Analysis: the U.S. could learn from France. Potter,
French president keeps door open to migrants while his U.S. peers grow panicky
If aliens landed today, unaware of what transpired in Paris barely five days ago, you could forgive them for thinking it was the United States, not France, that felt the absolute worst.
From Donald Trump’s pledge to “quickly and decisively bomb the hell out of ISIS,” to the brush fire of Republican governors vowing to bar Syrian refugees outright, the stateside fury boils anew with each passing day.
On Wednesday, the mayor of Roanoke, Va., went so far as to harness the memory of how “Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor” in a call to suspend any further Syrian refugee assistance. “It appears that the threat of harm to America from ISIS is now just as real and serious as that from our enemies then,” Mayor David Bowers warned.
Some conservative politicos in Washington, meanwhile, are pondering a possible government shutdown over U.S. President Barack Obama’s plan to absorb 10,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2016. The sound of doors slamming in Fortress America is deafening.
Contrast that to the astonishing message from France, where President François Hollande on Wednesday vowed that “France will remain a country of freedom” — not just for its own citizens, but for refugees, too.
“Life should resume fully,” Hol- lande said. “What would France be without its museums, without its terraces, its concerts, its sports competitions? France should remain as it is. Our duty is to carry on our lives.”
And that resumption of normalcy, he said, would include welcoming 30,000 refugees over the next two years, honouring a pledge made prior to the Islamic State onslaught against Paris.
“Our country has a duty to respect this commitment,” which will involve vigorous security checks. Hollande acknowledged that anxieties since Friday “have sown doubts” among many people, but said his government would align the “humanity duty” to help refugees, including those fleeing Syria, with the “duty to protect. We have to reinforce our borders while remaining true to our values,” he said.
France, framed as the new ground zero on TVs for five days straight, rolls out a welcome mat; an ocean away, that mat is all but burning.
Hollande’s message of inclusion suggests the “war” he envisions against ISIS may yet involve the kinds of non-military nuance that many security analysts say is essential to rolling back the ideology, and not just the territory, of the self-proclaimed caliphate. Fans of ISIS responded with glee online over weekend air attacks on Raqqa, the de facto ISIS capital, showing once again that a deeper war is precisely what they want. But the air raids, which don’t appear to have caused significant casualties, also bought Hollande time for France to pull together in tragedy.
Though the specifics of the French strategy remain unclear, Hollande’s determination to enlist a grand coalition against ISIS does not appear to pack the military punch such rhetoric implies — largely because French foreign policy is fixed upon the risks that a harder war and the likelihood of widespread civilian casualties will play into the hands of their enemies, multiplying, rather than reducing, the broader threat. As Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor of Middle East studies at French university Sciences Po, wrote in Politico, a ground offensive against ISIS “would galvanize jihadi recruitment and violence all over the world.”
The French government appears to be holding onto the sobriety of such thinking, even during its worst days in decades. Someone please tell it to the mayor of Roanoke.