France’s Other War at Home
President Hollande speaks stirringly of resisting ISIS, but France needs economic renewal too.
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
French President François Hollande in Paris, Nov. 19. Photo: Jacques Brinon/Associated Press
President François Hollande, since last week’s massacre in Paris, has declared that a state of war exists between France and the terrorist “caliphate” known as Islamic State. But France was already at war with radical Islamist groups. It has been flying bombing missions against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
It has troops fighting al-Qaeda related groups in North Africa like the one involved in Thursday’s hotel hostage-taking. But where France might get additional military resources to step up its efforts isn’t obvious.
The U.S. had the wherewithal to invade Afghanistan after 9/11. France doesn’t. Though the French government consumes 54% of GDP, it spends less than 2% on defense. Britain, its NATO ally, could not mount the Falklands operation today that it was able (barely) to pull off in 1982.
A sense of unity creates the permission to do things; it doesn’t create the means. And unity does not supplant normal politics for long. George W. Bush paid for his war policy with a lot of domestic pork barrel. Why does this matter? Because bombing and Kurdish pushback are helpful in containing ISIS, but rehabilitating the Syrian or Iraqi state, or both, is a likely prerequisite for real progress and both are a long way off. Even then, as al Qaeda mutated into ISIS, ISIS is likely to mutate into something else. The struggle against Muslim nihilism will be a long one.
Meanwhile, the European Union is rapidly stumbling toward a realization that its Schengen conceit—its commitment to a continent without internal borders—is unsustainable.
The EU’s debt-cum-monetary crisis is bidding to return as the Greek deal breaks down, as Portugal threatens to defect, as Spanish elections loom.
The political balance that allows the EU to see itself as a merger of equals rather than a German empire will take a perhaps fatal blow if Britain votes to quit the union next year.
Through it all France not only has been the key foot dragger on necessary economic reforms, it has been the key empowerer of other footdraggers. Mario Draghi, the central banker whose efforts have kept the euro afloat, has been reduced to begging France and Italy (though he seldom names them) to use the spell of ultra-low interest rates and an implicit central-bank guarantee of their debts to take long-term steps to restore their solvency. “How? By making the structural reforms which push up potential output, the participation rate, productivity,” he explained a few days before the Paris attack.
Mr. Hollande, who spoke stirringly this week of the need to resist Islamic State, never speaks stirringly of the need to cure French stagnation and youth unemployment and avoid the debt crackup of the EU and the French state. France can survive ISIS, but can it survive the French leadership class?
Recall that Mr. Hollande came to power saying he disliked rich people and wanted to punish them with higher taxes, as if this were a solution to an economy starved of entrepreneurship and animal spirits. Consider a certain ironic undertone in London Mayor Boris Johnson’s statement of solidarity this week, in which he noted that Paris is “a city that in the past few years has despatched so many talented workers to London that I am the proud mayor of one of the biggest French towns in the world.”
Fully 10% of the French workforce is unemployed, and 24% of its youthful job seekers, and 40% of its Muslim youth. Its worker productivity looks good only because so many young and entry-level people are kept out of the labor market. Half the workforce is estimated to owe its livelihood to the state.
And Marine Le Pen, who is expected to do well in upcoming regional elections, does not resemble an improvement.
The questions here apply broadly to the Western world and Japan. Civilization faces a challenge in ISIS, yes, but is most at risk from its own bad habits. And unfortunately Vladimir Putin is right about one thing: To influence the outcome in Syria it helps to have a side to be on. The West is floundering because it doesn’t have a side to be on in the anti-ISIS war though it once did: an increasingly stable, passably pluralistic Iraq, created at great cost by 2011 until President Obama withdrew U.S. forces.
Technology at least gives the U.S., France and other allies leverage to build security at home without undue harassment of innocent Muslim citizens during the prolonged fight ahead. Now if France, rich in creativity and tradition, would use today’s challenge to re-energize its economic culture, it would make a more lasting contribution to civilization’s self-defense.
It has troops fighting al-Qaeda related groups in North Africa like the one involved in Thursday’s hotel hostage-taking. But where France might get additional military resources to step up its efforts isn’t obvious.
The U.S. had the wherewithal to invade Afghanistan after 9/11. France doesn’t. Though the French government consumes 54% of GDP, it spends less than 2% on defense. Britain, its NATO ally, could not mount the Falklands operation today that it was able (barely) to pull off in 1982.
A sense of unity creates the permission to do things; it doesn’t create the means. And unity does not supplant normal politics for long. George W. Bush paid for his war policy with a lot of domestic pork barrel. Why does this matter? Because bombing and Kurdish pushback are helpful in containing ISIS, but rehabilitating the Syrian or Iraqi state, or both, is a likely prerequisite for real progress and both are a long way off. Even then, as al Qaeda mutated into ISIS, ISIS is likely to mutate into something else. The struggle against Muslim nihilism will be a long one.
Meanwhile, the European Union is rapidly stumbling toward a realization that its Schengen conceit—its commitment to a continent without internal borders—is unsustainable.
The EU’s debt-cum-monetary crisis is bidding to return as the Greek deal breaks down, as Portugal threatens to defect, as Spanish elections loom.
The political balance that allows the EU to see itself as a merger of equals rather than a German empire will take a perhaps fatal blow if Britain votes to quit the union next year.
Through it all France not only has been the key foot dragger on necessary economic reforms, it has been the key empowerer of other footdraggers. Mario Draghi, the central banker whose efforts have kept the euro afloat, has been reduced to begging France and Italy (though he seldom names them) to use the spell of ultra-low interest rates and an implicit central-bank guarantee of their debts to take long-term steps to restore their solvency. “How? By making the structural reforms which push up potential output, the participation rate, productivity,” he explained a few days before the Paris attack.
Mr. Hollande, who spoke stirringly this week of the need to resist Islamic State, never speaks stirringly of the need to cure French stagnation and youth unemployment and avoid the debt crackup of the EU and the French state. France can survive ISIS, but can it survive the French leadership class?
Recall that Mr. Hollande came to power saying he disliked rich people and wanted to punish them with higher taxes, as if this were a solution to an economy starved of entrepreneurship and animal spirits. Consider a certain ironic undertone in London Mayor Boris Johnson’s statement of solidarity this week, in which he noted that Paris is “a city that in the past few years has despatched so many talented workers to London that I am the proud mayor of one of the biggest French towns in the world.”
Fully 10% of the French workforce is unemployed, and 24% of its youthful job seekers, and 40% of its Muslim youth. Its worker productivity looks good only because so many young and entry-level people are kept out of the labor market. Half the workforce is estimated to owe its livelihood to the state.
And Marine Le Pen, who is expected to do well in upcoming regional elections, does not resemble an improvement.
The questions here apply broadly to the Western world and Japan. Civilization faces a challenge in ISIS, yes, but is most at risk from its own bad habits. And unfortunately Vladimir Putin is right about one thing: To influence the outcome in Syria it helps to have a side to be on. The West is floundering because it doesn’t have a side to be on in the anti-ISIS war though it once did: an increasingly stable, passably pluralistic Iraq, created at great cost by 2011 until President Obama withdrew U.S. forces.
Technology at least gives the U.S., France and other allies leverage to build security at home without undue harassment of innocent Muslim citizens during the prolonged fight ahead. Now if France, rich in creativity and tradition, would use today’s challenge to re-energize its economic culture, it would make a more lasting contribution to civilization’s self-defense.
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