France has ‘lost diplomatic influence’ over Syria

Tuesday’s meeting is expected to focus on the fight against the Islamic State (IS) group, the protection of civilians, and the proposal for a United Nations Security Council resolution (aimed at stopping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from using barrel bombs) France plans to put on the table this week.

"I invited our German, British, Saudi and American friends, and others, to Paris next week... to try to move things forward," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Friday.

But asked if the talks would include Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Fabius said he “didn’t think so”.

Both Turkey and Jordan are expected to send representatives to Paris, but not Iran, which is closely allied to Russia and the Syrian government.

Whether Paris deliberately snubbed Moscow or vice versa isn’t clear, but Fabius told reporters Friday that “there are other meetings where we will work with the Russians”.

France was not involved in the latest round of (inconclusive) Syria talks in Vienna last Friday.

Along with counterparts from allies Saudi Arabia and Turkey, US Secretary of State John Kerry met for two hours in Vienna with Sergei Lavrov, foreign minister of Russia, which has transformed the momentum in the four-year-old Syrian civil war by bombing Assad's enemies.

‘We wanted to go all the way’

Meanwhile on the ground in Syria, the United States and Russia are leading the charge militarily (albeit at somewhat crossed purposes) while the French contingent does nothing much. In the last month, the French military launched only two airstrikes in Syria.

Back in 2013, at the moment when Bashar al Assad’s regime was accused of using chemical weapons, Paris was calling loudly for military intervention to unseat the Damascus regime and end the Syrian crisis.

“We wanted to go all the way in 2013,” one unnamed diplomat told Reuters. “But we found ourselves isolated,” he said in reference to US President Barack Obama’s reluctance to come good on his “red line” threat to Damascus in the event of chemical weapons being used.

“Now we have lost our influence and we don’t know where we are going,” the diplomat said.

Russia appears to share the same opinion of Paris. At the beginning of October Aleksey Pushkov, head of the foreign affairs committee in the Russian State Duma, said he believed France was no longer an important regional player.

“In Russia, no one talks about the role of France anymore,” he said. “We do talk about the USA and our contacts with Washington, however.”

Changing attitudes towards Assad

Globally, the consensus for a Syrian strategy is leaning towards neutralisation of the Islamic State group, even if it means temporarily playing into the hands of the Syrian regime.

Washington has visibly softened its stance towards Assad (who was given the red carpet treatment in Moscow last week).

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, too, has indicated that Assad could be included in future negotiations for a political solution in Syria.

But France remains resolutely opposed to giving Assad any such legitimacy, and Paris’s failed policy of supporting moderate Syrian rebels hasn’t stopped France from hammering the line that Assad’s regime is wholly responsible for the Syrian crisis and that the result France wants is “neither Assad nor the IS group”.

‘Our Syrian fiasco’

France’s conservative opposition is worried about France’s diminished role.

Two former prime ministers, who are both angling to become candidate for Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-wing opposition party “The Republicans” in the 2017 presidential election, have called for a marked change of tack.

Alain Juppé, who was also foreign minister between 2011 and 2012 under then president Nicolas Sarkozy, wrote a blog post on October 24 titled “Our Syrian Fiasco”.

“I think the moment has come for us to eat some humble pie and sit down at the negotiating table in Geneva with Bashar al Assad,” he wrote. “Maybe we will be able to save some face.”

And in mid-September another former prime minister, François Fillon, called on France to take a new diplomatic line and to restore friendly diplomatic relations with Russia “which has been maligned so stupidly these last few years”.

“France seems to be out of the game,” he wrote on his blog. “The time has come for France to revise its diplomatic strategy.”

Lawmaker Rudy Salles, a member of the centrist UDI party and former member of France’s foreign affairs commission, also wrote in September of a need for change.

“The French government is quite alone in still believing in the possibility of defeating Daesh [the Arabic acronym used by French politicians for the IS group] and Bashar al Assad’s dictatorship at the same time,” he wrote.

“This disastrous and blinkered diplomatic posture can only continue to isolate France.”

This article was adapted from the original in French