France

It might have been pushed down the news agenda this week by David Cameron’s Europe speech and the bad economic news, but the situation in Mali is offering us a preview of the next decade in international relations. This decade will, William Hague warns in The Times today, be far more dangerous than what we have seen so far this century. This is a sobering statement when you consider that in the last 13 years we have had 9/11, 7/7, Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the striking things about the Mali mission is it shows how the US is far less interested in playing the role if global policemen these days. The New York Times reports today that the Obama administration thinks that the French aims in Mali are too ambitious.

The Algerian hostage crisis is over and the Prime Minister has warned that the focus of the al-Qaeda’s franchise has shifted westwards. In his statement on the situation, he was channelling Tony Blair, which at least makes a change from channelling the Foreign Office. But the initial reaction from Downing Street was deeply unimpressive. The BBC’s Nick Robinson quoted a nameless, sneering voice, apparently exasperated at the Algerian response to the crisis. It would be interesting to know whether this patronising individual had ever spent any time working outside SW1 or had any idea that the Algerian people have lived on the frontline of the struggle with violent Islamists for more than 20 years.

I fear that we are all going to have to learn a lot about Mali and the Sahel—and fast. It is rapidly becoming the latest front in the war on terror. Or, to be more precise, the West’s attempt to prevent the emergence of ungoverned spaces that can be exploited by Al Qaeda and its offshoots. The New York Times today has a good primer on the challenge facing the French in Mali: “The French are fighting to preserve the integrity of a country that is divided in half, of a state that is broken. They are fighting for the survival of an interim government with no democratic legitimacy that took power in the aftermath of a coup.

The crisis in Mali is yet another unintended consequence of the Arab Spring. Specifically, they are a result of the revolution in Libya, where Tuareg rebels who supported Gaddafi were forced to flee after his downfall. Heavily armed and regrouping in Mali, they created the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) which effectively ended the government’s control over the north. Jihadist groups aligned with al-Qaeda then swooped in and established a semi-autonomous Islamic state in the north. As they pushed south it looked as if they might capture all of Mali, prompting interim President Dioncounda Traore to ask for French assistance. Francois Hollande responded by launching Operation Serval with overwhelming public support both at home and abroad.

Today is not April the first; but the European Union has indeed won the Nobel Peace Prize. It is a bizarre decision given what is going on in Europe right now. Watching the reaction of the Greek crowd to Angela Merkel on her visit there this week, it was hard not to worry that the European project was now a threat to peace and stability on the continent. To be sure, France and Germany have not gone to war again since 1945. But to chalk that up solely to the European Union is a profound misreading of history. I suspect that the decision to award the prize to the European Union was a product of the desire of the Norwegian elite to rebuke the people there for not wanting to join the European Union. They are raging against the dying of the light.

Valéry Giscard d’Estaing is an energetic 86-year old. When we meet in Paris, for the first interview he’s given since the Socialists took power earlier this month, the former French president is fresh off the plane from a hunting trip in Namibia. Soon, he’ll hop on another flight bound for China, where he heads a think tank.   Giscard still holds the record for being the youngest president of the Fifth Republic – he was 48 when he took the keys to the Élysée. But there’s another claim to fame he’ll be glad to have relinquished - until Sarkozy’s defeat, he was the only recent leader not to win a second term.

This afternoon, it’s even clearer that the French and Greek elections are a significant moment in the life of the Eurozone. It’s not just the nervous market reaction to yesterday’s results, but also the way how the supranational debate has now changed. More so than ever, there are now two clear oppositional fronts. On one side, broadly speaking, are those who say that austerity is a prerequisite for growth. On the other, those who say that austerity must be relaxed for growth to arrive. It’s a situation dripping with black humour. When David Cameron kept Britain out of Europe’s fiscal pact a few months ago, it was portrayed as a case of us against them. Now it’s more a case of them against themselves.