PARIS—There are three takeaways from the first round of the French presidential election on Sunday: 1) never underestimate the people’s will to (re)shape their political future through the act of voting, or the strength of the message they want to send to their leaders; 2) never underestimate the rallying power of the extremes and populist parties in times of economic and social crisis; and, finally, 3) never discard a political leader from the electoral race too soon, as he might still demonstrate resilience. Recent experience elsewhere in Europe confirms these lessons: governments with a crisis on their hands were dealt severe defeats by the electorate (Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland) or preempted defeat by stepping aside (Greece, the Netherlands).

The high participation rate (around 80%) disproved pollsters who had predicted a democratic disillusionment. On the contrary, the election showed that French voters do not limit their interest in politics to the candidates’ personalities or program, but are in fact greatly concerned with the big issues, even where those were not directly addressed by the main candidates — above all, the vulnerability of the French social and economic model in an era of crisis and austerity, and the role of France in a divided Europe.

The fact that the left-of-center challenger, François Hollande, came in ahead of incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy (with 28.6 and 27.1 %, respectively) meant that Sarkozy’s attempts to lure the voters of the far right away from the extreme right candidate Marine le Pen boomeranged. In fact, le Pen surpassed all expectations of her rallying power when she received 17.9 % of the vote. Her rise is a major defeat for Sarkozy and reveals the frustration of the French voters who delivered what Hollande termed a “vote of crisis.”

The far right’s strategy of “normalizing” its image and discourse, and reaching out to those whom — as le Pen likes to say — the “Republic has forgotten,” has clearly been extremely successful, confirming the Front National as the third national party. The terrorist killings in Toulouse last month helped the extreme right’s agenda by focusing national attention on security and religious issues. In contrast, the far left candidate, Jean Luc Mélenchon, running with the support of the Communists, obtained an underwhelming 11%, substantially less than what the latest polls had predicted. Nonetheless, it means that a total of 29% of French voters, in an election with an unusually high participation rate, cast their votes for candidates that were running on an “anti-system” ticket. The challenge for Hollande and Sarkozy is now to bring these disgruntled voters back into the fold — a goal that they had both tried to accomplish and failed.

Unsurprisingly, neither Hollande nor Sarkozy are likely to publicly admit that their success in the second round on May 6 will depend heavily on their ability to appeal to extreme electorates. But they have already begun an aggressive “seduction” campaign for the coming two weeks. Hollande will have to unite the liberal electorate and reach out to the voters of the far left who preferred Jean-Luc Mélenchon, to the Green party, and to the Centrist party of François Bayrou (the biggest loser of the first round). More dangerously, he will also have to attract at least a part of Marine Le Pen’s electorate. Sarkozy, on the other hand, faces a divided right: he must convince the centrists as well as the far right — a balancing act that appears close to impossible. Look for Sarkozy to seek the lowest common denominator between all of right-of-center camps. Meanwhile, Hollande’s first reactions Sunday night indicate that he is poised to take the high road. In an obvious jab aimed at Sarkozy, the Socialist challenger suggested that he refuses to drive a wedge between different categories of the population, something the incumbent has been accused of again and again.

The first polls of the second round gave Hollande a 4-6 point lead, which has energized Sarkozy’s base. The fight will be ugly: Hollande and Sarkozy have both been waiting for a true confrontation. The former will have to prove his presidential mettle, and the latter will try to portray his challenger as unable to protect France from its internal and external woes. The test for France will be if it can emerge the day after, nursing its electoral bruises but ready to move itself and its continent in a positive direction.

Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer is Director of the Paris office of the German Marshall of the United States and Martin Michelot is a Program Assistant in the Paris office.

PARIS–President Barack Obama’s announcement last June of an accelerated U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan reopened debates in many European countries over when their soldiers should return from that unpopular war. French President Nicolas Sarkozy followed a few days later with an announcement that French troops would be reduced “in a proportional manner and in a calendar comparable to the withdrawal of American reinforcements.” Now, the tables have turned. With last week’s announcement, it was France that reset the transition calendar, arguing that progress in the transition allowed for the withdrawal of 1,000 French troops by the end of 2012. Although many U.S., Afghan, and NATO observers were initially critical, the Obama administration announced only a few days later that the United States also planned to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by mid-2013 and shift primarily to advising Afghan forces.

Both Sarkozy’s and Obama’s calls for a speedier NATO exit from Afghanistan reflect the depth of war fatigue in the West, the unpopularity of the Afghan war, and the relentless budgetary and political pressures leaders face to bring their troops home early. As Obama put it in his June 2011 speech on Afghanistan, “it is time to focus on nation building here at home,” a sentiment shared by many in Europe. The French military engagement in Afghanistan has always been perceived in France as a “war of solidarity” without clearly defined strategic objectives, aimed at repairing U.S.-French relations after France’s refusal to participate in the coalition against Iraq in 2003. Coming just three months before the election, Sarkozy’s announcement reflects a compromise between the Lisbon NATO consensus and his presidential campaign rival Francois Hollande’s promise of ending the French military presence in Afghanistan by the end of 2012. But in fact, both dates are unrealistic considering the unpreparedness of the Afghan security forces to lead coalition forces and the overreliance of the Afghan government on external assistance.

Indeed, the argument that progress has been made in Afghanistan is disputable. Today, in the province of Kapisa, Afghan representatives recognize that their security forces are not ready to assume the responsibilities of the coalition. Growing anti-Western sentiments, stemming from a serious trust deficit between Afghans and coalition forces and combined with the operational unpreparedness of Afghan forces, a weak central government, and the Taliban’s high morale, raise serious questions about the post-2014 role of the United States and its allies. A series of recent incidents in which Afghan troops have turned on their Western allies confirms the failure of the counterinsurgency and “winning hearts and minds” tactics deployed in Afghanistan over the last few years, as well as the flaws in the training mission in the absence of a legitimate central authority.

The coalition’s decade of military engagement in Afghanistan is a story of constant oscillation between three strategies that were never really connected. After a phase of “Americanization” of the Afghan war through the surge, and a phase of “internationalization” with the increase in coalition members’ contributions and assistance, “Afghanization” or the “transition” phase involving the training of local security forces has become the central pillar of the coalition’s exit strategy. But when the strategy becomes about exiting, the strategy of the weak prevails in setting the international calendar and the narrative. In fact, as both the French and American decisions illustrate, the gradual foreign troop reductions have mostly been in response to forces other than security progress in Afghanistan.

Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer is Director of the Paris office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. 

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PARIS—The Obama administration’s new defense strategy should come as no surprise to observers in France and across Europe. The question of rebalancing American military involvement between Europe and the Asia-Pacific has been a recurring theme of transatlantic relations and of U.S. policy debates since at least the 1950s. In large part, it reflects the historical evolution of U.S. perceptions of the transatlantic relationship, from what the United States should do for Europe to what it should do with Europe. In the context of economic austerity, this evolution assumes an even more urgent quality.

There are certainly legitimate reasons for concern. The stationing of U.S. troops in Europe is not only a key component of deterring potential aggression against U.S. allies, it also significantly enhances its power projection capabilities by locating U.S. forces closer to hotspots in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe’s eastern periphery. A recessed U.S. posture in Europe will have direct implications for the military’s ability to respond to future conflicts or strategic surprises. In the lead-up to intervening in Libya, confusion related to the United States’ role illustrated the increasing and dangerous ambiguity that underscores U.S.-European strategic relations. Whereas the United States “transferred” the command and control of the Libya mission to its European allies, Europeans had been counting on U.S. leadership to conduct the military operations.

At the same time, closer strategic cooperation between the United States and Europe has become even more vital in an unpredictable environment being transformed by the emergence of new powers and threats. In Obama’s words, U.S. rebalancing should “create new opportunities for burden-sharing.” Indeed, the key questions induced by an increasingly Asia-oriented U.S. foreign policy do not concern the United States’ military posture in Europe itself, but rather whether Europe is ready to take responsibility for hard security matters in and around Europe, and across the world. France’s chief of the defense staff, Admiral Edouard Guillaud, recently noted that while “Europe is disarming, the world is rearming,” a trend that could impact Europe’s future in terms of its power projection and influence in world politics.

Burden sharing need not entail a geographical division of labor between Americans and Europeans, whereby the United States focuses on Asia and the Middle East, while Europeans concentrate on their near and Mediterranean neighborhoods. Under certain circumstances, the United States will need European support, as in Afghanistan or sub-Saharan Africa. In others, the EU will need U.S. support and unique capabilities, as in Libya. Defining clear modalities of transatlantic cooperation would help avoid future Libya-like scenarios.

It is as yet unclear whether Europe is ready for all this. While the United States would wish for Europe to develop a more coherent military capacity, Europe is actually evolving in the opposite direction. At the present juncture, virtually no European country has the will or the means to assume these responsibilities. European decision-makers may have welcomed Obama’s commitment to draw to a close the perceived over-militarization of the post-9/11 era, but the Libyan campaign showed that hard power still matters in the 21^st century. Ad hoc coalitions are a short-term solution, Franco-British defense cooperation suffers from ideological divergences, and Germany is occupied dealing with the Euro crisis. NATO can therefore be expected to continue to enhance interoperability and coalition building, rather than acting as the core transatlantic security alliance.

What may appear a pragmatic and natural shift in U.S. geostrategic priorities to Asia and the Middle East means fewer resources for the traditional transatlantic alliance. But this does not entail a post-American Europe or less U.S. interest in the transatlantic partnership. On the contrary, the Obama administration has, in a way, renewed its defense commitments to Europe and acknowledged the continuing strategic importance of Europe in terms of ongoing security challenges and unresolved conflicts.

Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer is Director of the German Marshall Fund’s Paris office.

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