational	1995
Franco-German brigade	France, Germany	Operational	1987
German–Dutch Corps	Germany, Netherlands	Operational	1995
Bilateral agreements between national military schools (student exchange programmes, etc.)	Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom	Educational	1990s, 2000s
Lancaster House agreement	France, United Kingdom	Operational Educational	2010

This article argues that this strong internationalisation of key security actors is of interest to social scientists as it raises two sets of questions. The first has to do with the sociology of professions: What are the profiles of the military actors who work in international settings? How valuable are these positions for their careers? How does internationalisation change the training, socialisation, and work practices of a profession that has historically been, perhaps more than any other, closely tied to the state? Prior literature has suggested that internationalisation is often an elite endeavour: dominant professionals at the national level use international positions to accumulate more resources and strengthen their national position, thus fuelling elite reproduction (see, for the case of military officers Andreotti et al., 2010; Dezalay, 2004; Dezalay and Garth, 2002; Mérand and Barrette, 2013; Sklair, 2001; Wagner, 2007). Other studies have argued otherwise and suggested that internationalisation leads to the rise of new professional profiles: like other types of activities, internationalisation implies the learning of specific knowledge and skills, which some elites, distinct from national ones, specialise in, thus parting company from national career patterns (Beauvallet and Michon, 2010; Georgakakis and De Lassalle, 2007; Vauchez, 2007). This article will contribute to this debate by showing that, in the case of military officers, internationalisation acts as a professional resource as much as a constraint – a double-edged sword for military elites.

The second series of questions relates to the study of international relations: How does the increasing internationalisation of the armed forces affect inter-state relationships? What role does this phenomenon play in the development of European security integration? Constructivist and sociological studies of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) institutions have often argued that military internationalisation contributes to an increase in state cooperation: through international socialisation, military actors of European security develop a ‘common culture’ (Bagayoko-Penone, 2006; Haltiner, 1994; King, 2006; Meyer, 2007; Pajon, 2003) which, in turn, paves the way for the development of networks and ‘epistemic communities’ that work to increase European security integration (Cross, 2011, 2013; Haas, 1992; Howorth, 2004). Other studies, mainly concerned with multinational military operations, have argued otherwise: they have described national cultures as institutionalised and strong enough to impede military cooperation and render international military interactions dysfunctional (Palin, 1995; Soeters et al., 2003; Vennesson et al., 2009). This article will contribute to this debate by showing that, irrespective of the fact that officers may in the long term become socialised to a ‘common culture’, their first international experiences are marked by an improvisation that does not work in favour of European security cooperation. Officers appear to be unprepared for the type of internationalisation they experience in the framework of European security institutions. In spite of prior experiences of international contexts, they are forced to learn most of their work on the job and to improvise in their handling of international interactions and negotiations.

These arguments rest on a sociological analysis of the careers of military officers, using exploratory qualitative data on the French case. These data allow me to provide preliminary hypotheses on the internationalisation of military careers and its effects on the dynamics of military socialisation – understood as the way in which a given society ‘shapes and transforms individuals’ (Darmon, 2006) – and their implications for the study of professions and European security integration. The article is divided into three sections. The first section provides an overview of the structure of the French armed forces and provides details on the data collection methods and analysis. The second and third sections describe the types of internationalisation that occur during the first and second phases of military careers respectively.

The structure of the French armed forces

Military internationalisation has to be understood in relation to the general structure of the military field and careers. It is worth noting, first, that officers are unevenly distributed across the three branches of the French armed forces: the army; the navy; and the air force (Table 2). The army provides more than half of these personnel while the air force and especially the navy are weaker in quantitative terms.

Table 2.

Numbers of military officers in the branches of the French armed forces (Secrétariat Général pour l’Administration, 2015).

	Numbers	Percentage of officers/total number of officers	Proportion of officers/total number of staff in the branch
Army	15,830	57%	13.8%
Air force	7,217	26%	15.5%
Navy	4,759	17%	12.7%
Total	27,806	100%	14% (mean)

Officers’ careers are also strongly structured by a formalised hierarchy of military ranks and a set of training institutions. The ranks are not the same in the different branches of the armed forces and can be broken down into three categories: junior; senior; and general officers (Table 3). These three categories are linked to three different types of activities: broadly, junior officers are mostly involved in operational activities in the framework of troop units, while senior and general officers more often work in military institutions and administration.

Table 3.

List of military ranks.

	Army, Air force	Navy
General officers	General of the Army/Air Force	Admiral
	Lieutenant General	Vice-Admiral
	Major General	Rear-Admiral
	Brigadier	Commodore
Senior officers	Colonel	Captain
	Lieutenant-Colonel	Commander
	Major	Lieutenant-Commander
Junior officers	Captain	Lieutenant
	Lieutenant	Sub-Lieutenant
	Second-Lieutenant	Acting Sub-Lieutenant
	Officer	Midshipman

These three series of ranks are linked to three levels of military training (Table 4):

To reach the status of junior officer, individuals may go through two different types of school. The first – the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr, the École de l’Air and the École Navale – aim to train future military elites over a three-year course. They select their students on the basis of competitive examinations which may be taken after completing a baccalauréat and two years of preliminary training in a classe préparatoire aux grandes écoles. The others – the École Militaire Interarmes, the École Militaire de l’Air and the École Militaire de la Flotte – are less prestigious and essentially select their students among lower-ranking military personnel. They offer a two-year curriculum and their graduates often have slower career progressions than their elite counterparts. After this initial education, both elite and non-elite junior officers are given a year’s training specialising in the handling of a specific weapon, the most prestigious of these (infantry and cavalry) being reserved for the elite fraction of junior officers (Coton, 2012).

While the first level of education is specific to each branch of the armed forces, the second level is common to all of them. The École de Guerre selects its students among army, air force and navy junior officers through a competitive examination. It aims to train future senior officers by providing training in command skills.

The third level of training is the pathway to the ranks of general officers. It is delivered by the Centre des Hautes Études Militaires and the Institut des Hautes Études de Défense Nationale. Again, students are selected through a competitive examination among senior officers by all three branches of the armed forces.

Table 4.

Military schools.

	Army		Air force		Navy
3rd level	CHEM / IHEDN
2nd level	École de Guerre
1st level	Saint-Cyr	EMIA	École de l’Air	EMA	École Navale	EMF

Because of these multiple divisions (between officers of different ranks, from different branches of the armed forces, and trained in different schools), military officers experience diversified types of internationalisation. As shown in Table 1, their internationalisation may take place in the framework of training, operational or institutional settings. Because of their diversified background and socialisation, military officers interact with these international settings in different ways. To develop a full understanding of military internationalisation, one should therefore interview a large sample of officers from different backgrounds and involved in different types of international military settings.

Meeting these requirements is not easy. Sociologists who work on military personnel are not entirely free to control their sample. As some authors have pointed out (Pajon, 2005), researchers often have to approach military troops and staff via their commanding officer, who then chooses among his underlings for interviews. Although the researcher may be in a position to set some criteria, as I was, he is not entirely free to select his own interviewees. Because of these constraints and the fact that this inquiry still has an exploratory status, the sample on which it rests is not as diversified as one might wish. However, my sample still comprises military officers of different ranks, from the three branches of the armed forces and from both elite and non-elite schools (Table 5).

Table 5.

Sample.

Interview	Branch	Rank	Training	École de Guerre
1	Air	Colonel	École de l’Air	Yes
2	Air	Colonel	École de l’Air	Yes
3	Air	Major General	École de l’Air	Yes
4	Navy	Commodore	École Navale	Yes
5	Navy	Commodore	École Navale	Yes
6	Navy	Captain	École Navale	Yes
7	Navy	Commander	École Navale	No
8	Navy	Captain	École Navale	No
9	Navy	Captain	École Navale	Yes
10	Army	Colonel	École Militaire Interarmes	No
11	Army	Colonel	Saint-Cyr	Yes
12	Army	Lieutenant-General	Saint-Cyr	Yes
13	Army	Major-General	Saint-Cyr	Yes
14	Army	Lieutenant-Colonel	Saint-Cyr	Yes
15	Army	Colonel	Saint-Cyr	Yes

Difficulties in controlling the structure of the sample are not the only problems one encounters when interviewing military elites. As Deschaux-Beaume (2012) underlines, researchers undertaking qualitative research in the military field face classical issues related to elite interviewing (e.g. difficulties in setting the pace and direction of the interview, symbolic violence in the context of the interaction, gaps between the words and practice of social actors, etc.) as well as more specific problems linked to the type of data provided by the interviewees (access to and use of classified information). The researcher therefore ‘has to make use of reflexivity when using the data collected in this way and to bear in mind the inherent limits to any social science research based on recurrent qualitative interviews’ (Deschaux-Beaume, 2012: 112).

These difficulties contribute to giving this article an exploratory status: given its sample, some aspects of the phenomenon under study (e.g. multinational operations) are not as well documented as others (e.g. exercises and manoeuvres). In spite of these shortcomings, the use of interviews enabled me to gather original data and preliminary results on the process of military internationalisation. The following sections outline some characteristics of this process by looking both at the place and social value of internationalisation in the course of French officers’ careers, and at the international socialisation of these officers. Internationalisation occurs during both the first (junior officer ranks) and second phases of military careers (senior and general officer ranks). However, it does not appear to be equally prestigious at all career stages and in all branches of the armed forces. The following section discusses this variation.

The first phase of military careers: widespread internationalisation, limited international socialisation

Military officers already experience internationalisation in the course of their initial training and, subsequently, during the operational phase of their career. This experience is characterised by a certain amount of differentiation across the branches of the armed forces. It is also framed by a series of mechanisms and norms that standardise international interactions.

Initial training and the differentiation of internationalisation across the branches of the armed forces

The interviews first revealed a difference between the branches of the armed forces in their relationship to international settings. On the one hand, navy and air force officers argue that internationalisation is part of their ‘culture’ and describe their careers as internationalised at a very early stage and in an intensive way. On the other hand, members of the army see the international as a late and marginal part of their career. This difference is significant in the context of inter-service rivalries: for navy and air force officers the international character of their profession is a way to distinguish their services from the quantitatively dominant army (see Table 2). The symbolic weight of this distinction, which was spontaneously and systematically evoked by navy and air force interviewees in the early stages of their interviews, is all the more important in that it sometimes comes with a stigmatisation of army personnel as not being sufficiently educated to handle international interactions. By contrast, army officers only make marginal references to the practices of other branches of the armed forces when evoking their own international experiences:

‘First, as you can see, I am a navy officer. So I would say that my profession is intrinsically international, because as a navy officer you make many stops in foreign countries, and your training school is hosted by the school vessel Jeanne d’Arc (…). At that time, you make about 15 to 20 stops in foreign countries. So obviously, as navy officers, we have a slightly different kind of link to the international, as it is part of our culture and our basic training.’ (Navy, Captain, École Navale, École de Guerre – 8)¹

‘What is very obvious from the air force point of view is that [international interactions] don’t pose any problem (…). In the aeronautical environment, people maybe have a bit more education. Moreover, professional language is relatively circumscribed, we always use the same words, especially for certain kinds of attacks. So we don’t need Shakespeares. In the army, it is more complicated, you have to communicate, you have to, you know, and they don’t all come out of Polytechnique so they won’t necessarily understand each other.’ (Air force, Colonel, École de l’Air, École de Guerre – 1)

International socialisation thus takes different paths in the different branches of the armed forces. Navy officers mention their early geographical mobility, organised during their initial training at the École Navale, with frequent stops abroad. As these visits lead them to interact formally and informally with foreign military personnel, they give them an early sense of international interactions at a personal and professional level. Navy officers thus claim an ability to be spontaneous in their relationships with foreign individuals and contexts. By contrast, internationalisation in air force and army schools happens in the shape of student–officer exchanges. Different types of such exchanges have been developed since the 1990s (Augé, 2008; Hamelin, 2003). The first enables future officers to interact with their foreign counterparts during short stays in military schools abroad or when hosting foreign officers at their own institution. These exchanges, however, remain sporadic and do not seem to have much effect in terms of socialisation. Another type of exchange appears to be more significant, as well as more selective. A minority of French student officers are given the opportunity to spend a lengthy part of their training in foreign military schools – while French academies themselves also host foreign student officers. These exchanges, which involve EU and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) members as well as some other countries, have become increasingly institutionalised in recent years. In Europe, for example, they have been formalised since 2008 into the ‘European Initiative for the Exchange of Military Young Officers’ (or ‘military Erasmus’), organised by the European Security and Defence College. Taking part in these exchanges is conditional upon them having specific resources such as language skills and academic aptitude, with specifically military skills being only marginally taken into account. Like access to prestigious weapons, internationalisation is thus reserved for an elite fraction of future officers, whose dominant position is linked to their accumulation of non-specifically military skills:

‘In military schools, for example at the École de l’Air, we have international exchanges with the US Air Force Academy (…). It is a six-month exchange, imbedded. (…) I didn’t take part in it, I was first on the reserve list. (…)

Q: How did they select the participants?

A: The selection was made on the basis of rankings, corrected rankings. It is not the École de l’Air ranking but a weighted one, with a high coefficient on English, on academic aptitude, and then military skills, etc. All criteria are taken into consideration, but English is the key element. There are three English groups: all those who are not in the top level group cannot go to the United States. Among the remaining candidates, the selection is made on the basis of academic results.’ (Air force, Colonel, École de l’Air, École de Guerre – 2)

This internationalisation is highly valued and considered a prestigious achievement by the interviewees. However, for most junior officers their main experiences of internationalisation take place in the context of multinational exercises and operations. These involve most, if not all the officers of a given generation.

Operational internationalisations and the standardisation of interactions

After their training in military schools, many officers experience international interactions in the course of the first, operational, phase of their career. Multinational exercises and operations indeed provide a chance for most officers to interact with their foreign counterparts. However, these frequent international interactions appear to be relatively neutralised by a series of mechanisms. First, the fact that junior officers occupy a low position in the chain of command limits the extent to which they can freely interact with their foreign counterparts, as their actions are strictly limited to the execution of a series of precise orders. Second, the fact that these operations imply the use of specific and technical knowledge keeps some of these interactions away from geopolitical discussions and intercultural negotiation – though, as will be shown below, this varies across different branches of the armed forces. The officers’ technical competences therefore act as a standardisation tool for international interactions:

‘When you are a junior officer, you meet your international counterparts but it is essentially to prepare exercises, you have no perception of arm deals, export support or high diplomacy, you just remain at a rather technical level where you share procedures and exercises. I remember doing many mine war exercises, and I shared mine war procedures with my English, Dutch and German colleagues. At that time we had essentially technical and expert discussions. We sometimes had joint training: we attended the same mine war school for a few weeks and the same training in Brest. So your approach is that of a technician or an expert in one given domain.’ (Navy, Captain, École Navale, École de Guerre – 9)

This standardisation is strengthened by the fact that it is institutionalised in the shape of formal norms produced by NATO. Even though they may involve personnel from several countries, multinational operations and exercises are seen as relatively straightforward as long as they are governed by this set of norms. These rules are articulated in the shape of a ‘metalanguage’ that facilitates exchanges and neutralises the international character of the environment. Situations therefore become relatively undifferentiated. Similarly, the fact that military officers apply these norms to both NATO and EU operations leads to a relative lack of differentiation of these two contexts. As they restrict officers’ room for manoeuvre in the framework of international interactions, NATO norms act as standardisers and neutralisers of international contexts:

‘In the air force, NATO norms are so well-known that there is no problem for… When you make a raid, you can have planes of different nationalities being part of the raid. In short, you can have an American plane in front, a German plane in charge of electronic war, French planes launching bombs and Dutch planes protecting the others. With Spaniards in charge of the whole thing.’ (Air force, Colonel, École de l’Air, École de Guerre – 1)

‘Then you enter the NATO world. It’s true that it’s quite simple for navy officers as we have naturally been cradled in the NATO world since the beginning. All our tactical procedures are conducted according to NATO documents and standards. (…) During operations and also exercises, it’s almost a NATO language. It’s a metalanguage, that of NATOnia. If we do a mine war exercise – it’s called “Mike Whiskey”, it’s a convention – then the entire exercise is conducted along Mike Whiskey guidelines. So we give orders to boats using an ATP code (allied tactical procedure). It’s extremely simple and easy for members of the navy, and I think pilots have something rather similar. It may be less the case in the army. But we have been raised in the international and NATO world since the beginning. Then, for sporadic things, we have maybe been raised in the EU world (…).

Q: Is this different from NATO exercises?

A: No, it’s always the same thing. It’s in English, using NATO procedures, and the messages and missions are sent in the same way. (…) It’s not a different state of mind, everyone sees things in the same way.’ (Navy, Captain, École Navale, École de Guerre – 9)

As in the case of initial training, these routine forms of internationalisation go together with a few elite international exchanges, which also seek to improve the transnational standardisation of military practices. Thus, selective exercises, such as the ‘Red Flag’ for the air force and the Navy Fighter Weapons School, gather officers from several dozen nationalities in order to undertake intensive training missions using NATO norms and procedures. While statistical data would be needed to assess the scope of this phenomenon in a more precise way, our qualitative data suggest that these exercises contribute to the structuring of an international military elite, in the sense that many of those who took part in these exercises had already been involved in selective exchanges at the initial training level.

While this NATO standardisation is at work in all three branches of the armed forces, its hold seems to be uneven. On the one hand, navy and air force officers indeed presented international interactions as natural and NATO norms as a distinctive ‘part of their culture’. On the other hand, the army interviewees did not take international interaction for granted and experience a strong sense of otherness when working with foreign counterparts – thus echoing the results of previous studies on ‘national military cultures’ (Soeters et al., 2003) and their impact on the effectiveness of multinational operations (Elron et al., 1999; Soeters and Manigart, 2008; Vennesson et al., 2009). In order to reduce and manage this sense of otherness, officers appear to use heuristics based on a categorisation of foreign troops. The behaviour of soldiers and officers of a given nationality is thus systematically typified and described as more or less suited to the conduct of a given mission. In several cases, this categorisation of international contexts draws on stereotypes commonly associated with the nations in question:

‘When you are in the field, you can end up with a company of Nepalese sappers attached to the UN military group. For us, it is another way of thinking, of living, of commanding. We are always convinced – because we are European and proud to be, French, Western… We always wonder how they manage to work because we have the impression of seeing disorderly actions, not really commanded. How does it work? And still, it works… (…) We know that certain nations, nationalities, certain armies do not work in the same way as we do. (…) It’s an anecdote but when we come across Germans during operations, there is always the legendary German order: we know it’s German, so it must all be very rigorous. And then when you talk to them, there is a form of… not frustration, but you feel that they are at the same time very rigorous and reluctant to be too much so, become they have a complex… The weight of history means that, when we interact with Germans, it’s always peculiar.’ (Army, Lieutenant-Colonel, Saint-Cyr, École de Guerre – 14)

The data thus hint that during the first phase of officers’ careers, military internationalisation is linked to the possession of a particular kind of cultural capital. Academic skills are indeed a key factor to accessing an elite type of international career path. Besides, the mastery of specific technical and scientific knowledge is essential to the neutralisation of international contexts and to the command of NATO norms that structure military operational interactions. In the cases where this normative environment has a weaker hold on individuals – notably within the army – technical skills become less relevant for handling interactions. They then make way for spontaneous categorisations of foreign troops, fuelled by common stereotypes. This observation leads us to question the way in which military officers handle international interactions during the second part of their career, as technical skills then tend to become less central for the tasks they are in charge of. The following section tackles this question.

The second phase of military careers: marginalised internationalisations and improvised interactions

During the second part of their careers, military officers experience a different kind of internationalisation in the context of international security institutions. Compared to their previous experiences, this internationalisation appears to involve relatively marginalised officers and to be more improvised than prepared and standardised.

International security institutions as marginalised career paths

The data show that internationalisation does not hold the same status for senior officers as it did in the earlier stages of their careers. While in the first part of their careers internationalisation tended to take universal (through multinational exercises and operations that potentially involved all military officers of a given generation) and elite forms (in the shape of international exchanges only accessible to officers with specific types of resources), it appears to be reserved to a relatively small and less prestigious proportion of officers in the second part of their careers. The interviewees indeed unanimously characterised international careers as far from the most ‘noble career pathway’ that leads to the prestigious position of Chef d’État-Major des Armées – the French equivalent of the British Chief of the General Staff. Even if they frequently mentioned the case of General Stéphane Abrial² as a counter-example, the interviewees systematically described international career pathways as ‘consolation prizes’ or ‘dead-end streets’ which offer career opportunities to those officers who have not been successful enough at the national level:

‘Many of those who really commit to the international relations track, it’s… It’s often their choice. Some of them realised that their career was starting to take a wrong turn and thought ‘if I am to continue working within the armed forces, I might as well do something fun and travel around’. (…) There are many cases like that. These careers are a bit off.’ (Air force, Colonel, École de l’Air, École de Guerre – 1)

This symbolic status is already tangible at the École de Guerre (Louis, 2012). The school offers four specialisations centred on international organisations, strategy, civil–military relations, and defence management respectively, and the instructors do not present the ‘international organisations’ path as the most prestigious one (Coton, 2012). Commanding a troop unit is considered the most prestigious pathway to quick career progression, unlike positions in international organisations. The career paths of several members of our sample illustrate this perception of international settings. One such case is that of a senior navy officer who, after seeing his career slowed down by his failure to pass the École de Guerre entrance examination, saw positions in international organisations as the only way for him to achieve some career development. Officers who are less successful at the national level thus tend to conceive international settings as an alternative way to make career progress:

‘I ended up in international relations by chance (…). By chance, in the sense that I held a position in the field of “organisations” and I… I discovered things that some people did not want me to discover. So one day, I was ordered to move to a new office and I ended in an international relations position. (…) Against my will, because I had been asked several times to move into international organisations. I had answered that I was not interested. And so one day I was ordered to lock my office and move to another one. (…) And as I am among those who will not make any more career progress, I had to invest in this new job.’ (Navy, Commander, École Navale, no École de Guerre – 7)

However, this alternative career path is only relatively emancipating. While accumulating international capital enables officers to access other international positions, it also constrains their professional mobility. Several interviewees thus experienced difficulties in coming back to a national career course after working in international organisations. Resources and experiences accumulated at the international level do not appear to be easily transferable, especially at the national level. This specific status of international positions leads some officers to be type-cast for international functions and assigned to international career paths. As officers accumulate international abilities in the shape of linguistic skills (especially in English), practical knowledge (inside knowledge of how international organisations and negotiations work) and social capital (close relationships with foreign officers involved in a given international organisation), they become more and more specialised in the eyes of human resources services. These services therefore tend to send ‘internationalised’ military officers to new international positions:

‘It’s a matter of human resources management. After I was tagged as someone who could speak German and had already worked in Germany, I was first on the list when a position was opened at the German navy school. So I was asked to take the position and I accepted. (…) So after a while, when you have worked in international relations, you are part of – this also applies to NATO, this is my third position in NATO – you are part of a pool and human resources personnel draw from this pool (…). So from the moment you start working in this direction, you are strongly branded and it practically becomes a second specialisation. My own specialisation was missiles and artillery – all officers specialise in a given weapon – but you see, this gives you a second specialisation.’ (Navy, Captain, École Navale, no École de Guerre – 8)

The progressive construction of an autonomous career path for international military officers is all the more tangible in that the interviewees often mentioned the fact that they frequently encountered the same French and international colleagues in the framework of different international positions. These international networks appear to have been constructed in the course of the second part of their careers rather than during their operational phase. In other words, they are not related to the elite forms of internationalisation identified above:

‘The world of international relations is quite small. This is because other countries apply the same principle as we do: those who have done it before can more easily do it again. So I regularly bump into people I know here [at NATO]. (…) It is quite a small world I think. It was the same with fighter pilots: we met up for operations and there was always someone there that I knew. It’s the same with international officers. (…)

Q: Do you ever come across people you met as a fighter pilot here?

A: No, no, I never saw those pilots again, I don’t see them, I don’t know them and I won’t ever see them again. Here I’m in an exclusively IR framework. It’s very rare to bump into a pilot and have things to talk about.’ (Air force, Colonel, École de l’Air, École de Guerre – 2)

The data thus show that military internationalisation within international and European security institutions tends to be mostly linked to a subordinated proportion of military officers. Its logics also appear to be partially disconnected from the national field. Acquiring international resources and expertise is thus a double-edged sword: while it enables one to access more prestigious international positions, it also restrains one’s room for manoeuvre by diminishing the chances of working in national settings and engaging in national career progression. Rather than triggering a virtuous circle of accumulation of resources (as in the case of other elites – see for instance Dezalay and Garth, 2002), internationalisation goes together with a relative deprivation of national resources and career possibilities. This, of course, should be nuanced, as some elite international positions (e.g. top command functions in multinational operations, elite positions in NATO, etc.) come with important symbolic rewards for the minority of officers who hold them. For the great bulk of military officers however, internationalisation appears to come at a professional cost.

Military officers therefore experience two very different kinds of internationalisation in the course of their career. During the first phase, it takes mass as well as elite forms. During the second phase, careers in international institutions are more often perceived negatively and linked to a subordinated proportion of officers. The following shows that these officers are often unprepared for their international positions.

International military interactions as improvised practices

While the first internationalisations of officers were standardised and neutralised by a series of technical norms learnt in the course of initial training, international interactions in multinational organisations and administration are more difficult for officers to handle. Far from taking them for granted or presenting them as ‘natural’ processes, officers describe this second type of internationalisation as having surprising and unexpected dimensions. In the absence of standardisation devices, they see NATO and EU contexts as driven by very different sets of rules and practices, the learning and mastery of which take time. EU settings appear to be especially difficult to master as they imply both international and civilian–military interactions:

‘[At NATO and the EU] we don’t speak the same language, we don’t have the same references. There is defence planning at the EU, and defence planning at NATO. But when I say “defence planning”, it has a meaning, and that meaning is given by NATO, with processes, deadlines and steps that I know. If someone at the EU talks to me about defence planning, it will be his own defence planning, that of the EU, with a different meaning. Because they don’t have seven steps like us, I don’t know how many they have. They don’t have the same constraints: our defence planning constrains nations, contrary to the EU type. So we use the same words to describe different things.’ (Air force, Colonel, École de l’Air, École de Guerre – 2)

The absence of standardisation and the differences between international contexts lead the interviewees to experience a sense of otherness and to feel unprepared for their tasks. Many of them indeed explained that the training they got at the École de Guerre did not meet their needs or prepare them well enough. This impression of lacking preparation is strengthened by the fact that officers are unable to build on prior international experiences. In fact, they see this second type of internationalisation as disconnected from the first, and the tools they used to handle international interactions during the first part of their careers no longer seem relevant. The key importance of geopolitics, which was before seen as an alien world, strengthens their impression of entering a different universe, disconnected from their prior experiences.

This relative lack of preparation forces officers to learn how to handle international interactions on the job. In order to make sense of international contexts, they use heuristics drawn from prior socialisations (primary socialisation, first part of career, etc.) and mostly inspired by national stereotypes. Rather than progressively making way for more sophisticated representations, the hold of these stereotypes seems to be resilient and even to strengthen over time. Contrary to what happens in the early stages of careers, during which these types of heuristics were mainly observable in the context of the army, they are here present in all three branches of the armed forces. Internationalisation thus becomes less of a distinctive feature of air force and navy officers:

‘[Cultural differences in Europe] are phenomenal. In the EU, we underestimate them. Because we say “in Europe, we have a common culture”. Yes, the old Europe. That is, we share a common culture with the Russians because we share a history… But well, there are completely different logics, you see. I start all my conferences on the EU like this: I say “you know, you have to understand that a Dutchman eats at 5 pm, a Spaniard at 10 pm”. There is a Europe of wine and a Europe of beer, a catholic Europe and a protestant Europe. I know it is polite to say that it doesn’t exist, but it’s fundamental. Nordic country logics are completely different from our own, politics aside. Eva Joly has been blamed for being abrupt and lecturing others: we experience the same thing here every day with Nordic countries, who are the light of the world and explain to you what to do. I’m not even criticising this because we are arrogant as well, but differences are phenomenal, phenomenal.’ (Army, Colonel, Saint-Cyr, École de Guerre – 15)

‘I think, and I experienced the fact that it works very differently [for different nationalities]. For example, one should never betray a Spaniard or a German: relationships have to be based on trust. We don’t have to tell everything to one another, but it is forbidden to hide or omit the truth. You say things, and if you don’t, it’s very bad. With an Anglo-Saxon, things are quite different [he laughs]. A Brit will not necessarily blame you for tricking him, it’s an acceptable way of doing things. And I think an Iranian could say something like this too (…).

Q: Ok. So is this something you have been briefed about, or did you learn it on the job?

A: We learn it on the job, yeah, there is no… No, no one taught me this. I mean, it’s a rather difficult thing to say explicitly.’ (Navy, Commodore, École Navale, École de Guerre – 5)

These stereotyped perspectives reduce uncertainty for officers who have difficulties in handling international interactions. Apart from these heuristics, several interviewees also use their social resources as instruments to facilitate their integration in international environments. These resources rest on different types of networks linked to prior international positions, to common training or to specific weapons. In the case of officers who work in NATO and EU settings, these networks lead to a form of ‘Brusselsisation’ (Bagayoko-Penone, 2006) of military personnel:

‘Actually several of us here in Brussels were at Saint-Cyr in the same year. [Between the EU and NATO], I think there are about eight or nine us from the same year. (…) I think Brussels is the second city behind Paris to gather as many of us. (…) [Professionally], it helps. My friend Denis has an office on the seventh floor. So it’s quite nice because as he is close to the boss [the chief of the French representation to the EU], sometimes we have access to exclusive information, we know what’s going on, so it’s good.’ (Army, Lieutenant-Colonel, Saint-Cyr, École de Guerre – 14)

‘When I got here, I did not find many people I knew, many acquaintances. That’s the reason why I created a conference, a network of navy captains, with all countries that had navy captains in Brussels with whom I could share knowledge on what’s written in the EU, what’s promulgated, what’s produced in the EU in relation to naval matters. So we have about thirty members, some from the staff or from the European External Action Service, and about fifteen others from countries with maritime borders, all with the same rank. And so we meet up once a month to chat. (…) It’s a drink, a chat, and we talk about what’s been said over the last month about a given matter. So it’s completely informal. But still, a lot is being said during these meetings. And between navy military, we share a common vision of things. No one feels lost like “I’m Greek, what are we talking about?”. I don’t know if it is influence or not, it’s a community, a like-minded community. Whether it’s French influence or not, who knows.’ (Navy, Captain, École Navale, École de Guerre – 9)

The second internationalisation of officers thus appears to be marginalised and improvised. In contrast with what happens during the first part of military careers, most ‘internationalised’ officers are not part of the elite of the armed forces. When facing unfamiliar international contexts for the first time, they seek to deal with their sense of otherness by using heuristics drawn from heterogeneous cultural resources and networks linked to various types of social capital. Although several studies have shown that NATO and EU institutions have socialising effects that shape officers’ practices and subjectivity and trigger the emergence of a ‘common culture’ in the long term (e.g. Cross, 2013; King, 2006; Pajon, 2003), French military officers first appear to improvise in the context of these international interactions.

Conclusion

This exploratory qualitative study of the trajectories of military officers provides preliminary answers to the two series of questions identified in the introduction to this article.

The first has to do with the sociology of professions. While some authors have argued that professionals often seek international positions in order to accumulate various types of resources that they can then reinvest on the national stage, the case of military officers shows that international capital may act as a double-edged sword. While it enables officers to reach other international positions, it also restricts their national opportunities. In other words, it proves difficult for many of these officers to use these resources to reach prestigious positions at the national level. Thus, the data rather support the argument that internationalisation leads to some professionals ‘specialising’ in this type of mobility. International institutions are, for them, as much a constraint as they are a resource, and their role in the dynamics of elite reproduction is ambiguous.

The second series of questions has to do with international relations studies. The results of this inquiry indeed raise a series of question with regard to inter-state relationships. While some authors have argued that military officers who work within European security institutions share a ’common culture’, the data support the opposite idea that officers may experience difficulties in handling international contexts and interactions: while internationalisation may be widespread during the first phase of military careers, its standardised character means that it has little socialising effects in terms of getting officers used to international military interactions; this leads to national cultures retaining a strong hold on officers’ behaviour, and to a certain amount of improvisation during the second part of careers. Thus, French officers often have to learn their work on the job, and this may have an impact on the efficiency of international security institutions and the international power struggles that take place within them.

The social background of the French officers who work in international settings may also have bearings on inter-state cooperation. The fact that these professionals are often marginalised on the national stage may indeed put them in a subordinate position with respect to their foreign counterparts working in the same institutions, who may come from the elite of their own national forces. As European countries vary in terms of their position on the international diplomatic and security stage (notably with respect to their ties to the CSDP, NATO and the United States), the size and structure of their armed forces (especially the relationship between the army, the navy and the air force) and the way they organise military careers (in terms of training, formal hierarchies, mobility, etc.), internationalisation is not equally prestigious for officers of different nationalities. For example, as members of armed forces that have been restructured under the aegis of NATO after the Second World War, German military officers see international career positions as more prestigious than French officers, who have historically been less intimately connected to NATO structures, and for whom national honours retain a stronger prestige (Hampton, 1998). German officers who work within European security settings are thus often on a more prestigious career track than their French counterparts. These different backgrounds mean that officers from different countries do not enjoy the same level of professional prestige and may not be, therefore, equally able to gather support from colleagues and impose their views at the international level.

These preliminary conclusions and hypotheses therefore call for further studies that would aim at uncovering the logics of military internationalisation more precisely, using both qualitative and quantitative indicators. The social mechanisms behind the formation and use of stereotypes, as well as their role in the handling of international interactions, should be precisely identified. Findings also call for in-depth comparisons between the French case and that of other European armed forces, in order to uncover common patterns and differences in their relationship to international security settings. Future research should also develop indicators to precisely assess the extent to which inter-state interactions are impacted by these professional dynamics and their differences across countries. Thus, the data presented in this article call for further collaborations between the study of international relations and the sociology of professions.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am strongly indebted to all the interviewees for their time and patience. I also would like to thank the participants in the seminars and conferences where this article was presented, for their valuable comments and suggestions. I am also indebted to Ulrich Krotz for advising me on this research project.

Funding

Part of this research was undertaken in the course of a Max Weber Fellowship at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy).

Notes

Author biography

Thibaud Boncourt works as a FNRS Postdoctoral Fellow at the METICES research centre, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). He previously held fellowships at the Central European University (CEU, Budapest), the Centre Européen de Sociologie et de Science Politique (CESSP, Paris), and the European University Institute (EUI, Florence). He completed his PhD in political science at Sciences Po Bordeaux in 2011. He works on the relationship between knowledge and power (e.g. the development of the social sciences during the Cold War, the politicisation of scientists, etc.), the history of the social sciences, and internationalisation dynamics (internationalisation of professions, careers and ideas).

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