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La Revue internationale et stratégique N°65
Spring 2007
SPECIAL ISSUE : Are we allowed to criticize Islam ?
sous la direction de Pascal Boniface


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INSIGHTS

God’s Country? / Walter Russell Mead

The balance of religious powers in the American Protestantism has been shifting during the last years, and has changed U.S. foreign politics. The three main theological traditions lead to different views about the prospect for a world order and the role the U.S. should play in it: while Fundamentalists oppose any kind of cooperation with secularist international institutions, Liberal Christians believe in the universality of ethics and often engage for progressive fights. Laying somewhere in between them, the Evangelicals gain momentum: insisting on Christians’ moral responsibility towards the world, they urge for support to humanitarian issues but also see in the U.S. protection of Israeli interests a way to ensure God’s benediction of America.

Is the Third World Still an Actor of International Relations? / Yannick Prost

The alliance of Third World countries has been intending to influence the international balance of powers since the 1960s. But it has been strongly weakened by successive failures, including the lack of economic development. The convergence of the countries’ interests was jeopardized by globalisation. Yet the South seemed to play a role in agenda control, civil societies of the North partly supporting it: it praised for such themes as world governance, international markets accesses, intellectual property rights... However in the last period, the alliance mainly served the purposes of the emergent powers, the only ones to be accepted in a broaden world governance committee; other countries are confined in a diplomacy of declarations, which strengthens the risk of a new radicalisation among some of them.

The Chinese at the Conquest of the Worldwide Hydrocarbons / Hervé L’Huillier

China has embarked on a global strategy involving political, economic and military means in order to ensure the energy supply necessary to its development. In accordance with the theory of the concentric circles, China’s precedent over other countries. It also tries to catch up with the so-called “rogue states”. China is still granted support from its Diaspora and from its traditional allies, while using foreign aid to get closer to some other states. China seeks to secure and diversify its energy sources, hence setting up partner-ships, supporting processes of regional integration, and trying to control hydrocarbons transport. In a very pragmatic way, the Chi-nese thus adopt various approaches, paying special attention to countries which possess key resources.

The International Pipelines : Factors of Prosperity, Power and Rivalries / Loïc Simonet

The pipelines are a new stake of the international relations and geopolitics. The risks linked to the determination of the routes (armed conflicts, separatist threats, terrorist attacks) and the competition between countries exporting hydrocarbons hinder the engineering structures installation. The blocking capacity of some transit states explains that some “energetic crossroads” are bypassed, which the future North-European gas pipeline underlines. In the Caucasus-Central Asia region the stake of energy transport mobilizes the great powers’ diplomacy: for Russia, the United States, China, and the European Union, oil and gas pipelines are a guarantee of the energetic safety, as well as means to achieve political influence and economic penetration.

France and its Muslims / Stéphanie Giry

The confusion between radical Islamism and Muslims often obscures the issue of Muslims’ integration in France. France’s experience with integration is specific; it has been shaped by a particular combination of history, philosophy, and contemporary concerns, which has produced a stop-and-start immigration policy, a wariness about Islam, and discriminations. Yet Muslims long to integrate economically, they share republican values and their religion does not have much impact on their political positions. So if discriminations continue, there is therefore a real danger that French Muslims might get used to being treated as though their religious and ethnic identity was paramount. Then they could start resorting to a kind of defensive identity politics.

The French Nuclear Doctrine: Pending Questions / Barthélémy Courmont

The French nuclear doctrine rests upon the concept of the threshold of caution: the volume of nuclear weapons must coincide with that threshold, above which it is high enough to deter any military attack. However, this deterrent doctrine raises several questions: How to renovate the military arsenal while observing international treaties intended to limit the number of weapons and to prevent nuclear testing? How to identify the threats in a changing context, and where to place the threshold of sufficiency? How does public opinion perceive nuclear weapons? France could be urged on abandoning the doctrine of nuclear deterrence for one of nuclear use, if the spread of nuclear weapons goes on and if other countries’ nuclear approaches keep evolving.

How Defence Policy Could Evolve under the New Presidency? / Pierre Pascallon

On the verge of the French presidential elections, the question of how French defence policy could evolve under the new presidency can be asked. But, this policy remains constrained as it has been in the past. Indeed, because of France’s geopolitical configuration, its defence policy is organized around three geostrategic axes: the continental axis, the oceanic axis and the Southern one. It is also determined by current constraints: the situation inside the country, and the international context. The constraints explain that France’s defence policy is very consensual. Currently, a broad consensus appears on the necessity of drawing up a new White Paper, stopping the fall in defence budgets, pursuing nuclear deterrence, and developing European defence.


SPECIAL FEATURE: ARE WE ALLOWED TO CRITICIZE ISLAM?

Editorial / Pascal Boniface
For a Real Right to Criticize / Jean Baubérot
Criticism Must be Free, but Must Remain Consistent / Pascal Boniface
The Criticism of Islam, a New Moral and Political Duty ? / Jean-Yves Camus
The Criticism of Islam: a Chance for Progress Rather than an Assault on Identity / Jean Daniel
Against the Double Standard of Criticism / Paul and Anaïs Draszen
“Muslim Zolas and Voltaires”...? Reflection on the “New Dissidents” of Islam / Vincent Geisser

Contrary to a generally accepted idea, the “inner” criticism of Islam and Muslims is not a new phenomenon. Examples can be found in recent history: in the colonial context of French Algeria, a minority among Muslim elites endorsed strong views about their religion and the way to reform it. What remains nowadays of these critical trends? The criti-cism of Islam and Muslims, as expressed by those that could be called the new “Zola” or “Voltaire”of Islam, arises in a radically different political context. It it thus impossible to draw a social continuum between the colonial period and the present one. This articles examines some emblematical figures of the new criticism of Islam, which are: the scholar, the Algerian rebel woman, the exile female martyr, the civic-minded “Beur”and the emanci-pated “Beurette”.

Questioning Religious Texts / Marek Halter
Beyond Confusions, Islam as a Disparate Reality / Robert Hue
Image, Violence and Contagion / François-Bernard Huyghe
Understanding Before Judging, but Speaking Freely / Théo Klein
Islam and the Republic. Is it Allowed to Criticize Islam in a Secular State? / Arnaud Montebourg
The Right to Debate. Looking Back at the Robert Redeker Case / Michel Taubmann
“Voltaire’s Fault”? About the Racist Uses of Freedom of Speech / Pierre Tevanian
The Criticism of Islam Between Open Conflict and Misleading Neutrality / Michel Tubiana
Spirit of Faith and Critical Mind in a Contemporary Democratic Society / Mgr André Vingt-Trois

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