When French President Francois Hollande said Friday’s attacks on Paris were an “act of war”, he was following a script set by George W. Bush in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Rhetorically, invoking the language of war to describe a terrorist attack sends a message of seriousness and outrage. But as the US’ post 9/11 wars show, it is not always wise to elevate a terrorist group to the level of the sovereign entities that traditionally have the authority to make war, Noah Feldman writes in Bloomberg.
This was a mistake with respect to Al-Qaeda, but it’s a greater mistake when it comes to Islamic State, whose primary aspiration is to achieve statehood. By saying that IS is in a war with France, Hollande is unwittingly giving the ragtag group the international stature it seeks.
The consequences of Hollande’s declaration go beyond the public relations boon to the militant group, which has otherwise been struggling to stay in the headlines and gain the adherents it needs to control territory. A head of state who says that war has been made against his country must have a credible response in mind.
Appropriate Response
The appropriate response depends on whether the state of war is construed legally or metaphorically. The legal angle is somewhat important. Under Article 5 of NATO’s Washington Treaty, an act of war from outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization against one of the member states triggers obligations of support from the other treaty members.
The Sept. 11 attacks marked the first time Article 5 was invoked. That required all the NATO members to support the US war against Al-Qaeda. When it came to Iraq, several NATO members famously balked, reasoning that there was no proof the terrorist attack had anything to do with Saddam Hussein.
If France invoked Article 5, NATO members would be obligated to support it in a war against IS. Yet the disillusioning aspect of this legal position is that France has been bombing IS strongholds in Syria since late September, and its attacks on the group in Iraq are old news.
In other words, France is already at war with IS. The Paris attacks are not the first salvo. They are, at most, IS response to French assaults that expanded after the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish market in January.
Saying that the attacks were an act of war could motivate public opinion for a more rigorous response than France has so far pursued against IS. Because France is already bombing, that would mean a significantly stepped-up participation in the air war—or the introduction of French ground troops.
To be sure, the war against IS almost certainly cannot be won without ground troops. The remarkable longevity the group has so far shown is primarily attributable to the fact that no regional power has been prepared to commit such troops.
Kurdish militias backed by western air power and Shia militias in Iraq are the only troops to have made any real inroads against IS.
French ground troops, then, would be a great boon to the battle. But it seems overwhelmingly likely that Hollande has no intention of sending French troops, no matter how angry the public may be.
No Ground Troops
The strategic rationale for withholding ground troops has not changed. The US will not provide any because of public skepticism after the Afghan and Iraqi disasters. And if the US is not willing to commit troops, neither is anybody else, from Saudi Arabia to Jordan to, yes, France. The Paris attacks will not move the needle sufficiently for Hollande to pursue a different course.
That leaves Hollande with no military option but contributing more to the air war. That’s fine, but it points to a deep flaw in his declaration. Hollande must certainly realize that by acknowledging a war against France, he’s acknowledging a war that France cannot win, at least in the short to medium term.
More air attacks won’t defeat IS definitively. Thus, the metaphor of the “act of war” puts France into a disadvantageous position: It’s at war with an enemy, but it lacks the political will or military capacity to defeat that enemy.
The best it can hope for is to degrade the enemy’s capacities. Yet given that the enemy is not even a proper state, the failure to beat it in fact looks very much like defeat.
Painful as it might have been, the right course for Hollande would have been to denounce the terrorists as murderers unworthy to be considered in a war against the great republic of France. He should have said that a handful of ideologues who killed innocent civilians could not threaten or move the republic—and that France would not allow IS to dictate its domestic or foreign policies.
If President Bush had treated Al-Qaeda this way, it would have enabled a calmer, more rational approach to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US almost certainly would have still bombed the Taliban. But it might not have committed itself to destroying that regime. It might have been sufficient to force the Taliban to stop harboring Al-Qaeda terrorists.
Meanwhile, eschewing the notion that Al-Qaeda had made war on the US would have made it much harder to say that Iraq should be invaded on national security grounds. The elision of the threat from Al-Qaeda with the threat from Iraq was eased by the idea that Al-Qaeda was an entity capable of making war on a great nation.
Morally speaking, a terrorist attack may be as evil as an act of war. But practically, the two are very different—and preserving the distinction is wise foreign policy.
