FRANCE’s refusal to participate in the latest United States military strike against Iran is, in many ways, entirely unsurprising. Anyone even casually acquainted with Paris’ strategic tradition would recognize that France has never been an automatic follower within the Western camp. Since the time of former president Charles de Gaulle in the middle of the last century, France has consciously maintained a certain tension between Atlanticism and its own sense of strategic autonomy — withdrawal from NATO’s integrated military command,