2 OCTOBER 2013 LMDLeMonde diplomatique what the syrian crisis reveals

Franceʼs resounding defeat The Mali intervention worked well. But the attempt at a French intervention in Syria, backing US missile strikes, has left the government and its diplomats embarrassed nationally and internationally

The Syrian situation has been a complete failure for French diplomacy, unlike Operation Serval in Mali this January, which was judged a military success and politically satisfactory (1). France, dropped by its allies for its hardline posturing, has been profoundly humiliated and that will leave scars. It claimed it had “made Moscow bend” and “dragged” Washington along with it, but that clumsy attempt at saving face will not bear scrutiny, despite comment in some parts of the French press. The international verdict is straightforward: in foreign ministries and media, there has been commiseration and Schadenfreude over French self-satisfaction.

The plan put forward by Russia’s President Putin on 9 September, proposing that Syria’s thousand or more tonnes of chemical weapons should be “secured” under UN supervision, now has unanimous international support. It was probably first mooted in bilateral meetings with the US at the G20 summit in St Petersburg on 5 September. This informal agreement between the big players – “big” here is more a marker of diplomatic maturity than size – was achieved without France even being consulted, dashing any hopes France had of being first lieutenant after the UK’s withdrawal (2).

The Russian plan provided Barack Obama, who is fundamentally reluctant to become involved in any kind of intervention, with a way to avoid the trap he set for himself in 2012 when he spoke of the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war as a “red line”. John Kerry’s tough talk then provided the basis for trying to preserve as much coherence as possible in the US position, until the anticipated convergence of opinion with Putin was achieved, to the mutual satisfaction of the US and Russia: in late September, Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov met in Geneva for bilateral talks to establish the conditions for an international conference on Syria – Geneva 2 – scheduled for July 2014.

Putin the arch-manipulator has retained his freedom of movement and directed proceedings throughout, obliging his partners to follow his lead. He has further extended his hold on Bashar al-Assad’s regime, while reinforcing an argument that is as effective as it is simple: in what way would limited, targeted strikes bring relief to the Syrian people? Does the use of force advance the objective of an international peace conference? Why hunt down jihadists all over the world but come to their aid in Syria?

In this cynical game of Realpolitik, Moscow did the US president a favour by getting him out of a military operation he dreaded. France had already gone over the top and was rushing towards the barbed wire without being sure it had cover. No one in France, whatever their political affiliation, could have failed to be struck by President Hollande’s isolation in St Petersburg and by France’s subordination to the US position and the workings of Congress. The Elysée and the French foreign ministry have succeeded in annoying Washington, embarrassing London, irritating Berlin, and causing despair in Beirut, sighs in Brussels, and raised eyebrows among the chess-players of Moscow.

It is interesting to note that Frédéric Lefebvre, a member of parliament for the centre-right UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire), also expressed the French itch to intervene in an interview on Le Monde’s website; he provides a link between Sarkozy’s Libyan adventurism

Olivier Zajec is a senior researcher at the Institut de Stratégie et des Conflits and author of La Nouvelle impuissance américaine (America’s New Impotence), L’Œuvre, Paris, 2011

By Olivier Zajec and Hollande’s lack of caution over Syria, in the name of a moral indignation that is selective in its targets: Palestine and more than a dozen other international outrages do not figure on the list of putative “Munichs”. The genuine credit France gained in Mali has been damaged, as has the positive impression created by rejecting the Iraq war in 2003: at a stroke, the reputation for independence and clear-sightedness that France won through taking that stand appears tarnished.

Hollande, who went to Bamako (Mali) on 19 September to bask in the glory of a job well done, will have trouble getting people to forget his humiliation in St Petersburg: that humiliation was worse because in the speech he gave there he said France would officially be arming the Syrian rebels. He spoke of arms shipments made “within a controlled framework, because we cannot permit arms to go to jihadists rather than the SLA” (the Syrian Liberation Army). This equation contains three unknowns, since “controlled”, “jihadists” and even “SLA” are impossible to define. What degree of interpenetration is there between the SLA and groups with “more marked Islamist tendencies”, such as Ahrar al-Sham and Liwa al-Tawhid, or the even more extreme Jabhat al-Nusrah? The decision to “deliver arms”, justified by the fact that “the Russians [do it] regularly”, worsens the conflict and could prolong the bloodshed in Syria, allowing Assad even greater scope to denounce foreign interference. Offering arms is a gamble, with no hope of traceability, which goes against the express aim of all parties of reaching a political solution to the conflict.

How did we get here? Is it the case, as Bernard-Henri Lévy has written, that “diplomacy through public opinion” is to blame (3), a diplomacy that pays too much attention to the feelings of a public inclined to appeasement, who refuse – probably because of their intellectual shortcomings – to grasp the full seriousness of the Syrian situation? As ever with Lévy, the phrase is catchy, but can clever phrase-making really replace significant sector of the Syrian population is struggling for survival on the side of a regime for which it has no love geopolitical and diplomatic reasoning?

France’s failure over Syria is explicable as a failure to evaluate the regional situation and its repercussions adequately. For months, the French foreign ministry has been taking advice from experts. Those who are most knowledgeable about the regional situation have emphasised its complexity, stressing that, for want of a better alternative, some Syrians still support Assad’s regime and reject a “new Syria” which, given the nature of the rebellion, risks being at the mercy of sectarian extremists, and of manipulative regional power-brokers known to be indirect sponsors of an obscurantism that will condemn Arab countries to paralysis. These Syrians foresee that in a post-Assad Syria, barring a miracle, they will have little or no security.

Amid many rumours, there is one fact: a significant number of Syrians are fighting – or rather struggling for survival – on the side of a regime for which they have no love. The Iraqis ditched Saddam Hussein and the Libyans abandoned Gaddafi. The Egyptians got rid of Mubarak. All or almost all of them did so even though they wisely feared (as did young people in Egypt and a sector of Libyan society) that the new powers would be no better and no more just than their predecessors. If in Syria today neither party seems able to prevail, it is not just because of the regime’s superiority in conventional terms, but because of the residual loyalty of a substantial proportion of the population, who refuse to abandon Assad despite the brutality, clan nepotism, and police resistance to change that typify his regime. Between the Alawite Scylla – a far cry from the ideals of Michel Aflaq (4) – and the Charybdis of beheadings under full sharia law and the oppression of minorities, what hope can there be for the Syria of Maaloula, Latakia and the Kurdish regions? The answer to this, first and foremost, ought to shape any analysis of the Syrian predicament.