Last Thursday’s attack in Nice generates questions about France’s vulnerability to these kinds of threats and what the country and the region will do to respond. The Cipher Brief talked with Jeff Lightfoot, a senior associate at the Jones Group International and senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, about the various cultural, political, economic, and structural challenges France faces, as well as broader challenges this poses to European security.
The Cipher Brief: Can you give an overview of some of the internal dynamics in France that make it vulnerable to attacks like the one on Thursday evening – specifically in terms of the integration of the immigration community, internal security, and intelligence sharing?
Jeff Lightfoot: France has a significant Muslim population – I’ve seen estimates of between five and six million, which would make it the largest in Europe. There are some interesting debates in France about what it means to be French and if it is really possible for people, when they immigrate to France, to become French. There’s a lot of talk about the ghettoization and alienation of these immigrant groups. Lack of identity is another concern. The immigrants in second and third generations are not quite French, but they also are not from their parents’ generation and are somewhere lost in between and therefore prone to radicalization.
The current French intelligence director for internal intelligence, Patrick Calvar, just commented in front of the French Parliament the other day that an attack like Thursday’s was not a matter of if, but a matter of when and of how. During the European football championships and the Tour de France, the country deployed 10,000 military troops to protect tourists and citizens. Under the state of emergency – that France is still currently in – police and private security are out in full force. It was sort of a relief when the country made it through the European football final without an attack, but they couldn’t make it through the whole six weeks of the football championships, Tour de France, and Bastille Day. Knowing that France is on its almost highest alert and the attack still happened tells you how vulnerable the society is right now.
Moreover, there’s the question of whether the 10,000 troops are really effective. The government – for its own political reasons – has to look like its doing everything it can to offer protection. I’ve seen that President Francois Hollande is calling up the reserves, in light of Thursday’s attack. But the terrorists are evolving their tactics, and so I just wonder if reservist soldiers and 10,000 troops is going to keep France safe.
With regards to intelligence sharing, there was intelligence reform implemented under former President Nicolas Sarkozy that was a little controversial. My understanding is that it may have weakened some of the linkages with long-standing human intelligence networks that are useful in identifying individuals who may be prone to radicalization. In addition, there are challenges in how European countries cooperate with sharing of intelligence. Both of these developments leave France in a more vulnerable position.
TCB: We’ve heard the argument that liberal democracies are vulnerable to attacks like this precisely because they are liberal democracies, and therefore, there is only so much governments can do in terms of security if they want their citizens to retain freedom. Can you comment on this?
JL: There is the debate of security versus freedom going on in France. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls is a law and order guy. Sarkozy, who is now the head of the center-right party that is likely to win the upcoming French presidential elections, is a law and order guy as well. But then there’s also the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who is actually leading the polls right now. When Calvar spoke in front of the National Assembly, he mentioned the threat of the far-right extremists attacking back and the country breaking out into a kind of civil conflict.
France does not have all of the same civil liberty protections that the U.S. does, for example with the Bill of Rights. But there are plenty of civil society groups and plenty of people within the French government itself that strongly support freedom and civil liberties and have, for instance, come out against the possibility of stripping nationality of convicted terrorists. There are some in France who feel the government may be tempted to overreach in terms of the security versus liberty balance. It’s going to be a real challenge.
But we should put this all in context. Turbulence in democracies is not unusual in a historical context. France has gone through this before, for instance in the 1960s with the Algeria War and the May 1968 riots. The situation in France today – where troops are deployed and the country is under a state of emergency – is unusual, but not unprecedented. And as far as the security versus liberty debate goes, all democracies face this. The U.S. went through its own after 9/11.
TCB: Why do Marine Le Pen and her National Front party have so much popular support in France?
JL: Firstly, there’s a regional trend. Centrist political parties are struggling all across Europe, with the traditional duopoly shrinking and the fringes taking some of that space.
With regards to Marine Le Pen in particular, her father laid the groundwork for this, but her father was much more toxic and had all of this anti-Semitic baggage. Marine Le Pen is from a different generation. She’s more media savvy.
Also, she has been able to tap into the public’s sentiment. You see polls saying, in light of the substantial number of immigrants, a lot of French people don’t feel at home in their country (which is something I think you’re hearing from Trump supporters as well). Marine Le Pen has tapped into not only this anti-immigrant sentiment, but also an economic sense of alienation, which is very real in a country that has lingering unemployment that the government has struggled to tackle. The National Front camp attracts not only the traditional anti-immigrant folks, but also the disaffected working class. The Communist Party used to be a big player in French politics, and it’s not anymore. A number of those Communists switched from the hard left to the hard right. So Marine Le Pen taps into anti-immigrant, anti-free trade, and anti-EU sentiments.
TCB: How does economics play into all of this? I’m thinking specifically of the high unemployment rate in France and efforts to overhaul the economy. If the unemployment rate was lower and immigrants were able to procure jobs more easily, do you think that would have a major impact on what’s happening now – with both the rise of the National Front and terror attacks?
JL: I think it would be helpful; I don’t think it would be a cure all. Obviously the disaffected Muslim youth who live in France that are prone to radicalization are struggling with the same broad problems of unemployment generally and specifically youth unemployment – youth unemployment is much higher than standard unemployment, at around 25 percent. However, the French government’s labor reform laws have attracted huge strikes and protests from the people who are eager to hold on to any social protection they can. One of the ironies is that the youth are the big losers of the current system, yet they still want to preserve it.
I also think there’s a broader identity crisis, and France has a long way to go to better integrate immigrants on a cultural level, as well as on an economic level (although France is not unique in this challenge).
TCB: Let’s shift gears now to border control. Spain and Italy have already heightened security on their borders following Thursday’s attack. How could the attack have long term effects on European border control?
JL: I think the Schengen area of free movement within Europe - as it was before - is dead, and it’s not coming back. At the same time, I’m not sure we’re going to have complete border controls everywhere. What we will see is more passport checks and more stringent controls. That’s what citizens want, and it’s entirely reasonable. In light of the threat context, to have open borders without having the integrated intelligence necessary to protect the exterior borders is untenable.
There’s a debate right now within the European Union (EU) about whether more Europe and more integration is the answer to recent events (like the Brexit referendum, for example) or if more of a nation-state approach is better. My understanding is that Merkel and the Germans – who really drive the EU train – are in favor of listening to voters and not integrating too quickly. Voters are pushing for more national control. It may be that we have seen the high water mark of European integration.
TCB: Are we going to see the U.S. becoming more involved in European security?
JL: The stakes are really high for the U.S. I’ve talked to a number of European friends – including French diplomats – who have told me, ‘We the French don’t think we need you the U.S. to tell us what to do and how to work out our European crises. But we sure could use more of your help on our periphery.’ The French, in particular, are still seething about the U.S. failure to act in Syria. They want a greater U.S. commitment to fighting terrorists and to fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Other Europeans say they want the U.S. more involved in the Russia challenge. So the peripheral exterior challenges to European security are worse than these internal political challenges, although they are intertwined. For example, the refugee crisis and terrorist threat are obviously linked in many ways to the issues in Iraq and Syria.
I think more generally, there’s a call for the U.S. to not be a bystander. The European project has always been an American project, from its very origins with NATO, the Marshall Plan, Dean Acheson and others who encouraged integration. The U.S. should continue to be a shaper, not a bystander. I think this Administration has been active in that, but I think a future one could be a little bit more vocal, in terms of outlining what interests we have in the region. We could also be more vocal on pushing European countries to work more closely together in certain areas, like intelligence sharing. So I think you are going to see a more active U.S. in the future.
