Shortly after coming to power last year, French President Emmanuel Macron mused to a friend about the role of president.
“You go through stages,” he said. “Innocence is not allowed.”
On Friday night, like British Prime Minister Theresa May, he ordered his first major military intervention.
Overnight, French and British aircraft took part in a wave of airstrikes against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in response to alleged chemical weapons attacks.
Though already active in a US-led coalition combating the Islamic State group in the region, the strikes against al-Assad represented a major escalation for French and British forces.
Macron, who faces a battle with trade unions at home over rail reforms, was widely seen as facing the sternest test yet of his foreign policy and commander-in-chief mettle.
“We cannot tolerate the normalization of the use of chemical weapons,” he said in a statement yesterday morning, adding: “The facts and the responsibility of the Syrian regime are not in doubt.”
Around the same time as he was musing about power to his friend Philippe Besson after his election victory in May last year, Macron also laid out a clear policy on using military force in Syria.
In the same month, with Russian President Vladimir Putin at his side, Macron said that further use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a “red line” that would trigger a response.
Having said on Thursday that he had “proof” that al-Assad was responsible — which is denied by the regime — analysts saw Macron as having no choice, but to go ahead with airstrikes.
“When you fix red lines, if you don’t know how to make sure they are respected, you’re choosing to be weak,” Macron told the Guardian in June last year. “That’s not my choice.”
Many French officials still bristle as they recall how former US president Barack Obama had set a red line too over the use of chemical weapons, only to pull back at the last minute in 2013.
“The red line set by France in May 2017 has been crossed,” Macron said yesterday in his statement.
He published photographs on Twitter showing him chairing a defense meeting at the presidential palace, as well as a video of Rafale fighter jets taking off.
For May, whose time in office has been consumed by the process of taking her country out of the EU, the Syria crisis represented a new headache.
British involvement in military interventions abroad is controversial in a country still haunted by its role in the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Opposition politicians, including the head of the Labour party Jeremy Corbyn, and some Conservative colleagues of May called for a parliamentary vote before any British involvement.
British lawmakers in 2013 voted down taking military action against Damascus, in what was widely viewed as an assertion of parliamentary sovereignty on the use of force.
However, in a statement yesterday morning, May said there was “no practicable alternative to the use of force to degrade and deter the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime.”
“This is not about intervening in a civil war. It is not about regime change,” she added.
“It is about a limited and targeted strike that does not further escalate tensions in the region and that does everything possible to prevent civilian casualties,” May said.
A YouGov poll in the Times conducted this week found that 43 percent of British voters oppose strikes in Syria, with 34 percent unsure and only 22 percent supportive.
European Council President Donald Tusk said the EU stood by the US, France and Britain over the airstrikes.
“Strikes by US, France and UK make it clear that Syrian regime, together with Russia and Iran, cannot continue this human tragedy, at least not without cost. The EU will stand with our allies on the side of justice,” Tusk said on Twitter.
EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said this was not the first time that Damascus had used chemical weapons against civilians, “but it must be the last.”
“The international community has the responsibility to identify and hold accountable those responsible of any attack with chemical weapons,” Juncker said in a statement.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the airstrikes were “necessary and appropriate.”
“We support the fact that our US, British and French allies ... assumed their responsibilities. The military intervention was necessary and appropriate,” Merkel said in a statement.
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