The overall feeling in France observing U.S. actions in the Middle East is of a troubling uncertainty, a retreat that tends to leave a vacuum, a new American determination to work with a “light footprint” that can give the impression of disinterest.

In a speech this week to mark the 40th anniversary of the formation of the French Policy Planning Staff, Fabius dwelt on this perceived trend. “The United States seems no longer to wish to become absorbed by crises that do not align with its new vision of its national interest,” he said, suggesting that this explained “the non-response by strikes to the use of chemical weapons by the Damascus regime, whatever the red lines set a year earlier.”

He went on to say this U.S. redirection seemed likely to be “durable,” reflecting the “heavy trauma of the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan” and the current “rather isolationist tendency” in American public opinion.

Because nobody can take the place of the United States, this disengagement could create “major crises left to themselves,” Fabius said, and “a strategic void could be created in the Middle East,” with widespread perception of “Western indecision” in a world less multipolar than “zero-polar.”