More than 25 years after former French president Jacques Chirac “suspended” conscription, President Emmanuel Macron announced on Thursday, November 27, the creation of a voluntary military service. This “strictly military” program, reserved for young adult voluntee, will last 10 months. It signals France’s entrance into a new era, marked by a geopolitical context in which Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the United States’ growing distance have raised new questions about the relationship between French citizens and their armed forces.

Just as the end of compulsory military service in 1997 followed the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the escalation of threats linked to the invasion of Ukraine and the risk of the conflict expanding to NATO members is now pushing France, like several other European countries, to expand citizen engagement in defense. In this sense, Macron’s announcement is both a democratic response to Vladimir Putin’s belligerence and a gesture of solidarity to European neighbors facing the same challenge.

In France, the creation of this national service is meant to make Europe’s new security reality concrete for a public that has long felt distant from these issues, but whose role would be crucial in the event of military involvement. By insisting that the new military service will apply only on “national territory,” Macron sought to ease concerns sparked by comments from the army chief of staff, Fabien Mandon, who said France should be “prepared to lose children.” Still, more than Thursday’s presidential address will be needed to deepen the essential public debate and education around defense, beyond political posturing.

The program also raises questions about its alignment with France’s stated needs. The new national service must not fall into the same pitfalls as the previous “universal national service,” also launched by Macron, whose unclear objectives – straddling the promotion of social diversity and military engagement – and prohibitive costs led to its failure and cancellation.

The decline of anti-militarism and the rise in civic engagement, highlighted in a 2024 study by political scientist Anne Muxel, have made the military, alongside unemployment offices, one of France’s largest recruiters, with 90,000 applicants each year. Selecting the few thousand young volunteers expected for the new national service, and adapting the program to the armed forces’ operational needs, will be major challenges – as will monitoring these young recruits and coordinating with other existing initiatives like “defense classes” and “defense and citizenship days.”

Of course, it is hard not to see in Thursday’s announcement the move of a weakened and unpopular president facing a political crisis, attempting to present himself as a unifier of the nation. But Macron’s intervention cannot be reduced to this alone. It is his duty to help foster collective awareness of a dangerous situation – one that the troubling ambiguities of the American “peace plan” for Ukraine do not dispel.