MARSEILLE // François Hollande could face the deepest crisis of his troubled French presidency if he commits his country to an alliance with the United States in the use of force against the Syrian regime of Bashar Al Assad.
Opinion polls suggest that as many as two-thirds of French voters oppose the president's declared support for military action in the conflict.
This position is reflected in the rest of Europe, where countries either reject intervention against Damascus or insist that it should not occur without the United Nations approval that Russian and Chinese vetoes make improbable.
Only Turkey, Syria's neighbour and outside the European Union, has shown itself to be an enthusiastic advocate of military action.
Britain's withdrawal from any active role, imposed upon the prime minister David Cameron by a humiliating defeat in Thursday's parliamentary debate, makes it likely that European - and French - unease will grow.
In the first sign that Mr Hollande recognises the extent of the dilemma confronting him, the Elysée Palace indicated at the weekend that he would wait for the French national assembly to consider the issue before deciding whether to go ahead.
An emergency debate has been convened for Wednesday. The significance of this is underlined by the fact that Mr Hollande could have chosen to act with constitutional authority without seeking parliamentary endorsement.
Interior minister Manuel Valls said yesterday that France could not act alone against Syria after the United States said Congress would decide on any military action. "France cannot go it alone," Valls told Europe 1 radio. "We need a coalition."
Mr Hollande's socialist party has a comfortable majority but any hint of a revolt would weaken his position.
The paradox of France, a fierce opponent of the invasion of Iraq, finding common cause with the US in another Middle Eastern adventure has not been lost on French commentators.
One conservative analyst, Alain Barluet, acknowledged in the daily newspaper Le Figaro at the weekend that Mr Hollande's centre-right predecessor,
Nicolas Sarkozy, could only have dreamed of forming the sort of special relationship with Washington that Britain has traditionally enjoyed. "An offensive coupling France and the US without the UK," he wrote, "is something we have hardly ever seen."
But he said this was not the good news that Mr Hollande might imagine. The likely effectiveness of a "warning shot" against the Assad government was in serious doubt, he argued, and there was a real risk France would end up being seen as having enlisted in a western crusade.
Mr Hollande pleased the US leadership with his speech to a gathering of French ambassadors about being "ready to punish" the Assad regime for its alleged use of deadly chemical weapons against rebels. He followed this with an interview last Friday with the newspaper Le Monde in which he talked of "proportionate and firm action".
The French-speaking US secretary of state John Kerry responded in terms Paris must have found heartening, describing France as "our oldest ally".
France feels a special responsibility for events in Syria, having ruled the country by mandate from 1923 until the 1940s, and some observers believe Mr Hollande will refuse to allow himself to be swayed by political and popular doubt.
The US magazine Time speculated that the unlikely alliance with President Barack Obama could even halt Mr Hollande's descent into unpopularity with an approval rating currently struggling to rise far about 20 per cent.
In support of this assessment, some French analysts argue that French involvement would be relatively low-risk, limited to air strikes with no troops treading on Syrian ground. And Mr Hollande would, for once, be seen to have acted with determination instead of being dismissed as indecisive and weak.
But the French media have detected little confidence among the country's sizeable Syrian population that western words will be translated into beneficial action.
The France 24 television network quoted one expat, Fadi Dayoub, who has lived in France for 22 years, as saying: "Over the last two years, the international community has shown that it does not keep its word.
"I don't see why the situation will now change. 100,000 people have already died and no action has been taken. So far, all our pleas for western help have been in vain.
"We had hoped for a programme to protect civilians to be put in place, humanitarian corridors or security zones with closed airspace. None of this has happened."
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
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