Diplomacy & Crisis News

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro de printemps 2021 de Politique étrangère (n° 1/2021). Nele Wissmann, chercheuse associée au Comité d’études des relations franco-allemandes de l’Ifri, propose une analyse de l’ouvrage de Bénédicte Laumond, Policy Responses to the Radical Right in France and Germany: Public Actors, Policy Frames, and Decision-Making (Routledge, 2020, 256 pages).

Basé sur une thèse de 2017, cet ouvrage a encore gagné en actualité avec le meurtre de Walter Lübcke, président du district de Kassel le 15 juin 2019, l’attaque antisémite contre une synagogue à Halle le 9 octobre 2019, ainsi que l’assassinat de neuf personnes dans deux bars à chicha à Hanau le 20 février 2020. L’analyse de l’extrémisme et du terrorisme de droite sort d’une niche scientifique pour s’exposer aux projecteurs médiatique et politique.

L’observation et l’évaluation françaises de la lutte allemande contre les menaces d’extrême droite sont souvent limitées par l’ignorance des possibles champs d’action allemands en la matière, ainsi que par la méconnaissance de la vision démocratique propre à l’Allemagne. Ainsi, la présente publication a une valeur ajoutée scientifique incontestable. L’extrémisme de droite étant également une menace en France et dans d’autres démocraties européennes, cette publication doit aussi être vue comme un cadre de référence pour les meilleures pratiques dans la lutte contre l’extrême droite. Le texte évalue notamment la manière dont les deux démocraties, France et Allemagne, abordent le paradoxe de la tolérance : comment des démocraties libérales peuvent-elles restreindre les droits qu’elles défendent – comme la liberté d’expression – pour réprimer les forces intolérantes qui menacent la démocratie ?

Un résultat de la recherche se distingue particulièrement. En Allemagne, les principes hérités de la démocratie militante de Loewenstein ont été inscrits dans la Loi fondamentale et, à partir de ces fondements juridiques, les acteurs politiques et étatiques ont élaboré une doctrine d’État qui empêche l’ordre démocratique de subir les menaces politiques extrémistes. La démocratie militante (wehrhafte Demokratie) est par conséquent une caractéristique clé de la politique allemande, qui s’exprime à travers des institutions comme l’Office fédéral pour la protection de la Constitution, et une politique anti-extrémiste bien établie. La construction d’une politique de répression du radicalisme politique, avec une distinction claire séparant l’extrémisme du reste du spectre politique – le premier étant une menace pour l’ordre constitutionnel et donc considéré comme anticonstitutionnel – a permis à l’Allemagne de s’adapter au paradoxe de la tolérance.

En France, le raisonnement des décideurs politiques est que le radicalisme de droite ne doit pas être abordé en termes politiques, sauf si les groupes sont violents ou expriment des opinions racistes. Il est ainsi plus difficile d’identifier un cadre juridique complet permettant de combattre le radicalisme politique. Malgré tout, le cadre juridique français offre aujourd’hui un ensemble hétérogène de mesures axées sur la répression de la violence et du racisme qui, dans la pratique, contribuent à une répression efficace du radicalisme de droite.

Cet ouvrage doit être recommandé à tous ceux qui souhaitent examiner de près les réponses politiques apportées en Allemagne et en France à la montée de l’extrémisme de droite. Il est également une référence précieuse pour qui veut comparer les cultures politiques de l’Allemagne et de la France, qui ne sont pas toujours comprises dans leurs subtilités par les différents acteurs politiques et médiatiques.

Nele Wissmann

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Not long before President-elect Biden started naming his cabinet, two sets of recommendations to reform the Department of State were published, one from the Council on Foreign Relations, one from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School.  The Economist noted their rich menu of proposals.  Secretary of State – designate Blinken will do well to implement a number of them. 

He should also go further.  A question has been hanging over State for decades, namely: what precisely is the U.S. diplomat’s function?  Every U.S. Marines is told they are riflemen; what is every U.S. diplomat, particularly in the transformative 21stCentury?

A fundamental, elemental answer is that diplomats are authoritative representatives of their sovereign.  In much of history, the “sovereign” has been personal, a monarch.  For the U.S., while the President is Head of State, sovereignty transcends any person or office.  This is especially important to recall in a time of political polarization, when Americans could yet imagine a 2024 Presidential contest between Donald Trump and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

The Kennedy School’s recommendations do start by calling for a new mission for the Foreign Service, asking the new President to “restore the State Department’s lead role in executing the nation’s foreign policy.”  Rex Tillerson’s “listening survey” of 2017 also made identification of State’s mission its first recommendation.  The CFR report opens with issues, seeking a special envoy for climate change – i.e. John Kerry – and “elevating pandemic disease to a core U.S. national interest.” 

Both the CFR and JFK School pieces seek a reduction in political appointments.  The latter says 90 percent of Ambassadors and 75 percent of Assistant Secretaries should be career officers.  The issue of political appointees has long been a complaint of Foreign Service Officers.  Though the numbers (summarized in the Economist) show the Trump Administration accelerating the trend, it has been growing for decades.  And while there are horror stories that every FSO knows, many political appointees have been highly effective representatives, due to their stature – think Mike Mansfield or Jon Huntsman, as just two – or their close relationship with their President. 

One complaint career officers make is that the powers that be would never make a political appointee a brigade commander or ship’s captain.  The question, though, is what is the U.S. diplomat’s expertise, equivalent to the military expertise of rifleman, sonar operator, or fighter pilot?   Many FSOs cite the service’s presence in foreign countries and ongoing conduct of business with their governments.  But relations with governments have been conducted by military, commercial, and many other figures, and many of them, as well as academics and others, spend more continuous time in any given country than the diplomat progressing through her career.  Indeed, both the JFK and the CFR reports espouse recruitment of mid-career and experienced professionals from outside the Department.  In another vein, both call for extended professional education, focused on diplomatic history and practice.  But international relations Master’s degree holders abound in Washington, universities, and NGOs. 

The CFR effort contains elements of a functional definition, seeking to overcome a culture of risk aversion and building an “I have your back” ethos.  It calls for “de-layering” State and streamlining decision making, with less top-down instruction and more “nimble” diplomacy in the field.  The picture that starts to take shape will require much hard thinking and organizational innovation to fill out, but it points toward a unique, necessary, and rigorous expertise that would define the U.S. diplomat.

Ultimately, the diplomat officially represents the American nation.  A nimble and enabled diplomat still will need an innate capacity to carry and project, fundamentally and durably, what that means.  The calls for professional education should be filled out in a manner to instill this capacity.  Gestating diplomats must be deeply imbued with a stress-tested commitment to the American foundation and the people who make our national life on that base.  Their professional formation should, yes, include full familiarization with the history of foreign policy and diplomacy and current knowledge of everything from M-16s to MI-6 to M1B money supply.  But it must be rooted in rigorous ingestion of the tenets, nuances, and arguments around the Declaration of Independence, of U.S. history and development, and of American life in its many communities and institutions.  As a collegial body, they should all be pushed not only to study and observe, but to test themselves and each other in their comprehension and commitment, arguing with each other into the night about their understandings and obligations.  All should know that each has made a deep personal commitment to their American ethos.  With this formation and esprit, and an enabling institutional structure, the U.S. diplomat can be that nimble and empowered agent for the nation, across any administration, capable of addressing long standing issues and surprise controversies coherently, even when full instructions are unavailable.

Such a rigorous formation will help in another respect.  As the two reports note, diversity and inclusion are major issues for a U.S. Diplomatic Service (as the JFK effort would rename the Foreign Service).  A deeply rigorous, stress-testing formative process will, given America’s fundamental definition, select for a service demographically representative of the nation’s population.  It should allow for minimal use of arbitrary numerical targets and external identity markers. 

Not incidentally, when such diplomats serve in Washington and provide their counsel to the policy process, they become more than just “other countries’ voice,” though they will have special knowledge of foreign sensitivities.  As experienced carriers of America’s national identity, they can be stewards of what that means.  They will be experts in Americans’ common creed amid the functional agencies, clinical specialists in the nation’s roots through diverse administrations and shifting partisan landscapes.

Finally, both reports call for a new Foreign Service Act, the JFK report sooner, the CFR report as new practices take hold.  Either way, if a legislative proposal included a fundamental commitment to America’s eternal truths, for a functional and commonly shared goal of sound national representation — might it just transcend polarized partisanship, maybe even give a small spur to unity?

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Après cinq ans de négociations, le partage de la flotte de la mer Noire ne cesse d'envenimer les relations bilatérales entre l'Ukraine et la Russie. / Russie, Ukraine - 1996/12 / Russie, Ukraine - 1996/12

Lors de l'adoption par l'ONU, le 10 décembre 1948, de la Déclaration universelle des droits de l'homme, par quarante-huit Etats, huit s'abstenant, et deux étant absents, les pays de l'Europe de l'Est se sont abstenus. Ce fut le cas de l'URSS, qui disposait des voix de l'Ukraine et de la (...) / Europe de l'Est, Communisme, Démocratie, Droits humains, Éducation, Femmes, Judaïsme, Parti politique, Travail - 1968/04

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Accédez à l’article de Sophie Mitra ici.

Retrouvez le sommaire du numéro 1/2021 de Politique étrangère ici.

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