It was February 2nd 2013, three weeks after the launch of French military intervention in the West African state of Mali to halt and push back the advance of jihadist forces south towards the country’s capital Bamako. That day, French president François Hollande, visibly exhilarated from his meeting earlier with soldiers from the French marine infantry corps and parachutists from the Foreign Legion who had just liberated Timbuktu from jihadist control, addressed an enthusiastic crowd of civilians gathered on Bamako’s ‘Independence Square’, telling them: “Without doubt I have just experienced the most important day of my political life.”
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So it was that Hollande, a former member of the 71st regiment of military engineers based in Oissel, Normandy, which he joined after insisting on doing his military service despite being officially exempted because of his short-sightedness, appraised this victory in Africa of French troops placed under his ultimate command by the constitution to be more important in his political life than his election, by universal suffrage, to the French presidency.
Without overplaying the significance of words uttered at a moment of intense emotion, amid an atmosphere of public fervour, it was hardly absurd to assume that this 21st-century socialist showed a peculiar taste for the grand show of military expeditions. It was a position that placed him more in the line of former socialist prime minister Guy Mollet than that of Pierre Mendès France or the social democrats of Scandinavia.
The months that followed would confirm that this sentiment was a permanent one, which he openly embraced. The result however was not, to the dismay of military chiefs, to give the defence budget favourable treatment, notably with regard to foreign operations which the military complain have been undersized for years.
But Hollande’s interest in military affairs clearly does not alone explain the reasons for his penchant for military intervention abroad. In reality, the once self-styled “normal” president’s interest for the military leans upon a doctrine openly inspired by American neoconservatism, and which influences a growing number political advisors, strategists and diplomats.
It is not that Hollande himself has been truly porous to neoconservative ideas. According to those who know him, he is too pragmatic for that. One might also add that he is too bereft of clear beliefs, and the will to put them in train, to be accused of having adopted a French version of an ideology that stems from the late German-American political philosopher Leo Strauss, who proclaimed the absolute superiority of values inherited from Western history and who legitimized their propagation, including through the use of military means.
This ideology is today in significant decline in the US, after its nefarious nature was illustrated at the beginning of the new century during the two presidential terms of George W. Bush, notably in Iraq and Afghanistan. The pre-announced “democratic tsunami” of these foreign interventions never manifested itself, replaced instead by a state of chaos whose shockwaves are still shaking the whole of the region.
Discredited on the other side of the Atlantic by the events, this ideology founded upon the legitimacy of using military force, the contempt for multilateral organizations, the suspicion regarding diplomacy, the unconditional defence of Israel as a priority, the right for the West to act unilaterally, and a binary vision of the world (good against bad) has, however, found new disciples on this side of the ocean. Often graduates of the elite Paris political sciences school Sciences Po – where, according to a researcher in international relations “it is not Europe’s most anti-American political elite that is educated – these French disciples of American neocon gurus have ended up knocking together a local version that is just as Manichean and just as little inclined to respect alterity.
One of the results of this tardy ideological conversion is that Hollande, whose 2012 election manifesto pledged he would take action “for increased aid for developing countries and for the renewal of multilateralism” (manifesto pledge number 57), is today exposed - and is sometimes receptive - to the influence of this French-style neoconservatism. Its adepts today hold key posts in the foreign ministry, the presidential office and a number of ministries. Their priority is neither aid for development nor the renewal of multilateralism.
Bertrand Badie is a professor at Sciences Po, specialized in international relations. “Until the beginning of the 2000s,” he said, “the foreign policy of [Editor’s note: then-French president, Jacques] Chirac was inscribed in a sort of Gaullo-Mitterrandian1 continuity, severed as of the G8 meeting in Evian in June 2003 by a spectacular rapprochement with Bush, concretized by the Franco-American drafting of the United Nations Security Council resolution 1559 which notably demanded, to Israel’s satisfaction, the retreat of Syrian troops from Lebanon and the dissolution of Lebanese militias.”
“The shift was followed in 2005 by a visit to Paris by Ariel Sharon and a marked evolution of the French approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, clearly more attentive to Israeli demands than to Palestinian aspirations,” he continued. “A priori essentially pragmatic and aimed at preserving the economic and political interests of France which suffered, above all in the United States, from French bashing, this shift in French policy became clearly ideological when, on [Nicolas] Sarkozy’s election, the “Western family” and “the values of the West” began to be evoked in Paris, classic neoconservative markers, before deciding on France’s return to the integrated [military] command of NATO.”
1: The term “Gaullo-Mitterrandian” refers to presidents Charles de Gaulle and François Mitterrand.
French neocons rule roost at the foreign affairs ministry
French neoconservatism, which Bertrand Badie describes as “soft”, one which does not dispose of the same means as the American version and which has less messianic fervour, has the particularity that it transcends the traditional political divide. It applies just as much to the cult of right-wing values as to the remains of the emancipator ambitions of the social-democratic Left. Imported by Sarkozy, it is today adopted by a number of Hollande’s advisors, notably those who are specialised in strategic issues.
Christian Lequesne also teaches at the Sciences Po political sciences school, where he is working on ethnographic studies of French diplomats. He agrees with Badie’s observation that French foreign policy underwent a shift during Chirac’s presidency. “Those who’ve had access to the archives of this period at the foreign affairs ministry - they are not many – were struck to see that Chirac’s foreign policy, immediately after the speech at the UN by [then-foreign minister Dominique de] Villepin1, was aimed at patching things up with the United States,” he said. “A reconciliation that [was also] accelerated after the September 11th 2001 terror attacks, when Chirac had the strong belief that, in face of the democratic model that the United States embodied as did also France, had now risen a common threat, Islamism.”
“At the Quai d’Orsay [French foreign affairs ministry], those I prefer to call ‘Westernists’ more than neoconservatives have conquered positions of power which were until then held by the defenders of ‘independence and rank’, the heirs of Gaullo-Mitterrandism,” argued Lequesne. “Because, contrary to the strategies of the Bush administration who believed they could impose democracy everywhere, by use of force, the French ‘Westernists’ don’t believe that democracy will triumph everywhere but believe that a war is underway today between the Western model and other models, and that the West must maintain its superiority. Which implies staying close to the Unites States, the heart of the ‘Western family’.”
It is obviously no coincidence that many of those who are designated by their colleagues as ‘Westernist’ or neoconservative pioneers at the foreign affairs ministry have, or had, spent time in the US. That is the case of Philippe Errera, who served an internship with the US State Department between 1998 and 1999, and who was subsequently appointed as first secretary to the French embassy in Washington from 1999 to 2003. He is today head of the International Relations and Strategy department at the French defence ministry.
It is also the case of Michel Miraillet, the current French ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, where France has its only air force base in the Middle East. From 1992 to 1995 he was the first secretary of France’s permanent mission to the UN in New York. There is also Gérard Araud, France’s current ambassador to the US, who served as French ambassador to the UN between 2009 and 2014. Not forgetting François Richier, a former advisor on strategic issues with France’s permanent mission to the UN, who went on to become head of the department of non-proliferation at the French foreign affairs ministry and later an advisor to then-president Nicolas Sarkozy on strategic issues. In 2011 he was appointed French ambassador to India.
“Even if we sometimes, between ourselves, call them ‘the sect’, it would be idiotic to say that they were indoctrinated during their time in the Unites States,” said one French diplomat, speaking on condition his name was withheld. “I would rather say that they were victims, during their stay, of the effects of socializing, and that some could have been intellectually seduced by their contact with neocon think tanks.”
A former French ambassador, who also spoke on condition his name was withheld, commented: “The Quai d’Orsay is an organization with branches. To be in a good branch can help, even accelerate, your career. It happens that the neoconservative branch is without doubt today one of the most favourable. Thus the most sought-after. And it contains a large proportion of diplomats specialized in political-strategic questions.”
During the international negotiations with Iran over its nuclear programme, the French delegation constantly applied brakes on progress towards a deal. It was among French diplomats and experts concerned with the fight against nuclear proliferation that the Westernist theories began to win over their first adepts. According to several sources at the French foreign affairs ministry, there was at the beginning even an open rivalry between the Westernists in the anti-proliferation sector and the diplomats they regarded as dangerous Arabophiles in the ministry’s North Africa-Middle East department (ANMO).
With hindsight, it is plain today that the representatives of the Westernist view have succeeded, under presidents and ministers of different political persuasions, in obtaining important posts where their influence is considerable. Tthe new Westernist vision unites both diplomats described as right-wing and others close to the Socialist Party. Jacques Audibert, the current diplomatic advisor to President François Hollande, and who adopted a notably hardline approach during the recent nuclear negotiations with Iran – to the point of provoking a halt to the negotiations – has been known for some time as being both a neoconservative and close to the Socialist Party. The same is true of Martin Briens, who succeeded Audibert in the negotiations with Iran, and who is currently in transit between the foreign ministry and the strategic affairs department of the French foreign intelligence agency, the DGSE.
1: Dominique de Villepin, who served as foreign minister from 2002-2004, and who would later become prime minister, gave a speech to the UN on February 14th 2003 opposing the invasion of Iraq, a position shared, among others, by Germany, China and Russia. The powerfully delivered speech was met with unusual applause.
Leading France into a vicious circle of violence
It is evident that for this French Westernist, or neoconservative, movement military force is at the service of diplomacy, and the mechanism today for taking the decision to go to war serves them well. Among the ten or so people who take part with François Hollande in the defence council meetings where the most important political-military decisions are taken, there are few specialists of Africa or the Middle East. DGSE head Bernard Bajolet, a former French ambassador to Jordan, Iraq, Algeria and Afghanistan is the only Arabist familiar with the reality of the Arab world.
The military officials present at these defence council meetings are the chief of staff of the armed forces and Hollande’s private military chief of staff, who are known to be right-wing even if they are not the most gung-ho among the assembled figures, for they know on-the-ground reality of war. But, disciplined as they are, they accept the orders of the political powers. Which partly explains the hasty, improvised and openly political nature of certain decisions, which are not supported by solid strategic hypotheses and which often reveal a damning lack of vision.
Enlightened by his ethnographic studies of French diplomats, Christian Lequesne believes that on top of the natural inclination of neoconservatives for military intervention, there is perhaps another explanation for France’s interventionist policies. “Since the economic crisis of 2008, to the eyes of the world, and notably Europe, France has been eclipsed as a power by Germany,” he argued. “For a number of foreign leaders, just one country counts: Germany, which knew how to reform its economy thanks to the [2002] Hartz reforms while France dawdled. To reclaim its rank, Paris has no other choice than to manifest itself in a field where Germany cannot compete.”
“This field, where Berlin for obvious historic reasons cannot venture, is that of military intervention. So one must not explain French interventionism, under Sarkozy as also Hollande, only by the weight of Westernists or neoconservatives among their entourages, but also by the search for a compensatory leadership, of another means of existing, of showing one’s power. All of which is limited by severe constraints in equipment, manpower and budgets.”
In the Iran nuclear negotiations, Paris failed to block an agreement that Washington and Tehran both sought, and its opposition has hardly facilitated France’s future bids for a stake of economic markets opening in Iran. All the more damaging here is the choice by Paris to make the rich and pro-Western kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in open conflict with Iran, its privileged partner in the region – while showing indifference to Saudi Arabia’s links with jihadist movements..
Libya, in chaos, could become the next target of intervention. Meanwhile, the results of interventionist policies influenced by the Parisian neoconservatives is not flattering: it has proven to be impossible to eradicate jihadist groups in the Sahel, despite the investment in equipment and troop numbers and which is difficult to maintain. There are now preparations for a withdrawal from the debatable peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic, and which follows sordid accusations that some French soldiers perpetrated child sex abuse. The modest participation in the coalition strikes against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, ill prepared and a strain on French resources, has shown no concrete result until now.
Lacking coherence despite their dogmatic rigidity, blind to the West’s responsibilities in the injustices and disorder around the planet, indifferent to all social dimensions to problems at home and abroad, incapable of seeing that, as Bernard Badie observed, “we are no longer alone in the world”, the strategists of these policies have achieved no better results than their American models. But, like them, they refuse to see the fact.
By continuing to turn to needless, even detrimental, military interventions on every occasion, for reasons of politics rather than the necessity for defence, these strategists and those they influence at the summit of political power are leading the country into a vicious circle of violence that is ever more difficult to contain.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse