CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AFP/Getty Images Hollande unchained The French president has proven surprisingly tough when it comes to foreign policy.

PARIS — Before he became France’s president in 2012, François Hollande’s only foreign experience had been a drive from New York to California at age 20 while researching a report on U.S. fast food and, a few years later, an eight-month internship at the French embassy in Algiers.

That’s some distance from holding France’s nuclear launch codes and sending Mirage fighter jets on faraway bombing missions. But now Hollande is surprising French diplomats and foreign governments with his bold approach to foreign policy, and uninhibited use of French troops abroad — from Africa to the Middle East.

Hollande, 61, was not the first European or U.S. leader to take office with little or no foreign experience. But he is the first French president to be tested on so many crises at the same time, with French forces active in so many theaters of operation.

His resolve is currently being tested in Syria, where French fighters last week bombed an ISIL training camp. The attack came after the French president reversed his previous view that such operations might not amount to much.

Hollande’s foreign policy is even more surprising in contrast to the widely held perception that he is indecisive and hesitant on the domestic front, permanently weighing the electoral consequences of the choices or non-choices he makes.

“He’s the caramel candy president," said one French diplomat, who requested anonymity. "Hard on the outside and soft on the inside.”

Hollande's political opponents generally find it hard to attack the only part of his policies that voters don’t seem to dislike.

On the world stage, he seems to have no problem making choices and getting political support for them.

“Foreign policy is the one domain where a French president can act without much opposition,” said Camille Grand, head of the Paris-based Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique. “Compared to, say, the U.S. or Germany, the French parliament has little powers. The head of the executive has a lot of freedom of decision.”

And, it often seems, freedom from criticism. Hollande's political opponents generally find it hard to attack the only part of his policies that voters don’t seem to dislike. According to recent polls, even if the French overwhelmingly think Hollande is not doing a good job as president they tend to approve the way he is “defending France’s interests abroad.”

That doesn’t mean his foreign policy will help him in the polls. “It has little impact on a president’s popularity,” said Jerome Fourquet from French pollster IFOP. “At the very best it can help stabilize it if he’s seen as doing a good job.”

“You don’t get popular in the polls with a strong and active foreign policy, but on the other hand, to be taken seriously at all by the voters you have to be up to the task in that area. All French presidents know that,” said François Heisbourg, chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

France's hard line

France may have surprised its Western partners with its unexpected hard-line stances in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear capabilities and over the fate of Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad, whom Hollande still sees as preventing a long-term solution to the country’s problems.

Two weeks ago French authorities launched a criminal probe against the Assad regime for alleged war crimes, and Hollande never loses an opportunity to express his regrets over U.S. President Barack Obama’s last minute change of mind, back in 2013, on bombing the Damascus government’s forces.

The pragmatism that can sometimes make Hollande appear spineless in domestic matters is an asset in foreign policy.

Hollande staked his foreign policy ground as an active president early in his term. Eight months into his presidency, in January 2013, he sent French forces to Mali to fight the advance of Islamist forces that threatened to take over the capital, Bamako.

“I was a bit surprised by his decisiveness," said Heisbourg. "He didn’t try to weigh the pros and cons and come up with one of his infamous political compromises. That may have been because the situation was rather binary: You either did something, or you didn’t, and the decision was urgent.”

The pragmatism that can sometimes make Hollande appear spineless in domestic matters is an asset in foreign policy, said one French diplomat.

“If you look at where France’s interests are, very often the choice is rather clear-cut,” the diplomat said. “And most of the time there aren’t voters or domestic entrenched interests to worry about.”

The beginning of Hollande’s term was dominated by the eurozone crisis and its Greek spinoff. France had to take a backseat to Germany, if only because the eurozone’s largest fiscal delinquent could hardly take the lead in trying to solve the monetary union’s fiscal woes.

So besides harping on Paris' long-term preference for tighter eurozone integration, Hollande couldn’t do much that would be credible to France's euro partners — especially Germany. It was only after Hollande made a U-turn on economic policy in early 2014 that he could get back in the game — by helping forge a last-minute compromise between Athens and Berlin in the last stretch of the talks.

Even then, Grand said, “Europe is the missing piece of his foreign policy. We haven’t heard any original proposal or speech from him.”

With Africa and the Middle East, however, it has been a different story.

Less than a week after French forces helped retake Mali’s northern city, in early February 2013, Hollande had what Bruno Tertrais, a professor at France’s IRS, calls his “Timbuktu revelation.” After huge crowds celebrated the French president as their liberator, a visibly moved Hollande said he had lived “the most important day of his political career.”

“That’s the moment when he realized that foreign policy was a domain where you could be effective and obtain tangible results quickly,” Tertrais said.

Hollande's new attitude

With little taste for grandiose pronouncements and nothing like a firm doctrine on France’s role in the world, Hollande early on chose “a rather modern” attitude towards foreign affairs, an associate said.

“He didn’t share in the old de Gaulle or Mitterrand mythology, for example, that France has to keep strong ties to Russia just for the sake of balancing its natural alliance with the U.S.,” the source said.

On the other hand, Hollande’s formative years in politics were spent in Mitterrand’s Elysée, and the former socialist president remains his main political influence. “By default, he took from Mitterrand the need for a firm stance in foreign affairs, up to and including the use of force if necessary,” Tertrais said.

Still, Hollande’s policy can’t be seen as a break from the tradition. His style differs from the type of showmanship associated with his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy, but French diplomats see a continuity rather than a “rupture.”

On Iran, for example, France’s constant push for closer ties with Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries is based on its economic and industrial interests, and partly explains its hard line against Tehran.

France has shed its long-standing obsession with the U.S. and its will to distance itself from Washington at all costs.

Pragmatism, however, was what made Hollande, two years ago, the first western leader to meet with newly elected Iranian president Hassan Rouhani. The two met again last week, and Rouhani is expected on a state visit to France in November.

On Russia, Hollande has proceeded more carefully, said the French diplomat. That's in sharp contrast to Sarkozy, who started his presidency after saying in his 2007 campaign that he’d rather “shake [George W.] Bush’s hand than meet with Putin.” Then he seemed to become best pals with the Russian strongman. More recently Sarkozy has criticized Europe’s policy on Ukraine, saying it was a mistake to “isolate Russia.”

“Hollande was very cautious, without preconceived ideas, but very quickly he decided he couldn’t trust Putin,” the diplomat said. “On the other hand he really worked hard to get the so-called Normandy process off the ground, together with Merkel.” That’s the diplomatic gathering of four countries – Ukraine, Germany, France and Russia – who agreed to work on a solution to the crisis in eastern Ukraine.

“That’s the only channel of communication still open, and you have to credit Paris and Berlin for that,” Grand said.

More importantly, said diplomats and analysts alike, France has shed its long-standing obsession with the U.S. and its will to distance itself from Washington at all costs.

“Sarkozy had started along that road, but Hollande is totally at ease with Washington and doesn’t feel a need to make the French difference heard at all costs,” said a French ambassador.

When he was elected three years ago, Hollande appointed veteran Laurent Fabius, a former Mitterrand prime minister, to the foreign minister job.

“Everyone then expected him to delegate that domain and focus strictly on domestic politics and the economy — and he didn't,” an aide said.

While Hollande is visibly enjoying being a foreign policy president, Fabius is rumored to be willing to resign by next January. Whoever is chosen to replace him is unlikely to become more influential than he was.

Nicholas Vinocur contributed to this report.