Trapped?

Is French President Hollande now trapped, as many in the French media claim?

President Obama's decision to consult Congress before ordering military strikes against Syria, following a poison gas attack on a Damascus suburb, and that both France and the US accuse Assad of having instigated, has clearly put him in an uncomfortable position.

Before he can intervene militarily against Assad, as he has pledged to do, he must await the decision of a foreign parliament...France, though possessing significant military means, could not act alone... 

Some in France, where the Gaullist tradition of pride and independence looms large, consider his position to be a humiliating one...

Vincent Desportes, a former general in the French army, and now a professor at L'Institut d'études politiques de Paris, told Le Monde that President Obama's Syrian policy reversal clearly evinces contempt for France. The day before, President Hollande explained why France was ready to take its responsibilities. The next day, his great ally shoves him in an impasse.

Hollande is under no constitutional obligation to follow in Obama's and British PM Cameron's footsteps and seek parliamentary approval before ordering any military strikes.

A president must do so only forty days after a conflict has begun.

Nevertheless, a debate on the issue will be held next Wednesday both at the Senate and National Assembly. These debates will not be followed by a vote, therefore...

Yet, after both the British PM and the American President sought parliamentary approval before taking any action, can Hollande do any less?

Prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault is to meet parliamentary leaders from both the majority and the opposition on Monday afternoon.

Yet, the demands for a vote are more and more numerous and clamorous.

A former prominent member of the previous Sarkozy administration and now head of a centrist party, l'UDI, union of democrats and independents, Jean-Louis Borloo, is demanding just that, as are some Socialist and Green supporters of Hollande.

Jean-Luc Mélanchon, a former Socialist party official and candidate in the 2012 French presidential election, now head of the Front de Gauche, a leftist party, said the following: the British voted, the Germans will vote, as will the Americans, and we will be the only ones not to, and let one man decide by himself? M. Hollande is not the king who decides when the nation goes to war. That is the parliament's business, not the responsibility of two people in an office.

In the twenty first century, how can one man have the sole power to decree war and peace? wrote Patrick Apel-Muller, in the Frecnh Communist party's daily, L'Humanité.

That is a relevant question, all the more so as 59% of the French, according to a recent poll, oppose any military action against Syria...

A debate without a vote seems more and more difficult, politically, though of course it would be constitutional.

Yet, France prides itself on being a great democracy, if not a model...Would that status be compatible with denying the representatives of la République a chance to express the people's will on a major issue of war and peace?

MM. Cameron and Obama may have done the French an invaluable favor, however indirectly.

In the V th Republic, the parliament's powers are limited and no match for the executive branch's.

Mr. Obama's initiative, a necessary and constitutional one, for the issue of war and peace is surely the province of elected assemblies, may yet have the effect of reviving and emboldening the French parliament. That would be perhaps the only positive development to emerge from the tragic Syrian crisis...

Will M. Hollande also have the courage to listen to the people?

(the photograph above of President François Hollande is by Reuters)