Diplomats, Soldiers, and Armed Conflict Databases: Another French Exception?

Abstract

Contemporary governments are awash in quantification, as numbers and algorithms play an ever-greater role in public decision-making processes. In the field of defense and diplomacy, the development of armed conflict databases holds out the promise of improved predictive capacities and early warning systems. While this dynamic can be witnessed across a range of European countries, notably Germany and the Netherlands, it appears to be much less present in France. Diplomats and militaries make only marginal use of the available databases, judged both inadequate in their own right and ill-adapted to strategic analysis. This article proposes two explanatory variables to explain this specific appreciation: not only is a relatively limited training in quantitative methods offered to French diplomats and militaries, which leads to a specific use of numbers, but there is also a broader picture link to the will of protecting “digital sovereignty” in the international realm.