Jean Baptiste Jeangene Vilmer

Dr. Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer is director of the Institute for Strategic Research (IRSEM) at the French Ministry for the Armed Forces, and a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, Washington DC. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) and an Honorary Ancien of NATO Defense College.

Trained in three disciplines—philosophy (Bachelor, Master, Ph.D.), law (Bachelor, LL.M., post-doctorate) and in political science (doctorate)—, he served previously as a Policy officer on “Security and Global Affairs” at the Policy Planning Staff (CAPS) of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2013-2016). He also held positions at the Faculty of Law at McGill University in Canada (2011-2013), at the department of War Studies of King’s College in London (2010-2011), at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies of Yale University (2008-2009), at the French Embassy in Turkmenistan (2007-2008) and at the University of Montreal (2005-2007).

Auditor of the 68^th national session on “Defense Policy” of the Institute for Higher National Defense Studies (IHEDN), member of the Ethics Committee created by the Minister of the Armed Forces in January 2020, he has received several awards (including the “Maréchal Foch” prize from the Académie française in 2013, and being nominated a Munich Young Leader at the Munich Security Conference in 2018).

The author of some one hundred articles and more than twenty books, he published on international relations theory, collective security (UNSC, veto restraint), military interventionism (Libya, Syria, Ukraine), R2P, law of armed conflict, the humanitarian debate on nuclear weapons (TPNW), remote warfare (targeted killings, armed drones, lethal autonomous weapon systems), international criminal justice (ICC, in particular in its relationship to Africa), hybrid warfare, information manipulation, human rights, totalitarianism, the Horn of Africa (Eritrea) and the mutations of the international order.

Last publications in English:

- "Peace without freedom in Eritrea : causes and consequences of the Ethio-Eritrean rapprochement", Journal of Eastern African Studies, 2021. 

- "A Matter of Balance: A French Perspective on Limited Strikes", Ethics and International Affairs, 34:2, 2020, p. 201-215.

 "The Forever-Emerging Norm of Banning Nuclear Weapons", Journal of Strategic Studies, June 2020.

 - "Russia as a hurricane, China as climate change: Different ways of information warfare", War on the Rocks, (with Paul Charon), 21 January 2020.

 - The ‘Macron Leaks’ Operation: A Post-Mortem, Paris, Institut de recherche stratégique de l’Ecole militaire (IRSEM) / Washington DC, The Atlantic Council, June 2019.

 - "A People-Oriented Peace Formula for the Donbass", The Washington Quarterly, 42:2, 2019, p. 115-132.

 - "The Responsibility Not To Veto: A Genealogy", Global Governance : A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations, 24:3, 2018, p. 331-349.

 - "Aron’s Oxymorus International Ethics", in Olivier Schmitt (ed.), Raymond Aron and International Relations (Routledge, 2018, p. 70-92). 

- "France and the American Drone Precedent: A Consequentialist Response to a Polemical Critique", in Daniel R. Brunstetter and Jean-Vincent Holeindre (eds.), The Ethics of War and Peace Revisited (Georgetown University Press, 2018), p. 97-116.

- "The French Turn to Armed Drones", War on the Rocks, 22 September 2017.

- "The Ten Main Defense Challenges Facing Macron's France", War on the Rocks, 10 May 2017.

- "The African Union and the International Criminal Court: counteracting the crisis", International Affairs, 92:6, 2016, 1319-1342.

- "Ten Myths About the 2011 Intervention in Libya", The Washington Quarterly, 39:2, 2016, 23-43.