Again, a sad heinous crime was committed in Paris. At a theater, a stadium, in cafes.
Looking back at my Jan. 8 piece following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and my previous one on Dec. 1, 2014, which I wrote as my first book (Ukraine: Prémices de Guerre Froide en Europe?) was coming out, I wanted to come back to The Hill on two converging events: my second book, in French, La Défense Européenne Face aux Menaces: Est-Elle Prête pour son 9/11?, handed in to my editor on Monday, Nov. 9 and the horrendous terrorist attacks on Friday, Nov. 13.
Looking back at my Jan. 8 piece in The Hill, it ends in a question: “Have the more than 950 French jihadists come home to attack the homeland?”
{mosads}As we all now know, as of this writing, 129 people were shot dead and more than 350 injured in six different locations by eight jihadi terrorists, all wearing explosive belts; all, except one, blew themselves up. One or more have been identified at this writing as being French nationals. And, worse yet, one of the kamikaze bombers at the friendly France/Germany soccer game at the Stade de France apparently came into France with a Syrian passport with the hundreds of thousands of refugees making their way from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan to Europe.
French President François Hollande has made a number of declarations on television, saying that “France is at war.” A state of emergency was decreed, which mobilized the military forces that will be patrolling the streets and public places; allowed police to stop and search people’s homes and belongings without warrants; and suspended participation in the Schengen Area and resumed border controls.
A state of emergency has not been decreed in France since 1955.
Could this attack, like the previous one in January, have been prevented?
My book lays out how Europe reacted to the terrorist attacks in New York on Sept. 11, 2001 and what measures, laws and resources were put into place.
The first part is about how the European defense structure functions, the decisions and the mechanisms put into place at the national leve, and supranational level with NATO; the the second part is about the changing security posture since the advent of terrorism, defining the new security menace and the reactions of both the U.S. and the EU to meet this new asymmetric, non-state threat; and, finally, the third part details the challenges facing the EU, as a 28-country bloc, one divided on the Ukrainian crisis, the Iraq War and how to secure its periphery against all forms of criminal activity, trafficking, smuggling and illegal migration.
My conclusion, written long before the events of Nov. 13:
Europe is more vulnerable to terrorist attacks than is the United States because of its geography and the limits of the Schengen Area space that facilitates the circulation of people without any control inside this zone.
Quels sont les défis pour l’Union Européenne demain? Ce n’est malheureu-sement qu’une question de temps avant que l’Europe vit son 9/11. (What are the challenges for the European Union tomorrow? It is unfortunately only a question of time before Europe lives its 9/11.)
The enemy is terrorism, which aims to destroy our open and free way of life and disrupt the model of economic integration and its five flows: people, money, information, merchandise, education and culture.
Will France invoke Article 5 of the NATO Treaty? Are we headed to all-out war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (which is neither a state nor Islamic)? Are we headed for World War III?
Wasylina is president and founder of the International Geostrategic Maritime Observatory (IGMO) (formerly the Observatory of the Black, Gulf and Mediterranean Seas) a think tank based in Paris. She is the author of Ukraine: Prémices de Guerre Froide en Europe? and La Défense Européenne Face aux Menaces: L’Europe Est-Elle Prête pour son 9/11?. Follow her on Twitter @presidentigmo.