France’s participation in a rare military operation in Syria last week thrust it back into the international spotlight at a time its young and relatively untested leader President Emmanuel Macron seeks to restore a sense of national pride and, perhaps, distract from widespread domestic protests.
The missile strikes carried out by France, the U.S. and the U.K. “saved the honor of the international community,” Macron told members of the European Parliament on Tuesday in Strasbourg, France. Macron defended the operation, designed to respond to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s reported use of chemical weapons against his own people, as different from the kinds of preventative warfare that led to the collapse of Iraq and Libya, and pushed back against assertions he was simply doing the bidding of the U.S. as some hardline political opponents have said in Paris, as well.
Macron said France cannot “turn our backs” on Syria amid a 7-year-old civil war, and a parallel international operation to defeat the Islamic State group. The hybrid conflict has turned into a proxy war between a U.S.-led alliance and an axis led by Russia that includes cooperation with Iran and sometimes Turkey, a NATO ally.
“Do we sit back? Do we defend human rights by saying rights are for us, principles are for us and realities are for others?” Macron said, according to Sky News.
The ongoing catastrophe in Syria presents France with a unique opportunity to capitalize benevolently on its imperial history and attempt to stabilize a region of the world with which it has close connections, both socially and financially. Its involvement allows Macron to follow through on “red line” promises he made during last year’s election regarding chemical weapons use there, and appear to address concerns of terrorism at home. And perhaps most importantly, Syria represents a protracted quagmire for which few other international powers wish to take responsibility.
“The French consider that this is a moment to show a certain leadership in Europe,” says Ziad Majed, professor of international affairs at the American University in Paris.
Majed points to a perceived lack of leadership among European powers and general sense of unrest on the continent as Britain continues negotiations to ultimately withdraw from the European Union and ultra right-wing political parties continue to rise in central and Eastern European countries including Hungary and Poland.
And Macron faces that pressure at home, analysts say. Widespread protests continue over reforms to a labor plan for France’s state-owned railways, known as SNCF, which have disrupted traffic nationwide.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right French political party Front National who lost to Macron in the presidential election last year, said that because of the Syria strikes, “France again loses an opportunity to appear on the international stage as an independent and balanced power in the world,” according to RN Australia. Jean-Luc Melenchon, a far-left French politician, said the operation was “irresponsible escalation.”
Yet criticism has mostly emerged from the far ends of the political spectrum, and with little proof that Assad did not commit these heinous acts. The French people, largely, either support Macron’s decision to intervene, experts say, or are apathetic to the issue.
“Historically, French citizens give a very wide berth to the president in terms of foreign policy, and on top of it have been fairly — and unfortunately — desensitised to what’s going on in Syria,” says Martin Michelot, an expert on French foreign policy and deputy director of the Prague-based think tank EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy. “I don’t see any important political debate about this and I also do not believe this was done to distract from the debates about the reforms of SNCF, which a majority of French support in any case.”
The fact that French presidents don’t need parliamentary authorization for these kinds of foreign actions provides Macron with “some freedom to act when domestic politics are complicated and frustrating,” says Alice Billon-Galland, a policy fellow at the London-based European Leadership Network.
Macron likely believes that greater cooperation with U.S. President Donald Trump on Syria will help Europe more broadly, by sharing responsibility for an intervention in a foreign country — following the former reality TV star’s campaign pledges against overseas meddling — and demonstrating that European powers are stepping up for international security — another subject for which Trump has harangued European leaders.
France also has a unique relationship with countries like Syria and neighboring Lebanon, which it ruled under a mandate for much of the early half of the 20th century.
“Macron can claim that role in a way, he can reposition France as being a power alongside the U.S. but also that part of the world — Syria, Lebanon, Palestine — there is a strong domestic constituency in France that really cares about it,” says Randa Slim, director of conflict resolution at the Middle East Institute.
Hundreds of thousands of people from the Levant have emigrated to France, particularly during Lebanon’s civil war from 1975 to 1990. Lebanon’s second official language is French. And France maintains a base there with almost 1,000 troops under U.N. auspices.
“When it comes to the Middle East, France definitely has a special relationship,” says Majed. As for European leadership in negotiating for some sort of stability in Syria, he adds, “Macron considers this the right moment to do it because he might be the only one to do it internationally.”
There are also practical reasons for France seeking greater stability in the Middle East, which indirectly or directly feels the effects of the Syrian wars. As the world’s third largest weapons supplier, France increased its arms exports by 27 percent between 2013 and 2017, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks this data.
“The money is in the [Persian] Gulf, so France has an interest in maintaining a stronger relationship with Gulf countries,” says F. Gregory Gause, regional expert and head of the International Affairs Department at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government & Public Service.
“France has always wanted to be an independent player on the world’s stage,” Gause says. “The problem is that France by itself can’t really do that. In terms of military power, it needs the U.S. to come along.”
Indeed, France relied heavily on U.S. transportation and logistic support for its ongoing operations in Mali to rid the arid sub-saharan African nation of the extremist threat there — a mission the U.S. since 2013 has been happy to turn over to a NATO ally.
The U.S. was responsible for the vast majority of resources dedicated to this latest operation in Syria, including ships and war planes that that launched missiles.
The French frigate Languedoc fired three missiles from the eastern Mediterranean as a part of the operation, U.S. defense officials said Saturday, and its Rafale and Mirage fighter jets fired nine.
“France has already tried to exercise leadership to the extent that it can on the Syrian dossier, which is less on the political side but rather on the military side,” Michelot says. “This is the limit of French leadership in the 21st century, where it cannot participate in great power competition but can rely on a strong and capable military to send certain strategic messages.”
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Macron Finds New International Role for France in Syria Operations originally appeared on usnews.com
