Within hours of the attacks on Paris on Friday night, President Hollande had called them an “acte de guerre” – an act of war.
On Monday morning, in his speech to the French Parliament at Versailles, he affirmed and strengthened this stance, stating that France is “at war with the Islamic State”. The French Prime minister Manuel Valls has gone even further, seeming to pledge France to substantial military adventures: “We are at war ... We will strike this enemy in order to destroy it, in Europe but also in Syria and Iraq. And we will respond on the same level as this attack - with the desire to destroy this terrorist army. And we will win this war.”
As the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle heads to the Eastern Mediterranean and airstrikes continue, and with recent boots-on-the-ground interventions in the Central African Republic (2007) and Mali (2013) – in the latter case explicitly to tackle an Islamic insurgency – this is more than a mere metaphor for cultural struggle. France now looks to its allies to press IS harder and faster, and has invoked article 42.7 of the EU treaty.
It’s notable that the word ‘war’ has not been used by Barack Obama or John Kerry, though there is pressure for them to do so by military commentators, and therefore to embrace the imperative to ‘take the fight to IS’. David Cameron, in trying to build the case for British airstrikes within Syria, has avoided the ‘w’-word.
To my mind, there are good reasons to continue to do so. As with Irish Republican terrorism, denying the conflict the status of a war is to deny one’s opponent political legitimacy. To say that what happened in Paris on Friday night was an ‘act of war’ is to give the attackers the dignity of combatants, fighting on behalf of a legitimate state within defined rules of war. But the ‘state’ for which they act is simply a temporary violent tyranny – a large organised gang with lots of guns. This was no fight, but a cowardly attack on defenceless diners, concert goers etc. Even when fighting real fights IS adhere to no commonly accepted rules of war. No – better to describe these acts as sheer criminality – albeit unbelievably violent, shocking criminality.
Similarly, to be at war is to concede that the civic peace which allows people to live their normal lives must be suspended: borders are closed, political protests are restricted and armed forces are policing streets. France has indeed announced a state of emergency lasting for at least another three months – the sécurité they feel is need to defend the liberté, égalité, fraternité of the Republic. Understandable, but the further you walk down that road the more sinister it becomes – the fusing, as Robespierre put it, virtue and terror. Serious though the security threat from IS is, it’s arguable that France’s best response is to maintain the freedoms and rights that its citizens normally enjoy.
Finally, to call it a war would seem to indulge the religious fantasies propagated by IS – that their fighters are the representatives of a true Caliphate, striking (as they so ludicrously think of one of the most secular states in the world) at “the carrier of the banner of the Cross in Europe, Paris”. As many have observed, since that narrative actively seems to include the eventual defeat of their own forces, the suffering that they will now incur will serve partly to further confirm and validate their mission.
Of course, in refusing to legitimate barbarism by speaking of war, we must also avoid the pitfalls of disingenuity – of saying ‘peace, peace, when there is no peace’. It’s simply easier to speak in sanitised terms when it comes to military action already underway. The United States already has troops engaged with IS forces in Northern Iraq, but these are euphemistically called ‘close combat advisors’. Both the UK and US governments calculate – rightly – that there is little-to-no public appetite (or in Britain’s case, capacity?) for a prolonged and extensive military commitment, but there is little hope in refusing an honest public debate about the objectives of any military action which is either currently underway or likely to get underway in the future. Most worryingly, there’s a risk of ineffective action being taken for purely therapeutic purposes. What is the strategic case for British airstrikes? Will we “degrade and destroy” more effectively than others? Cameron is now making the case more strongly, but that is not the same as making a stronger case.
Ultimately, however, we must recognise that there’s some kinds of fight that can’t be won by UAVs, bombing, or even boots on the ground. In fact, used injudiciously these things could lose the real war, which is the war for people’s hearts, minds, and souls (it’s hard to mourn the death of someone like Jihadi John, but we’re hardly occupying the moral high-ground). The sad reality is that, if IS could be bombed into oblivion tomorrow there would still be men and women in our towns and cities who are filled with hate for the nations in which they live – the communities which have educated them, housed them, and healed them. The cancer has metastasized – cutting it from the body will not, in itself, heal us.
It might not satisfy the hawks, but surely it’s more realistic for governments to seek a UN resolution which will mandate them to restrain and contain IS while a political solution is found in the wider Syrian civil war (repugnant as the notion of cutting a deal with Assad might be) in the hope that refugees could return and rebuild in a secure national state. Many reading this will find that a less than palatable prospect, and they may well be right, but the peace of the ‘earthly city’ is always an imperfect peace.
Paul Bickley is Director of Political Programme at Theos
Want to keep up to date with the latest news from Theos? Click here to join our monthly e-newsletter. We'll let you know about our latest reports, blogs and events.
