Form Up The Battalions!

The French are not only punching above their weight in the tough arena of coercive diplomacy, the go-out-and-get-them approach of President Nicholas Sarkozy has taken France from the doldrums of diplomatic irrelevance where it languished as recently as February to the position of calling the West's diplomatic tune.  Not a bad record even for an inveterate gambler, addicted to high-risk, high-payoff ways of playing politics with enough personal energy to (if focused) replace the lost Japanese nuclear reactors.

Sarko currently has French forces deployed in six actual or nearly actual shooting wars--Ivory Coast, Libya, Afghanistan, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Somalia.  As one French observer noted recently, in comparison George W. Bush was a blooming pacifist.  While the French public has exhibited a fair degree of disenchantment with the Afghan operation, the other "overseas contingency operations" have not met with significant disapprobation.

More than a little ink--both physical and virtual--has been expended on the possible motives for the new French assertiveness.  To many onlookers, the prime reason has been assigned to Sarkozy's political ambitions coupled with his low standing in the polls, strong opposition, and poor showing in recent municipal elections.  While there is some measure of truth in this interpretation, it is doubtful it is the whole story.

Another input to the Sarko decision making process in recent weeks has been the embarrassment caused by France having botched policy during the "Jasmine" and "Lotus" revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.  Make no mistake about it, the French policy debacle was an embarrassment to Sarkozy, his party, and, most importantly, the French public.  Simply sending an inept--or merely unfortunate--foreign minister to the scaffold was not enough to repair the damage to both reputation and influence.

Another input may well have been a strong desire on the part of Sarkozy to step out from the shadow cast by Germany and its chancellor in the Eurozone.  Germany and France have not been good yokemates, to say the least, with respect to the economic challenges which have beset the EU the past several months.  But, foreign policy gave France--and Sarkozy personally--the chance to shine, shine much brighter than the timid Germans with their fear of all things military and love of all things financial.

Not to be dismissed without consideration is the gentlemanly pushing and shoving between Sarkozy and David Cameron regarding leadership in the newly emerging military relationship.  A robust policy backed by military force gave the French a leg up by demonstrating just which country had the real muscle now.

Nor is it possible to overlook the role played by the US.  Or, somewhat more accurately, the failure of the US to act in its traditional Great Power role.  Whether this deficiency was attributed to the cover story of American overextension and budgetary limitations or the weak kneed nature of the American president, the vacuum existed at the top.  And, Sarkozy well understands that international politics like nature abhors a vacuum.

Then, of course, one might take Sarkozy at his word.  France does have a set of norms, values, and customs by which right is parsed from wrong.  Acting quickly and robustly to protect unarmed civilians from mortal harm at the hands of a regime which had announced its intentions to inflict bloody repression was in complete tandem with French norms and values.  Bombing tanks in Libya or mortar positions in Ivory Coast were exercises meeting the highest tests of French morality regarding governmental conduct.

M. Sarkozy's motives were, as psychiatrists would put it, "overdetermined."  They were the expectable mix of the cynical and the principled, the transient and the eternal, the personal and the disinterested.  The issues which matter most are not those of motivation or intent but rather those of outcome and precedent.

Both Libya and the Ivory Coast constitute situations in which the outcome is not clear.  Should, as seems quite likely at the present, the war in Libya bog down into a protracted stalemate with a de facto partition of the place, the cheers which met Sarko's actions initially are highly likely to turn into jeers of disillusionment.  In the Ivory Coast should it prove out that the supporters of the internationally recognized incoming president, Ouattara, have been responsible for atrocities on a large scale (again as currently appears to have been the case) the applause within France will be replaced by shrugs of disengagement and sneers of disapproval.

In either case the presumption of failed overreach will go a long way to assuring that M. Sarkozy is a one term president.  High-risk, high-payoff gambles are like that.  And, as Clausewitz pointedly noted, "no plan survives first contact with the enemy".

Win, lose, or draw, the precipitous action of the French government has gone a far piece toward reinforcing the notion of R2P as an overarching responsibility of civilized states.  Arguably, R2P, as the Russians and Chinese have maintained, constitutes an unwarranted increase of UN authority.  It is ironic, but France's exercise in sovereign decision making particularly as regards two former colonial possessions and particularly the Ivory Coast intervention, transforms R2P into just what its opponents claim it to be--colonialism under a different and nicer term.

The reality is that most of the world's governments and publics accept the nation-state as the basic unit of global political organization.  This runs against the world view of the Western elites which hold the nation-state to be a relic of the past--and a very dangerous one at that.  The Western elites have embraced the supra-national organization with a lust which boggles the imagination.  The underlying proposition in the mind of the collective Western elite is that the planet is too small and common problems too large to allow nation-states the unfettered sovereignty which they have enjoyed for the past five hundred years.  The size and scope of problems coupled with the lethality of contemporary technologies of war fighting and the power of ideological conviction demand that power reside with international organizations alone.

The historical record of the past half century is littered with examples of governments run amok, of mounds of bodies piled up at the command of governments or non-state actors both fueled by racial, religious, or ideological hatreds.  The ability with which governments can and have killed their own people, generated refugees in the millions, inflicted fear along with physical casualties and destruction has been demonstrated with nausea producing regularity.

It is small wonder that the R2P doctrine was formulated and formally approved by an overwhelming majority of the UN membership.  It is equally of no surprise that the precursors of R2P all the way back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were similarly passed by universal acclamation.  In the waves of disgust and enthusiasm for having created a "better way" on paper, the assembled diplomats lost sight of what might occur when some country and some future time took the strictures seriously and demanded effective enforcement.

The inevitable result of such a demand would be the bringing into sharp conflict of the basic principle of sovereignty and the ideal of international duty.  The always realistic men in the Kremlin and Forbidden City have always held a firm line against the international community intervening in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.  Both have always relied upon their Security Council veto to protect against excesses of Western enthusiasm for intervention of this sort.

For reasons of short-term diplomatic interest both abstained on the Libyan no-fly/civilian protection resolution.  Both are probably regretting having done so as by not going the "No!" route, they have allowed for a crack of precedent to be formed.  How quickly the crack could be widened was seen by the UN peace keeping force in the Ivory Coast ordering four Ukrainian gunships into action against forces loyal to outgoing president Gbagbo.  This attack constituted a significant change in UN peacekeeping operational practice.

The French have pushed a precedent which seems good at the present moment but is fraught with problems for the future.  Chief among these are where will the line be drawn  At what level of international nausea will the civilized states or one of them seek R2P authorization?  What will happen if and when the Security Council does not give its blessings?  Or can the UN be bypassed, with reliance upon one regional organization or another acting in its place?  What happens if the UN says, "yes," but the regional entity decrees "no?"

There are other problems as well.  Some have been outlined in Libya.  Who is responsible for executing any specific R2P operation?  What about the internal mechanisms of any state for approving such expeditions?  This is particularly relevant with regard to the US while totally lacking relevance for the French whose president has royal level prerogative to employ armed force for reasons of state.

Nicholas Sarkozy has well and truly kicked the fire ant hill when it comes to looking ahead.  Without any intention to do so, he has created a precedent with more problems than solutions, more difficulties for tomorrow than certainties.  It may even prove that more civilians in the future will die at the hands of their governments than otherwise would have been the case as an unintended consequence of M. Sarkozy's  motives and consequent action.

Who ever said that irony is not a major feature of history?