As a longtime writer on French politics who was critical of François Hollande's performance in the feckless early days of his presidency, I am gratified to report that he is finally taking the measure of his job and the responsibility it carries. Reforged in the crucible of terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday, Nov. 13, Hollande is showing unexpected talent for statesmanship. His central role is legitimized by the circumstances -- the fact that the Islamic State group chose France and not some other country to stage the most complex, damaging assault to characterize its explosive expansion into globalized terrorism. Hollande has new stature among American, Russian, and Muslim national leaders who had dismissed his importance. At this point it is clear that if Hollande plays his hand skillfully he could be the moving force to create a global coalition against the Islamic State.
Hollande's Nov. 16 speech to a joint session of Parliament convened at the Versailles Palace crystallized the president's transformation. Versailles was Hollande's finest moment. His speech was dignified, measured, solemn, determined, epigrammatic, and morally uncompromising. It was the oration of a statesman. An enemy was specified without ambiguity. "France is at war," he said, "and the adversary is more than just another international terrorist network." ISIS is "a jihadist army" that "has a territorial base, financial resources, and military capacity." Clarifying the Obama administration's weak formula that the goal is "to degrade and ultimately to destroy" ISIS, Hollande said directly that the point is "not to contain but to destroy this organization." Putting to rest a long-running controversy among Western intellectuals over whether Islam and democracy are compatible, Hollande said that the war against ISIS is not a war against Muslims, "not a matter of some kind of war of civilizations, because these assassins don't represent any kind of civilization."
France's opposition politicians generally applauded but asked, plausibly, why it had taken the socialist leader so long to endorse unabashedly draconian counterterrorism laws. Underneath their statements lay the accusation that the left's emphasis on civil liberties and its wish not to stigmatize France's Muslim population is partly to blame for the failure to prevent ISIS from carrying out this and other recent attacks. However valid this point may be -- and it's always a question, as in the United States, of striking the right balance between security and civil liberties -- Hollande took an extraordinary step. It was extraordinary for any stable democracy, let alone France: He declared a state of national emergency, a move which might be seen as an embarrassing failure. Police and counterterrorism investigations are now legally more intrusive, including house searches without warrants; taking family members in for questioning; house arrest; more aggressive rules on deportation; and stripping bi-national suspected terrorists or conspirators of their French nationality. Hollande is proposing to revise the Constitution, including Article 16, a long controversial measure from the time of the Algerian War that gives the president personal authority to declare a state of emergency. Hollande added that this increased anti-terrorist regimen was a matter of national interest, not collective punishment of some particular group: "France without distinctions based on race, national origin, personal history or religion."
Hollande, who will meet U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin separately, is calling for "a single, broad and unified coalition," to link the United States, Russia, and various Muslim countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and the Gulf States. Such a coalition may even include Iran. The goal is to organize a formalized joint operation to destroy ISIS. President Charles de Gaulle's hope during the Cold War was to act as a diplomatic link between the United States and the Soviet Union. France would lead the world to Soviet-American detente. It didn't work then, but conditions have changed. The Soviet Union is gone and Putin, despite his aggression in Ukraine and his support of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has reasons to join up.
François Hollande is rising to the occasion. In French existentialist vocabulary, "il devient lui-même," which means he is creating himself, becoming what he might have been, reaching his potential, hidden as that was before. There certainly was a bit of artifice and theatrics when at the conclusion of his Versailles speech the parliamentarians gave him a standing ovation and broke into the Marseillaise. But even a skeptical eye saw some genuine patriotism, rather than the usual hypocrisy. The French parliament, with the president standing at the rostrum, at that moment visually and truly represented the French as a people and as a nation.
The Paris attacks will be remembered as France's 9/11. It wouldn't have been offensive if Hollande's speech had also paraphrased FDR after Pearl Harbor: November 13 "is a date which will live in infamy."
(AP photo)
