France, experiencing a prolonged domestic malaise, is seeking to define itself again with an active role in the Lebanon crisis—one the United States welcomes, in spite of some differences, given Washington's own foreign entanglements.

This Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report for Congress deals with the factors shaping France's foreign policy and U.S.-French relations (PDF).

The French government's backdown on plans to reform youth labor laws has raised concerns about the country's ability to adapt to globalization, as well as how failure to pass the law will impact the continent.

Charles A. Kupchan, CFR's top expert on Europe, says the continuing demonstrations and protests over an attempt to change the labor hiring laws in France are only symptomatic of a wider political crisis in Europe.

France faces a problem with its Muslim population, but it is not the problem it generally assumes.Paradoxically, it is the exhaustion of political Islamism, not its radicalisation, that explains much of the violence, and it is the depoliticisation of young Muslims, rather than their alleged reversion to a radical kind of communalism, that ought to be cause for worry. 

Michael Moran reports that calm returns, but some say it is just a lull.

Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Dr. Konrad Adenauer, and the President of the French Republic, Charles de Gaulle, signed this treaty on January 22, 1963 to mark the reconciliation of the two countries after World War II.