Renaud Girard

French journalist and writer

Renaud Girard
Born	(1955-05-25) 25 May 1955 (age 69) New York City, New York, U.S.
Alma mater	École normale supérieure ÉNA
Occupation(s)	Journalist Writer

Renaud Girard (born 25 May 1955) is a French journalist and writer. He studied at the École normale supérieure and the École nationale d'administration. He has worked as a war correspondent and written books about the Middle East, geopolitics and international relations.

He is an advocate of political realism. One of his concepts is that of the "principal enemy" (ennemi principal), which constitutes a hierarchy of political priorities. For example, in the Syrian Civil War, he considers the principal enemy to be Sunni jihadists, which makes it acceptable to seek alliances with Shi'a Islamist groups such as Hezbollah.^[1] Another concept he uses is that of "blatant evil" (mal flagrant), which creates distinctions between different dictatorships. A dictatorship may be deserving of strong criticism, but at the same time not legitimize mass murder or strive for unlimited expansion, in which case it can not be considered as blatantly evil. This is exemplified by the regimes of Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad. On the other hand, Nazi Germany and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are examples which Girard regards as blatantly evil.^[2]^[3]

Girard is very critical of the neoconservative movement and its doctrine of trying to impose democracy on other countries by force. He has argued that the United States under President George W. Bush prioritized democracy in Iraq over the prospect of peace, which only lead to failure and took the country further from democracy than it was when the operation began.^[4]

Bibliography

Pourquoi ils se battent ? : Voyage dans les guerres du Moyen-Orient, éditions Flammarion, 2005 ISBN 2080687697, Prix Montyon from the Académie Française
La guerre ratée d'Israël contre le Hezbollah, éditions Perrin, 2006 ISBN 226202605X
Retour à Peshawar, éditions Grasset, 2010 ISBN 978-2246765516
Le Monde en marche, CNRS Éditions, 2014 ISBN 978-2271079916
Que reste-t-il de l'occident ?, with Régis Debray, éditions Grasset, 2014 ISBN 978-2246851363
Le monde en guerre. 50 clefs pour le comprendre, Carnets Nord / éditions Montparnasse, 2016.

References

^ Girard, Renaud (2015). "Savoir désigner notre ennemi principal". Revue des deux Mondes (in French) (3). Retrieved 2017-02-11.
^ "Quand les Occidentaux sont tétanisés par les destructions de Palmyre". Huffington Post (in French). 2015-08-31. Retrieved 2017-02-11.
^ "Indignation et action : le décalage de l'Occident face à l'État islamique". Le Figaro (in French). 2015-08-24. Retrieved 2017-02-11.
^ Bastié, Eugénie (2014-06-13). "Irak : "On n'impose pas la démocratie à coup de chasseurs bombardiers"". Le Figaro (in French). Retrieved 2017-02-11.