French President Francois Hollande arrived in Washington yesterday to further strengthen the U.S.-France relationship, which has greatly improved from its Iraq War-era nadir. Hollande is facing the lowest approval ratings of his presidency and a faltering economic recovery with sustained high unemployment. But even so, French officials have signaled a desire to maintain an active foreign policy with close U.S. cooperation.
The visit is “a nice way for the United States to pay France back for its leadership on Syria, Iran and Mali,” says Nicholas Dungan of the Atlantic Council. The French, for their part, “will be looking to see whether the United States still wants to lead from the front,” he says.
In a jointly authored Washington Post op-ed coinciding with the start of the visit, Hollande and U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged that “a decade ago, few would have imagined our two countries working so closely together.” But in recent years, they wrote, the U.S. and France have “expanded our cooperation across the board” and have taken the alliance “to a new level.”