The UNS, too militaristic?
This is the question that once again animated political and media debates when the hypothesis of a generalization of this service from 2026 to all young French people in second class (about 800,000 students) resurfaced.
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If the images of the rector of the academy of Besançon, Nathalie Albert-Moretti, reviewing young volunteers of the SNU last June had been very controversial, new shots showing Sarah El Haïry, secretary of State in charge of youth and Universal National Service, have revived criticism.
We see him walking in front of the young SNU volunteers lined up under the Arc de Triomphe, arms crossed behind his back.
However, in 2019, at the dawn of the first edition, the device seemed to please a majority of French people who saw the project with a good eye.
“
I feel a real expectation from society.
Young people are in search of meaning, of rites of passage
,” said Gabriel Attal at the time.
Where does this challenge to the military spirit of the UNS come from?
A “scrambled memory”
The Universal National Service was the big surprise of the announcement of Emmanuel Macron's defense program during the presidential campaign in 2017. He then spoke of a one-month compulsory service for young people, not without mentioning a "
military experience
.
"
The president's speech revealed an original confusion between national service and military service
", immediately analyzes Bénédicte Chéron, lecturer at the Catholic Institute of Paris and specialist in relations between the army and society. .
Already in 1965, the Messmer law created “national service” which included military service within it.
The latter becomes one of the many paths that make up national service, with cooperation or even defense service.
Read alsoWould the armies have the means to organize a new military service?
For the historian, this is not the only confusion.
The academic insists more particularly on the discrepancy between "
the reality of military service
" (that is to say the learning of the profession of arms) and the political discourse which conceives it as an "
initiation rite serving national cohesion
".
Indeed, the "
army is not a social or collective organization that seeks to create cohesion in itself
"
,
explains the historian and retired colonel Michel Goya.
“
It is only a means to an end
”.
However, after the suspension of national service in 1997, this "
republican myth
" became a lasting part of the
The mix of genres
“
Thus, by making an announcement that is based on a scrambled memory, we inevitably generate confusion within the system itself
,” believes Bénédicte Chéron.
According to her, the astonishment of the public vis-à-vis the "attention" and the "review" comes from this mixture of genres: "
military symbols have a meaning because they are articulated around the purposes that are war and combat effectiveness
," explains the historian.
"
Recovering these signs in a device that does not have this purpose cannot make sense
," she decides.
The attention to you indeed reflects a special relationship between the military and their leader, which is not of the same nature as the bond between a student and a teacher or even a young person and a senior state official.
It is a regulation position that the military takes after a specific order, "Attention!"
(explaining the name of the position that results from a noun).
The body is straight and motionless, the heels close together, the arms flat against the body.
Integrated into military ceremonies, this position initially evokes the disposition of the soldier to listen, going into battle.
By respecting this command, the military recognizes a strong authority.
This is moreover the result of a more general renunciation: they have previously given up certain individual freedoms, such as freedom of expression or movement.
The position at attention therefore conveys a good number of implicit messages, specific to the military world.
"
The principle of imitating military practices outside of what they exist for is absurd,
" says Michel Goya.
According to the historian, the military rites are thus preserved but emptied of their substance: "
It is not simply by singing the Marseillaise and putting on a uniform for two weeks that individuals will immediately create a bond and cohesion
", he asserts before insisting on the fact that “
solidarity, in the army, is created in difficulty and hardship
”.
"
It's a process that takes time and effort
."
Renewal of relations between the nation and the army
For Michel Goya, this strategy is also part of a more general context where the use of the army and the military spirit in the civilian field is more and more frequent.
“
After several years of anti-militarism, we are seeing a certain return
”.
The former colonel mentions in particular the “military-inspired courses” launched by Éric Dupond-Moretti in 2021, designed as five-week internships for young offenders within the army.
These courses are the result of joint work between the Ministry of the Armed Forces and of Justice.
“
There is the idea finally, that when it is the army which organizes, that functions
”, underlines it.
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However, for the historian Bénédicte Chéron, these recourses to military symbols and authority risk throwing confusion on “
the role of the army
”.
The universal national service contains a civic component and therefore “
political and ideological
”, unrelated to the army.
"
We use military rites to legitimize ideological content
", which, according to her, distorts the role of the army, which must not appear to adhere to this or that policy.
This mixture calls into question a subtle balance that was developed in
“the pain and chaos of the tragedies of the 20th century
”, details the historian.
The role of the army was gradually defined there: it was not to intervene in domestic politics so that there was no doubt that it protected “
all citizens
”.
The military was also asked to reserve the expression of their political opinions to guarantee the defense of the nation, whoever the elected officials and those in authority are.
Project “profitable in the short term”
For the historian, generalization must therefore be questioned.
If the French are mostly in favor of it today (they were nearly 74% in April 2019 to be in favor of its implementation according to an Ifop poll), the return of a bond under these conditions could be "difficult
"
.
“
It is indeed profitable in the short term because the French want it
, believes Bénédicte Chéron,
but the very history of military service shows us that its maintenance is only possible if there is a relative national consensus
”.
However, since the Algerian war, there is no longer any national consensus on the usefulness of having a mass army.
Moreover, the content of this universal national service has not finished being debated.
The first phase, called cohesion, includes a civilian component that could change according to majorities.
"
Today, there is content in the SNU decided by the LREM majority to make good citizens
".
However, they will necessarily be different if it is the Nupes or the RN who are in power.
"
There is no consensus because these are civic and therefore political and ideological contents
", slices Bénédicte Chéron, putting forward a hypothesis: "
instead of being a tool of cohesion, it could become a cause further divisiveness within society
”