Name Raoul Castex | Books Strategic Theories | |
Died 1968, Villeneuve-de-Riviere, France | ||
Raoul Victor Patrice Castex (27 October 1878, Saint-Omer – 10 January 1968, Villeneuve-de-Riviere) was a French Navy admiral and a military theorist.
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Naval career
Castex joined the Navy in 1896, becoming the best student of his promotion at the Ecole Navale. He became professor at the Ecole de Guerre Navale. In 1919, he was tasked with reorganising the historical services of the Navy and in 1928 he was promoted to contre-amiral.
On 2 July 1936, he was made Grand officer of the Legion of Honour. The same year, he founded the Institut des hautes etudes de la defense nationale, which he headed until 1939. He rose to vice-amiral in 1937, and finished his career heading the naval forces of the Northern fleet.
Institut des Hautes Etudes de la Defense Nationale
One of Castex' main achievements was the creation of the Institut des Hautes Etudes de la Defense Nationale (IHEDN, Institute of Higher Studies of National Defence), which aimed to reduce the intellectual gap between civilian and military officials.
Theories
Between 1929 and 1939, Castex wrote Theories Strategiques, which analysed the link between land and naval warfare and argues for a national "gravity centre" which, in the case of France, would be situated off Europe. He argued that the "gravity centre" should have been displaced to Northern Africa before 1939, with installation of main armament factories and government centres.
In 1939, Castex suggested granting independence to French Indochina, deemed indefensible against the Japanese Empire, and to Syria and Lebanon, then under French mandate, as to make allies out of them.
In 1955, Castex published an article in the Revue de la Defense Nationale ("National Defence review"), titled "La Russie, rempart de l'Occident" (Russia, the wall of the West), in which he seemed to predict the rise of China and its upcoming rivalry with the West, including Russia.