The CR 451

The CR451 is a team composed of academic researchers, analysts, practitioners, and operational staff who work based on the study of:

• Historical material.
• Socio-cultural contexts.
• Power dynamics between Powers, businesses, and civil society actors.
• Economic confrontations of all kinds.
• Ideological and cognitive clashes.
• Informational rivalries.

Learning to think in order to fight an adversary or an enemy

It took the election of D. Trump in the United States with his slogan “America First” and a return to a form of protectionism, the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russian war in Ukraine, and their consequences (shortages, price increases, etc.) for a greater awareness to emerge: some countries could simultaneously be military allies, diplomatic competitors, and economic rivals or even adversaries. All these events validate the analytical framework of the world developed at the School of Economic Warfare.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine show how mistaken European leaders were. Being a good student of free trade is not enough to protect the interests of 450 million Europeans and 68 million French citizens. It is also necessary to acknowledge international power dynamics and have a clear idea of the threats hanging over the Old Continent. All of this was lacking in the institutional machinery in Brussels, and also within the French executive. The challenge now is to catch up on our strategic delay compared to our main competitors, some of whom are very aware of conflicting realities and exploit the naivety or sometimes voluntary weakness of their targets.

The task is urgent and heavy because the world has never been so complex. We thought states were outdated by globalization and supply chains crossing borders more easily than people. Here they are rehabilitated by numerous climatic, health, financial, economic, and now military crises. These crises show that free-trade globalization has reached its limits and that it is time to build a new model of international relations. While economies remain interconnected, the pendulum swing announces a world entering a phase of “deglobalization” and probable transnational regionalization. In a world where tensions are escalating, economic warfare will not diminish. We must revive our capacity for reflection and action to understand this coming world and prepare for the many challenges it imposes on us.

Knowledge in service of action

It is no longer possible to study international relations, economics, politics, societal debates, technology, military, and cognitive domains separately: all these themes must be united to create a field of study whose central object would be informational power issues and new forms of economic warfare.

Our research areas

Research Center 451 aims to develop this field of study and ensure the production and dissemination of knowledge. The center’s activities will focus on the following areas:

• Applied research on economic and informational power dynamics.
• Dissemination of the analytical frameworks experimented by the center.
• Animation of an interactive network with institutions and economic actors.
• Experimentation with new methods for disseminating our conceptual contributions.
• Organization of research seminars and conferences dedicated to economic warfare, information warfare, and cognitive warfare.
• Publication of research notes.
• Production of documentaries and podcasts.