As requested by Dr. Birchfield, this blog will be related to our visit to the French foreign ministry. This was our second site visit in France. It was a fascinating visit in terms of finding out the French perspective on current issues especially Brexit! Both in my view and according to the recent lows of the markets in the UK and within member states of the EU go to prove that Brexit was probably the wrong decision. However on the other hand this is probably one of the most interesting times to be pursuing a minor in international affairs. The EU and its future could possibly never be more interesting. I fortunately also got the chance to travel to London on Saturday so my past three days have been Friday in Brussels, Saturday in London and Sunday in Paris. I’ve got a whole range of perspectives this past week regarding Brexit and the most crucial point I noticed which I will talk about later in this blog as well is “Uncertainty”.

The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs located on the Quai d’Orsay is the oldest French administration building. It handles a budget of approximately 4.5 million euros and has had some significant events that have taken place at this monumental location. We got a tour of the place before we started our visit and all of us could agree that the French are in another league of classiness. Room, bathrooms, doorways and almost everything you see is decorated with gold. Few of the rooms that we saw included the ground floor drawing room which is where the 1919 Peace Conference was held to bring an end to World War 1 and another important room was The Clock Room which was the setting for Robert Schuman’s declaration on Europe in 1950 and the signing of the ECSC the following year (the first stage in the road towards the present day EU).

A picture of the group taken in the Clock room which was the setting for the Schuman Declaration.

Our first speaker was Sophie Delet, a French official working with the French government since 2007. She shared with us her valuable knowledge regarding Brexit. Just like the general atmosphere around Brussels and the UK she too was uncertain about the future of the EU. According to her the possibility of Marine Le Pen winning the upcoming presidential elections in France is uncertain however the important part is that the French need to realize that being part of the EU is vital to both their peace and stability and their economic standards. It’s not at all surprising to see that after Brexit The French CAC closed around 8 percent lower on the day. The European Single market is a crucial part of the European Agreement and the French would find it hard to survive in a market without the EU. She clearly stated that she regretted the Brexit result as it’s going to take a lot of time and energy to deal with this matter and that due to this the EU will be a smaller player in the international field. All in all she wants the deal with the UK to be completed as fast as possible to reduce the amount of uncertainty whether its regarding the single European market, people’s jobs and healthcare, border checks, the Erasmus+ scheme we learnt about during our study abroad or something like roaming charges. It will all become clearer if the deal goes down quickly and I completely agree. I honestly believe that the UK should have not left but I do also feel that the UK could sustain the economic downturn if it reduces uncertainty. It was the best time to shop in the UK this Saturday, the pound was at a 35 year low and in my opinion its just stuck in “Limbo Land” and that the Pounds days are numbered and that it would fall further as long as this cloud of uncertainty hangs over the UK.

Three French officials conducted our following lecture. They were desk officers to the United States; one of them closely followed the elections in the States while the other two were studying French relations with all countries. Most of our talk with them surrounded the 2% pledge by all NATO member states. It was interesting to see how they defended what France is doing in terms of defense spending was adequate. According to the French officials the 2% was just a number and they value quality more then quantity so they are not worried about meeting the 2% of the GDP requirement on defense spending. They did mention that they already contribute way more then other member states and complained about the lack of political will other member states have to increase their defense spending in certain areas. My classmate Rad and I had opposing views on France’s contribution to European/NATO defense (I happened to agree with the French officials while Rad believed otherwise) that made me wonder how frustrated US officials would be with most NATO member states that rely heavily on the US for defense and just free ride without any sense of responsibility for sharing the burden for defense. On the other hand I being an Indian citizen felt like France is contributing heavily to many parts of the world especially in Africa and it is effectively using its military to help fight terrorism.

After our visit to the French foreign ministry the rest of the day we had some free time. So I took that opportunity to go watch the Italy vs Spain game that was being played in Paris. I went to the stadium without a ticket and I have to admit that I was really lucky to have gotten a ticket for the game at face value. It was a rather entertaining game that was quite unexpected given that both teams were tagged as defensive teams coming into the match. I am a huge soccer fan, I have probably missed out on just a couple of games in this euros and this Italy vs Spain game was my second ever football game I am watching live in a stadium. It was truly exciting! I’d like to throw in a quick word about the security at the stadium. It was extremely tight and in my opinion even though it took rather long to catch the train after the match, the guards handled the crowd really well. After all at our visit to the ministry that afternoon they did mention that around 90,000 personnel were added in France to protect everybody and I surely did feel safe and secure through the entire experience.

At Stade de France for Italy vs Spain

The trip in Paris has almost come to an end but I’ve enjoyed every bit of it from visiting all the different museums, our different site visits and lectures, to touring around Luxembourg gardens, Montmartre and obviously the Eiffel Tower. It’s definitely seems like it’s going to be really difficult to leave Paris however I look forward to see what else our study abroad has in store for us.

It was a harrowing weekend for us international affairs students here in Europe. The BREXIT (Britain’s decision to exit the EU) decision was released Friday morning (a.k.a. I was addicted to my laptop the entire weekend as I read the apocalyptic implications that most websites predicted, Tweets from devastated British people, and various statistics). As I stood inside a meeting room at the Committee of Regions in Brussels that day, realizing how many chairs would be left empty soon, I felt incredibly humbled by the gravity of the situation. One of the reactions to BREXIT that really drove home the impact of the vote for me was of Eurasia Group founder Ian Bremmer, who said that BREXIT is the biggest international political risk since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Finding out that 75% of young people like me had voted BREMAIN didn’t help the frustration that I felt. Needless to say, I was excited to take the Thalys train to Paris on Sunday to get a break from the stressful environment in Brussels.

a picture outside the Notre Dame on our first day in Paris!

Our first site visit in Paris was to IFRI, whose French acronym translates to the French Institute of International Relations. IFRI is a leading nonpartisan think tank that often advises the French government. Among the panel of speakers that visited us, the first to speak was a research fellow at IFRI’s security studies center. He started off by giving us a brief history of French dealings with terrorism: First came the Hesbollah attacks in 1985/1986, then the civil war in Algeria that spilled over in the 90s, then the relative calm in the ten years post-9/11, then the anti-Semitic Toulouse and Montauban shootings in 2012, and then the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the attacks on Jewish supermarkets a couple years ago, and finally, the most recent (and most deadly): the November 13, 2015 Paris attack that killed a staggering 130 people. I was concerned to learn that the Paris attacks did not come as a complete surprise: hundreds of French citizens had been traveling to Syria and Iraq to become radicalized for years, with a huge uptake in recent years. Many of these “travelers” are lower-class teenagers previously involved in petty crime, which is a phenomenon that has been well-documented by the media. However, the statistic that has caught IFRI by surprise is that around 30% of these radicalized people come from middle-class backgrounds, where they “get mostly radicalized online,” said the speaker. I asked the speaker about his thoughts on the Schengen Area, which Johnny Jones previously mentioned made it easier for terrorists to move freely between EU countries. He said that although the Schengen Area isn’t at fault here, the Belgians should have done much more to prevent the terrorists from entering Paris. He also mentioned that there are many problems with Europol and insufficient coordination with intelligence sharing among member countries.

Next, another speaker talked to us about the other side of the battle: the French government’s response to the the terrorist attacks. Since January 2015, after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, French authorities have improved upon military operations and homeland security, increased social education, and implemented judicial process reform throughout France. He talked about how the French army has been involved with homeland security for centuries—mass protests and riots were handled by the military because the police were not large enough a force. Unfortunately, this led to the wide use of military force for repression, so after WW1, the French government decided to create a new Parliamentary Police Core. However, after the rise of the Cold War, the army became re-involved in homeland security. This involvement increased tenfold after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, when the president mobilized about 10,000 troops as part of a homeland security force. Unfortunately, the size of this force combined with a drop in training capabilities proves a real challenge. Moreover, there has been a growing morale drop in the army because its homeland security duties are not as exciting—patrolling the streets without having the power to arrest anyone isn’t the same as a battlefield. On the other side, there’s been growing militarization of police forces, so the inversion of roles of the police and military forces is interesting.

I wondered, is this very expensive ubiquitous military presence really needed for the safety of French citizens, or is it just being used to reassure them? France hasn’t even met its 2% GDP quota for NATO spending, so why should it divert this money for troops that seem like nothing more than intimidating “window dressing”? The speaker took a defensive stance on this position: “Their presence makes it much more complicated for a terrorist to carry out an attack efficiently. The question is, how much is our security spending affecting other areas—how can we be cost-efficient?”

IFRI’s logo

The speaker then moved on to the next issue: lack of cooperation in intelligence-sharing among governments. Although the cooperation level between major powers like the France, UK, and the US, is “good”, most intelligence-sharing is done bilaterally, not multilaterally. This needs to change, but member countries have to build trust: “You need trust to share intelligence, and there is a lack of trust among EU states, especially with the Baltic states.” He also mentioned how the Internet Jihad presence makes fighting terrorism infinitely harder. There have been three stages of terrorist presence on the Internet: 1. Top-down public websites in the 90s 2. Jihadist forums where passwords were required in the mid-2000s 3. Social media jihadists (which skyrocketed starting 2012): allowed terrorists to reach the vast public The first two stages were much easier to deal with than the third stage, where governments are now constantly clashing with companies like Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Apple to gain access to social media accounts (which we heard a lot about previously at Google Europe and on the news with the Apple-FBI issue). Looking towards the future, it’s safe to say that the French government’s most pressing goals in this area are having a strategic vision for French homeland security, rethinking the army’s role in sharing resources with the police, and increasing cooperation between governments.

The next part of our panel discussion was of French involvement in Africa. To me, this was the most surprising part of our visit to IFRI. It showed me that despite France’s failure “on paper” to meet the 2% GDP spending requirement on NATO, it is actually a huge leader (where the U.S. is not) in leading anti-terrorist operations in Africa. I assumed that French media coverage, like in the U.S., would be heavily biased towards terrorism in the Middle East. However, according to the IFRI panel, terrorism coverage in Africa and the Middle East is more balanced due to France’s operations there. One of these operations is named Operation Barkhane, which started in 2014 and represents a new approach for French military operations in Africa, with troops in five countries including Mauritania, Mali, and Burkina Faso. Its main tenet is partnering with local militaries and multinational institutions (like the UN) in order to combat terrorism and reduce freedom of movement in those five countries. However, there are many challenges in working with African armies in combating terrorism, including limited military capacity, human rights violations, corruption problems, and disastrous human resources management within those armies. This really demonstrated the danger when it comes to only focusing on increasing militaries when fighting terrorism—a regional, long-term, multifaceted strategy needs to be developed instead. “You need to understand the African way of doing things—you can’t just imply that the 1st world countries ‘know best’,” the Africa expert said.

Operation Barkhane, in 5 countries in Africa

Because media coverage in the U.S. tends to be so Eurocentric and Middle-East-centric, it was fascinating to learn how much of an investment France has in Africa. I realized how much I had been in the dark when it came to terrorist groups like Boko Haram and AQIM. It was also interesting to make comparisons between U.S. involvement in Iraq and France involvement in Operation Barkhane—while the U.S. made the mistake of pulling out of Iraq too quickly, France seems to have taken note of that mistake and doesn’t look like it will be leaving Africa anytime soon. Then again, it is very scary to think of Boko Haram growing into the quasi-state that ISIS has become.

All in all, French military operations and anti-terrorism efforts seem to be much stronger than I previously thought. Although when I visited NATO in Brussels I got the impression that France was not pulling its weight, after being on the other side of the coin I learned that quality is much better than quantity when it comes to defense. In that, France is well-prepared strategically despite its strained forces. I suspect that France, which has already surpassed the UK economically in days since BREXIT, will take greater leadership in the European defense space now that the U.K. has left the E.U.

(Side note: one of the few positive and uniting things about being in Europe has been football. After our long days we went to sit at a café and watch the Euro 2016. Your economic policies and voting histories didn’t matter—only the team you were rooting for. I had several conversations with people all over the world in that café just because they were also rooting for Belgium! If only fighting over international affairs was as simple as fighting over a football!)

A picture of a view of the Eiffel Tower from the boat tour of the Seine we took that day–it has a football hanging from it because of Euro2016, whose fanzone is on the Eiffel Tower’s lawn.