This paper identifies how defense issues emerge in society and whether or not they are transformed into public policies by public decision-makers, parliamentary institutions, and more generally the political system. Starting from a framework of a theoretical analysis of agenda setting, we study and compare the attention given to defense policy in the parliamentary arena of the United Kingdom and France between 1997 and 2007. Despite small differences in the parliamentary agendas in this respect, France and the United Kingdom show consistencies as regards the external dimension of defense policy and considerable differences within it.