Immigration is slowly becoming a major issue in the French political debate, but it is at the same time extremely difficult to discuss in a rational manner.

First, no one know how many immigrants live in France. In fact, no one really knows who is or isn’t an immigrant. There are now third generation immigrants who are French citizens born to French parents and for whom “the French” are the white people from neighboring cities.

Secondly, it has been nearly impossible to criticize the immigration policy without being called a racist, even though the immigration issue has never been about race.

Third, as the demographics of France are being transformed, the political elite adapts accordingly. In the eye of a politician, immigrants are neither a problem nor an opportunity for France, but essentially new voters. So the political debate about immigration mutates at the same time as the French population does.

As French society becomes fractured between separate communities, political parties are adapting to the new realities. In 2007, being part of a “visible minority” (meaning a Black or an Arab) was taken into consideration by the Socialist Party for the designation of candidates to the legislative elections.

The Socialists are clearly attempting to attract the “minorities”, and it remains to be see whether the conservatives will try to do the same or if they will take a chance with an anti-immigration message.

Thus, many people who wonder why the politicians are not defending the cultural integrity of the nation are mistaken. The nation itself is being transformed, at least from the politicians’ point of view. As the nation’s leaders, they have to follow her.

In France, immigrant communities are usually located in relatively isolated suburbs. It’s easy to ignore them. Most of the time, someone who lives in a suburb near Paris may not have anything to do with the well-off part of Paris. Conversely, native French can live their life without ever putting a foot in an immigrant neighborhood.

The real problem, has nothing to do with race and not much with religion or culture. The real problem is legal and political.

The people living on the French territory, wherever they come from, have to share the same legal system, especially in a centralized, non-federal state like France. That includes among other things, a civil code with dispositions on family relations, marriage and so on. That also includes a lot of implicit dispositions, tolerances or approximations that pose no problem as long as the country is culturally homogeneous.

For instance, the French secular state does not subsidize religious institutions, but it does subsidize historical monuments, which happen to include a lot of churches. The catholic church has been treated harshly when the separation between the church and the state took place in 1905, so this state of things may be an implicit historical compensation. In any case, nobody had a problem with this until Islam became a big religion in France, hence the debate about places of worship.

Muslims who pray in the street argue that they would happily use buildings if the French state made them available, or at least did something to that effect. French legislation officially keeps the government from subsidizing any religious activity, but the central and local governments, which are anxious to oblige this new constituency, seek ways to overturn the law.

The first casualty of immigration is the rule of law, and the current situation only shows how fragile an edifice the western democratic state is. European legislations are usually the product of centuries of struggles and compromises, and immigration makes part of it look like a joke. Secularism is undermined, and so are freedom of expression or immigration laws, among other things.

To take a relatively trivial example, the sale of Swedish snus, an oral tobacco, is banned in the EU but makla, a North African equivalent, only more hazardous and less regulated, is tolerated in order to accommodate immigrant communities.

If the French immigration policy remains the same, which seems likely, it is to be hoped that immigration’s second casualty will not be civil peace. Explosions like the 2005 riots or the recent London riots can be described as insurgencies without a political content. Islam might fill the void someday, or not. No one knows. But what can be said is that the situation is not getting better.

Unemployment is not decreasing, and it is massive among immigrant youth populations. New generations from immigrant communities do not assimilate to the French society and culture, and the populations involved are increasing. Things remain relatively quiet as long as the French state keep them that way with social benefits and police forces, but that may not hold on forever.

It’s easy to imagine the French authorities relying on local Muslim figures to keep things quiet, in exchange for small things like places of worships or local tolerance on religious symbols. In 2005, they relied on “big brothers”, locally influent persons, to convince the “youths” to behave. In other words, they used old colonial methods to deal with places inside the French territory.

Whether we like it or not, France is changing fast, and is doing so without the consent of the largest part of its population. Episodes like the street prayers issue, the headscarf ban, or the 2005 riots are the product of this evolution. It’s difficult to believe that a more than a thousand-year old nation is fading away but no one can be sure what the country called “France” in will look like in forty years.

The reality is that it’s the Palestinians who are blocking any formal agreement.  Palestinian politicians have failed to be honest with their own people about what a final peace settlement would entail. Because of the radical demands of the Palestinian people, none of their politicians can keep power if they endorse the peace terms Western diplomats are promoting: two states living side by side peacefully with no return of refugees and no territorial claims.

On the Israeli side, such an outcome would be easy to sell to the public. The case against an agreement with the Palestinians is mostly based on security considerations and not on any rejection of Palestinian self-determination. No important Israeli politician is pushing for the annexation of the West Bank or Gaza Strip. No one in Israel wants to turn Palestinians into Israeli citizens and no one is considering expelling them. Security considerations are almost the only argument made in favor of the current status quo.

For the various third parties (the US, the UN, the Europeans, and so on), their focus has been on a formal peace treaty, rather than peace itself. Westerners should know the difference. Peace treaties that last are the exception rather than the rule, and it’s very difficult to predict the future of any particular treaty. In Europe, the treaties signed in 1648, 1815 and 1945 lasted for decades, but the treaty of 1919, which took just as much time and effort, didn’t work so well.

Forcing a peace treaty on the two parties is a useless exercise. Even if Israelis and Palestinians were to sign one, nothing is easier than finding a pretext to break an unwanted commitment. Maybe something could have been signed in Camp David in 2000, but would it have changed anything? Arafat started his war in spite of his Oslo commitment. A formal state of peace is no obstacle to war.

Obama’s latest vision may worry some in Jerusalem, but it’s also vague.  He mentioned the “1967 lines” (during when in 1967? one might ask) with land swaps, but he didn’t say that the swapped lands have to be of an equal area. He only said that the swaps had to be “mutually agreed.” Obama’s other remarks about the final terms of a peace deal weren’t more specific.

There’s little sign he’s ready to waste time once again on empty negotiations. Israelis always have to be careful, but there doesn’t seem to be any reason for panic here. Obama’s parameters are not very different from Clinton’s and they are still far from what the Palestinian leadership is in a position to agree to publicly.

On the other hand, Obama did make the important point that radicalism will not bring the Palestinians any closer to a final agreement of any kind, and he insisted on Israel’s security. Whatever Obama has in mind, his speech pointed to a basic truth that is not often articulated about this conflict: a peace treaty should be based on peace, not the other way around.

In Northern Israel, Jews and Arabs live side by side with no major problem. Jewish settlements in the West Bank wouldn’t be a problem if people could go about their business without fear of trouble. Even if Israelis and Palestinians never sign a peace treaty, they can maintain a relatively quiet status quo for a long time and postpone the final status for as long as they want. That’s basically what has happened in Cyprus.

In the end, Obama made a careful, very diplomatic speech that should please the Europeans and the UN and doesn’t contain much substance, which is all for the best.

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There are though many reasons to explain the polling result. As has been written about everywhere since last Sunday, French political culture is traditionally much more tolerant about sexual matters than America’s political culture.

French president Felix Faure (1841-99) famously died in a Paris brothel, and that didn’t cause much of a shock. Clemenceau quipped that the best part of love was the climb up the stairwell.  He meant: in a brothel. As far as French voters and the press are concerned, any legitimate act between consenting adults is fine and not much to worry about it.

Americans are of course more religious than the French, yet that doesn’t really explain the differing views.  The French were more religious in Faure or Clemenceau’s eras than Americans today. And in any case, the lack of interest in politicians’ private lives is could itself be compatible with a generally moral attitude regarding politics, at least in theory. The problem is that it just isn’t so.

In Strauss-Kahn’s case, as could be suspected, other stories are now emerging about previous incidents: one including Tristane Banon, a journalist Strauss-Kahn seems to have assaulted in 2001 or 2002 (reports differ), and a Mexican chambermaid during an official trip at a later date. Obviously, these incidents go much further than private life issues.

When Strauss-Kahn was appointed to run the IMF, Jean Quatremer, a journalist from the daily Libération, blogged about possible coming troubles due to DSK’s incapacity to control his urges, but the profession ignored him while Strauss-Kahn’s communication staff asked him to remove the post (which he refused to do).

What is emerging now is the realization that every political journalist in Paris was aware of the allegations surrounding Strauss-Kahn’s behavior and failed to reveal them.  No one was there to blow the whistle. Even if we put Strauss-Kahn aside, there’s a larger question: what other stories is the press holding their silence on?

The French understand that there is a sense of “omerta” at work, an implicit vow of silence on the part of the media that may very well cover much more than just sexual or intimate issues.

Most French papers couldn’t survive in the marketplace alone and are only still in business after having been bought out by a larger industrial group.  For their new owners, good relations with the government may be important.

Other players in the French media often rely on financial aid from the state. Public TV and radio are big players too and the news agency AFP is a public company. As a profession, journalists share various corporate interests, fiscal or otherwise. The bottom line is that French journalists depend heavily on the state and are strongly unionized as well.

Add to that the fact that politicians and journalists depend on each other for publicity and scoops and the general discretion about politicians’ intimate lives gets easier to understand.

What remains uncertain is whether the press does a better job when it comes to reporting on corruption in general. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be the case.

Not long after Mitterrand’s death, the French public was surprised to discover an interview made by a Belgian TV channel in which Mitterrand dismissed a journalist for being too insistent about a recent scandal involving Mitterrand’s presidential staff illegally wiretapping various French public figures. The scandal was known in France, but the interview, which showed Mitterrand in a very bad light, wasn’t released until he was out of office.

The French public has been kept in an isolated news vacuum many times.  The near-complete consensus against the Iraq war in 2003 is partly explained by the almost compete absence of any dissenting points of view in the media during this period (in addition to some outright lies in reporting).

The current atmosphere, with politicians feigning “shock” about Strauss-Kahn’s attack allegations and more or less insinuating that he is in trouble because he’s an affluent and influential Frenchman, are reminiscent of this period.

All that makes it relatively unsurprising, but depressing, to discover that a majority of the French believe in a conspiracy against Strauss-Kahn (although there isn’t even a theory underpinning that belief).

Less than a week ago, Strauss-Kahn was thought to be not exactly a perfect family man, but still a respectable person, thanks to the media’s omerta — and now he is in jail. It may take some time for the French public to make sense of it all. Hopefully though the scandal will make the public open their eyes a little more.

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For Nicolas Sarkozy, the arrest has provided a boost: the road to reelection seems more open now than 48 hours ago.  Strauss-Kahn would have been his toughest opponent, although admittedly his odds for defeating Sarko were probably not as great as many polls suggested.

Strauss-Kahn was essentially absent from domestic politics, which was very convenient for him. In 2007, Strauss-Kahn lost the Socialist primaries to Ségolène Royal, and he didn’t do much to increase his standing in the party since then.  Being in charge of an international institution, he couldn’t, and therefore didn’t have to comment on every single French political event.

It’s one thing to be the most popular political personality a year ahead of an election, but quite another to maintain that standing during a campaign. Even if he had been appointed the Socialist party’s candidate, Strauss-Kahn would have had to actually campaign: deliver inspiring speeches, look nice, shake thousands of hands and collect votes one by one.

The nitty-gritty of campaigning was never Strauss-Kahn’s strong suit. The French master at this game has always been Chirac. Sarkozy isn’t so bad. Strauss-Kahn though is no natural on the trail. Also, a presidential candidate must appear likable to the public.  During his presidential debates, Sarkozy had to hold back when he debated Royal to avoid looking arrogant or smug. Strauss-Kahn would have had a very hard time pulling this off.

The Socialist party can still find an effective candidate and the arrest may even free some space for a dark horse. This may be one of the reasons why the Socialists have decided not to postpone the primaries. Candidates have until mid-July to declare, which doesn’t leave too much time for outsiders.

Many Socialist leaders are also silently rejoicing at Strauss-Kahn’s arrest.  François Hollande, Martine Aubry, Ségolène Royal and Laurent Fabius have all lost a tough competitor. None of them has poll numbers nearly as high as Strauss-Kahn’s, but if the government remains as unpopular as it has been during the last year, any candidate supported by the party stands a chance.

The arrest also poses a daily problem for the party.  Socialist politicians have to support Strauss-Kahn to a certain extent because he is one of them and they don’t want to look like opportunists. But at the same time, they have to remember that they are dealing with accusations of sexual assault.

The alleged victim is also a member of an ethnic minority group and so the Socialists can’t afford to look insensitive.  If Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers mount a defense by trying to raise questions about the accuser, it could end up backfiring on the Socialist party.

Most politicians from the conservative majority have remained careful as well and Sarkozy hasn’t spoken yet, but there’s no doubt they will exploit this weakness as the case against Strauss-Kahn proceeds. Strauss-Kahn’s “rock star” behavior was already an embarrassment for his party, but many were willing to overlook that so long as he was popular and stood a chance against Sarkozy. Now, he’s just a problem.

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When Nicolas Sarkozy appointed Strauss-Kahn as the French candidate for IMF directorship, he wasn’t doing him any favors. Sarkozy knew that Strauss-Kahn would have to come back to France some time before the end of his term in order to run in the 2012 presidential election, which in turn would complicate the Socialist party’s choice of a candidate. In addition, it wouldn’t look very good on the part of Strauss-Kahn to quit his post in order to return to run for political office.  And in fact, the position wouldn’t help him with the French left which doesn’t like the IMF, an institution they see as the embodiment of the free-market.

Nevertheless, Strauss-Kahn was performing well in the polls.  It may not have meant much a year before an election, but he had a good chance to run well. There were issues: a few weeks ago, he was spotted getting out of an expensive Porsche, which in itself isn’t damaging but is a problem for a politician who was asking Greece to lower their wages while pushing for the opposite policy in France. All that was expected by Sarkozy who knew that the IMF position would complicate any Strauss-Kahn political run.

Some people speculate that the alleged sexual assault incident was planned by Strauss-Kahn’s opponents, but information is scarce and quite frankly, it doesn’t make much of a difference. That’s because Strauss-Kahn has been linked to scandalous behavior before.  Less than 24 hours after Strauss-Kahn was shamefully arrested trying to flee the U.S., stories are emerging that were ignored or under-reported earlier. Strauss-Kahn has been known for years to have a problem with women and it is quite possible that he has behaved criminally: A journalist claimed in 2007 that Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her.

The French media though tends to look the other way in those sorts of cases. French political culture has a reputation for being relatively blind to politicians’ private lives. Many French politicians cheat on their spouses without anyone taking any interest in the story.  Whether this is the right way to deal with such matters is open to debate.

Even if the story involving a hotel chambermaid is a conspiracy, which it doesn’t look like, that probably wouldn’t save Strauss-Kahn. His past is coming to the surface and his reputation is irremediably hurt now. He’s history. If it is a conspiracy, it’s a very good one: the kind that damages the target even if discovered.

That leaves Sarkozy with much less dangerous Socialist opponents: Martine Aubry, the daughter of Jacques Delors, ex-president of the European commission, secretary general of the party, and the politician who originated the 35 hour week; François Hollande, another socialist apparatchik with no particular charisma, and Ségolène Royal who lost to Sarkozy before and lacks credibility. None of them looks very frightening for Sarkozy.

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In the early 80s, as the US and the UK were turning pro-market and finally taking the Cold War seriously, France under Mitterrand was enacting socialist reforms. The minimum wage was increased, the weekly work week was limited to 39 hours, a new wealth tax was adopted, many companies and banks were nationalized and public spending took off.

The Keynesian economic program was based on a consumption stimulus that was supposed to jump-start the rest of the economy, and which (unsurprisingly) never worked. Two years later, as unemployment and public deficits had reached new highs, the French government was facing a choice between a devaluation that would have pushed France out of the European monetary system and a repudiation of most of their policies. They chose the latter and that was the end of the “changement”, the “change” that had been Mitterrand’s motto during the campaign.

Yet, the Socialist party is now celebrating Mitterrand’s election as if it had changed France’s face forever. In a sense it did, but certainly not for the better. The conservatives (mostly Gaullists) never really reversed the Socialists’ policies for good.

Mitterrand was one of the most cynical and capable politicians in French history. As a student, before the war, he was part of the far-right. His political career started during World War II, when he managed to be part of the collaboration and resistance at the same time. During the decolonization era, he publicly adopted a liberal posture but acted as a hard-liner as Minister of Justice during the Algerian War.

Under De Gaulle’s presidency, he became the leader of the Socialist opposition. He passed an alliance with the Communists during the 70s and won the 1981 election. He remained president for 14 years with a cancer that should have killed him by the mid-80’s, but had to wait for the end of his second term to get him. He died in 1995.

The philosopher Jean-François Revel, whom Mitterrand approached during the 60s, described him as utterly uninterested by political ideas. Ideas were tools, and so were people, and Mitterrand knew how to use them as no one did.

The Socialists never recovered from his death. By the turn of the century, it was very hard for a politician to claim seriously that he was a truly committed “socialist”. Mitterrand knew how to please the people he needed to, managing a coalition with social democrats, communists – and even some centrists. Without him, the socialists were left more divided than ever and even now, they are still stuck with a 19th century ideology, and a party organization dating from the same period, with “cells”, a “secretary general”, “currents”, an obligation to produce a “common platform” which is expected to “synthesize” the party’s views, and so on.

But at the same time, France, like other Western states, has become more and more of a statist country, partly because of Mitterrand’s 1981 victory, partly because of the 1997 election which also put into power a Socialist government, but also thanks to a general, almost mechanical, trend. Every state encroachment has to be followed by another. The French state now eats about half its GDP and it’s difficult to start a business without the state’s involvement at some level.

And that’s probably the most remarkable thing about the 1981 Socialist victory: it was never reversed. Politically, the Socialist victory was brought about thanks to the Machiavellian genius of a complete opportunist, not because the French people were so keen to live in an anachronistic socialist paradise. But socialism of any brand is a very convenient system of government for bureaucrats and politicians in general, even those who do not particularly favor socialist ideas.

A lot has been written about the tendency of a democracy to evolve into a statist tyranny of the majority to the detriment of the liberal ideas that brought about democracy in the first place. In France, the 1981 election accelerated that descent, and if it is reversible, no one seems to have found the solution yet.

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While there are few details out now, here are the main elements: The story was first reported yesterday by the Metula News Agency (MENA), a French-language Israeli news service that usually provides reliable, and sometimes hard to find, information.  So far, they are the only news agency to have reported this story.

Mohammad-Reza (Arash) Fakhravar, an Iranian student who is the brother of Amir-Abbas Fakhravar, the president of the Confederation of Iranian Students, seems to have been kidnapped on April 29th by personnel from the Iranian embassy in Paris

According to MENA, he was then taken to Orly airport and put on Iran Air 732 flight en route to Tehran. During the kidnapping, Fakhravar managed to alert his brother in Washington, DC about his situation.

His brother then alerted both the FBI and his mother in Tehran, who ran to the Khomeini airport in order to look for her son. A member of the airport staff told her confidentially that her son had been taken to Evin prison, where many political prisoners are detained.

And that’s all that’s been reported thus far.  There isn’t much mention of it in the mainstream French media, nor anywhere else as far as I can see.  And there’s been absolutely no reaction from French authorities.

If the story is true, and MENA’s record tends to make it plausible, it’s possible the French government wants to keep things quiet and try to find some sort of solution.

While silencing the press and letting the guy rot in jail could have been an option before the Internet, that seems unlikely now and Sarkozy’s policy doesn’t seem to mesh with that approach. We can only suppose that more details will emerge in the coming days.

The story, in French, is on the MENA website. They may provide an English version later on, as they sometimes do.

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In the Ivory Coast, France’s involvement is part of a long line of interventions in French-speaking Africa. There may be more troops involved, but the role is still limited.  And in Libya and Afghanistan, the moves aren’t the result of a more assertive, go-it-alone France, but rather of a weakened French military more open to cooperating with other Western forces.

For starters, none is a war in the legal sense.  Declarations of war still have to be authorized by the French parliament and while admittedly no one does that anymore, perceptions still matter.  The French don’t see any of these interventions as a major conflict.

In Afghanistan, French troops were present early on, but their role remained marginal for years. Only a few special forces were actually engaged in combat until more troops were sent in 2007. Few in France seemed aware that French soldiers were actually involved in a conflict.

In fact, Sarkozy’s policy in Afghanistan is part of a larger strategic shift towards better integration with the Western alliance. France joined NATO’s integrated command structure in 2009, and the French presence in Afghanistan is an embodiment of that same policy.

France is getting closer to the US and NATO not because it’s getting stronger and more aggressive, but rather for exactly opposite reasons.  France’s military budget has shrunk more or less continuously since the 1960s. Governments however have still wanted to maintain some sort of global influence.

In order to do that, leaders from De Gaulle to Chirac experimented with two options that failed. First, they tried to triangulate between the East and the West during the Cold War, but this strategy was constrained and possible only to a certain extent.  De Gaulle could only make his speeches about “Free Québec” or leave NATO’s integrated command structure because France was still, in effect, under the American umbrella.

Second, they tried to use the EU. France and Germany were the two main EU member states until the United Kingdom joined the Union, and with Germany keeping a low political profile until reunification, that left France as a de facto political leader of continental Europe.  It’s debatable if that’s still the case.

None of these two policies would make much sense today, so France is again changing direction and focusing on working better within the Western alliance.  In Afghanistan, a key French interest is maintaining good relationships with the US.

Again in the Ivory Coast, it’s not a new assertive France, but just business as usual. The country has always kept close watch on French-speaking Africa. For decades, the Ivory Coast was the showcase of French-speaking Africa, with many expats and a high level of political stability, thanks to local elites who had often studied in French schools. Things though have gradually grown messier after Felix Houphouet-Boigny’s death.

In the past, French African interventions were small affairs.  In 1978, two companies of French paratroopers could stop a Cuban supported invasion in Zaire. Up to the 80s, most rebellions in Western and Central Africa could be halted with two helicopters and one company of Marine Infantry, or something close to it.

But population change and the proliferation of arms have made things more difficult.  Yet, the conflict in Ivory Coast is still a classical African ethnic war.  France can intervene punctually and efficiently. Their military has experience with the region, knows how to operate there and isn’t getting directly involved in the fight. It’s nothing new: the French have done this before.

In Libya, French aims are constrained, though mainly thanks to confusion about the mission.  In short, the French are improvising their Libya policy.  Sarkozy did decide out of thin air to offer full diplomatic support to the rebels, and rushed to begin military operations without a defined objective, but the French expect a typical African-intervention ending.

Libya is seen in and treated by Paris very much like a sub-Saharan African country: a land unstable and divided, with strong tribal factions and very weak military forces.  International negotiators will work out a political order and European states hope for an arrangement that would help them prevent a flood of migrants leaving North Africa (Europe’s biggest worry.)

So while France may be involved in three shooting conflicts, their involvement in each seems to be set within relatively constrained limits. And war in this decade is different from even 20 years ago: many Western armies, not just the French, are now forced to carry out operations in multiple theaters.

How long they can maintain this posture though poses an interesting question.  Most European military budgets have been shrinking for decades, and demographic trends may make it much harder for the West to keep policing the world.

While unusual, and perhaps unprecedented, for France to be involved in three different shooting wars at the same time, that doesn’t mean they’ve become trigger-happy.

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This year’s French département elections (for local administrative governments) are relatively minor.  Only half the seats are being contested and there was a high abstention rate (55%).  Yet, after the first of two ballots, Sarkozy’s UMP lost, with the Socialists squeaking by and the National Front pulling many votes from the president’s party.

If it’s true that Sarkozy hoped the intervention in Libya would help him domestically, this electoral strategy would also be odd for many reasons. First, the war doesn’t seem very large or burdensome for the French public.  Thus far, France’s involvement consists of about 50 aircraft.  The scale is nothing like the 2003 Iraq war for the U.S. Second, last week news of Libya was overshadowed by the French media’s coverage of the Fukushima reactor. Events in Libya seemed to be off the public’s radar screen.

Finally, the French public is unsure what national interests Sarkozy is defending in Libya. Is the action motivated by the state’s worries about a flood of illegal immigration? Qaddafi had acted as a buffer against migrants, but with him out of the game, could that become an issue again? There’s been little analysis in France of the Libyan intervention in terms of national interest though. The media has played up the human rights angle in their coverage.  But even from that particular vantage, the situation in Libya is far from clear. We know Qaddafi is bad, we don’t know much about the rebels, and to be honest, few people in France actually seem to care right now.

On the other hand, the French may be happy to see Qaddafi beaten. In 1989, he was behind the downing of an airliner (UTA flight 772), killing 270 people including 54 French citizens. Qaddafi supported dozens of terrorist groups during the 70s, including the French Action Directe. In 1976, when Palestinian terrorists hijacked an Air France flight, Qaddafi allowed them to refuel in Libya before they flew to Entebbe, Uganda, where the IDF conducted its famous rescue operation.  The recent warm-up in ties may have been backed by diplomats, but many French still have memories of being humiliated by Qaddafi.

But finishing off Qaddafi, may require actions on the ground and that possibility is still uncertain.  A Ceausescu-like ending may make many French happy, but would Sarkozy get any credit if the rebels were responsible for toppling the regime?

More generally, it’s not easy to guess how the French would react politically to a real war.  Precedents aren’t useful: France’s last notable victory took place in 1918, and cost 1.4 million lives. Few are nostalgic about it. After that, the three major wars fought by the French military ended up as defeats, 1940 against Germany, the war in Indochina and then in Algeria. One military success was the 1956 Suez operation, but that turned into another humiliation thanks to President Eisenhower.

Since then, France has played a bizarre game: promoting a “third way” under the U.S. umbrella, or by being part of coalitions while not fully participating, (as happened during the Kuwait war when Mitterrand refused to place French troops under U.S. command). During the 1999 Kosovo campaign, Chirac would review and sometimes veto airstrikes on a daily basis, making the operations even more complicated.

Sarkozy has taken the opposite direction, trying to make France an important component of the Western alliance: hence French reinforcements in Afghanistan and the country’s re-integration into NATO’s command structure. With the operation in Libya, Sarkozy may be trying to prove that his policy hasn’t made France a vassal but has in fact raised its influence.

That could strengthen Sarkozy’s authority over his government, especially the diplomats, some of whom recently published a collective – and anonymous – letter accusing him of amateurism and of being America’s puppet.

The Libya operation may also help Sarkozy strengthen his authority within his own party. The war looks like a humiliation for Alain Juppé, the new foreign minister, who declared on the very day he took office that he was opposed to a military intervention in Libya. The Socialists have to pretend that they side with the government on the issue. The National Front has a choice between siding with the government or being seen as supporting Qaddafi (they supported Saddam Hussein in the past).

As for the rest of the political spectrum, there is no real pacifist movement in France. That may change since the Socialists are more or less playing that card on Afghanistan, but in a moderate way. There haven’t been any major demonstrations against France’s presence in Afghanistan yet, and don’t seem to be on the horizon.

In any event, operations in Libya have just started and no one can tell how things will evolve. Even if successful airstrikes help Sarkozy for the second ballot département elections next week, it’s hard to see how this operation could help him a year from now in the presidential elections.

Even in the best case: with Libya stabilized under a new government, the situation won’t be perfect and Western leaders who backed the intervention will be blamed for anything that goes wrong.

Politically, Sarkozy should be careful: if you want to be a war leader, it’s better be a winner than a loser.

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But skeptics of safety regulation have a better argument to offer than the “slippery slope” toward loss of liberty – and that is the risk of corruption. In France, the parliament just passed a bill requiring carbon monoxide detectors. During the process, representatives of the firemen’s union tried to push an amendment that also made it mandatory for the landlord to pay for a security inspection by a qualified person, such as a retired fireman.

The amendment was beaten back, but it’s a reminder that regulation always serves interests, and the interests are not always public interests.

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