US Secretary of State John Kerry’s fluency in French hasn’t always served him well. During his 2004 presidential bid, his cosiness with those “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” - as the French were nicknamed over their Non to the war in Iraq - was used by his opponents as a stick with which to beat him.Over the past month, however, he has used his French to first mobilise, then demobilise, America’s oldest ally in support of President Barack Obama’s shifting stance on Syria’s chemical weapons.During a visit to Paris on September 7, when it looked as if the US and France might be about to intervene together against Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Kerry delivered an eight-minute ode to Franco-US relations. In French.Returning to Paris nine days later to plug a US-Russian accord on dismantling Syria’s chemical weapons that takes the threat of immediate military action off the table, he kept the French part of his speech to a single line.“I would like to thank President (Francois) Hollande and Foreign Minister (Laurent) Fabius for their extraordinarily warm welcome,” he said after talks with Hollande, Fabius and British Foreign Secretary William Hague.And then he switched to English.It was a sign of how France had become sidelined in the reach by Russia and the US for a diplomatic solution to avert the threat of missile strikes.After going out on a limb to support Obama, French President Hollande found himself relegated to a ringside seat as the former Cold War rivals agreed a deal on the dismantling of Syria’s chemical arsenal.If implemented, the deal will eliminate the threat of another chemical attack, removing the pretext for an intervention against Assad’s regime.Hollande presented the deal as a victory for the tough tack taken by Washington and Paris.“We should be proud of what we did. The pressure we exerted with the US paid off,” he said in a prime-time television programme.Kerry gave thanks to both France and Britain - the latter’s government had backed military action before being shot down by parliament - saying the US was “very grateful” to have “such able and willing partners.”But a BVA poll showed that the French are far from happy with their president’s performance.While 54% believe the US and France had been right to threaten Syria militarily, 60% disapprove of Hollande’s handling of the dossier.The French leader was caught off guard twice - first by Obama’s surprise decision to seek authorisation from Congress for military action, a decision that left France hanging; and then by the US-Russian accord, which effectively shelved his plans to “punish” Assad for his suspected chemical weapons use.More worryingly for Hollande, the Syrian crisis showed him to be out of sync with the electorate on foreign policy.“Hard on the outside, soft on the inside,” Liberation newspaper wrote, summing up the contrast between his surprisingly hawkish approach to foreign threats and his avoid-confrontation-at-all-costs approach on domestic issues.