While French President Emmanuel Macron is haunted by the political tremors started by U.S. President Donald Trump, the ghost of the disunion of Europe, and the diplomatic showdown with Algeria, a new agenda has been taking place in French politics. Last month’s Paris summit to discuss the political transition in Syria was joined by Arab and Western powers after Macron spoke to Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and invited him for a state visit to France, promising reconstruction of Syria.
Paris did end a long-running course of realpolitik in the MENA region designed by Gen. Charles de Gaulle, President François Mitterrand and President Jacques Chirac in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. Yet, unlike his predecessors and despite his own constitutional attributes, Macron has not been able to influence French politics with his persona. He adopted a contrastingly unbalanced Maghreb policy and an aggressive one on Lebanon and Syria, stretching to position Paris as a pivotal regional actor in the Levant in the aftermath of the new political breakthrough in Lebanon and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. Macron has been displaying a style likely to push France into isolation because of its muddled Levant foreign policy, arousing tensions with its NATO partners.
Syria holds a significant place in French foreign policy, especially when considered in the context of the historical relations between the two countries. Syria became a League of Nations mandate between 1923-1943, following the division of the Ottoman territories by France and Britain outlined in the terms of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The region known as Syria (Bilad al-Sham) today was divided into six states according to the sectarian divisions made during the mandate. However, the Syrians were quite reluctant regarding the French mandate.
To better understand France’s foreign policy on Syria, history must be analyzed. For a long time, Paris had an ambiguous relationship with the Assad regime. During the French mandate in the Levant and Syria’s invasion of Lebanon in the wake of the Lebanese Civil War in 1976, France had a close relationship with the Alawite sect in Syria. Further, Paris had been content with playing the “gendarmerie” role between the chiefs of Lebanese ethnic and sectarian factions until 1989 and the post-Taif Agreement to 2005.
However, relations between Paris and Damascus deteriorated in 2004 with the assassination of Lebanese Premier Rafik al-Hariri on Feb.14, 2005. This event signaled a civilian outrage, demanding the removal of Syrian forces from Lebanon. President Jacques Chirac, a personal friend of assassinated al-Hariri, condemned the killing and requested regime leader Bashar Assad withdraw his troops from Lebanon. In 2007, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, succeeding Chirac, endeavored to develop a strategy of rapprochement with Assad to remove Damascus from Tehran’s influence and the domination of the so-called “Shiite crescent” in the region, a crescent that was progressing to become a full moon.
Following the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians, the Syrian civil war started. Paris took the incident as an opportunity it had been looking for a role in the region. By means of this opportunity, then-President François Hollande attempted to join the international coalition led by the United States and the United Kingdom to intervene in Syria. Nonetheless, the Kerry-Lavrov Agreement focused on the intervention as another storyline in the Syrian crisis.
Paris has always played a double game in the Syrian crisis since its military engagement in September 2015. While having relations with the Assad regime, it also supported the Syrian opposition against the Baath regime from the beginning. Nevertheless, the Kerry-Lavrov Agreement in 2013, the failure of Geneva II and the Astana processes and lastly, the emergence of Moscow as the major superpower in the Syrian dossier further isolated Paris and drove its Syria policy right into a panic mode.
France's other fundamental foreign policy in the region has been its unconditional support for the PKK terrorist group's Syrian wing YPG. Like in 1991 in Iraq, an ethnic pretext variation and national security imperative was used by Paris. So what is Macron's aim in inviting al-Sharaa to visit France while supporting separatist groups in Syria? Paris wants to contain Ankara's influence in Syria in accordance with the broader conflict between the two countries, extending from the Caucasus to Africa.
In the aftermath of the historic move of Türkiye to dissolve the PKK and its wings in the region, how will Paris justify its diplomatic support to the PKK/YPG terrorist organizations in Syria, Iraq and Türkiye?
Therefore, al-Sharaa will not be welcomed warmly in Paris like he was in Riyadh and Ankara because of Paris’ deceitful diplomatic gesture toward the Syrian leader. One should remember the French foreign minister's support to his German counterpart, who broke the diplomatic dress code in their meeting with the Syrian leader.
In sum, the recent geopolitical and economic developments in Europe and its tensions with Washington have forced Paris to use another strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean. The offshore natural gas prospects have roused tensions between the five main surrounding countries, and Paris is looking for potential allies to contain Ankara’s exploration projects. All the tensions and contradictory ambitions of super and regional powers depend on the priority of their interests, yet it sounds inevitable that France's Syria policy is better off with a cemented realpolitik rather than an "irrealpolitik."
