France asks for help to the European Union but not to the Atlantic Alliance

French President Hollande has decided to appeal to the Lisbon Treaty, which commits the EU member states to provide assistance to the treaty country, which suffers an armed aggression on its territory. This device is intended as an obligation and must be implemented bilaterally, so Paris will contact other countries. However, the EU has declared its willingness in the coordination of contributions that France will receive. Members of Brussels gave their unanimous support to the French request, which is the first case of application of the clause of the Lisbon Treaty until now required. For France it is a collaboration repeatedly sought with little success at the European partners; direct engagement in Paris in the fight against Islamic extremism is present in Mali, Central African Republic, Syria and Iraq, and has often been a source of discord with the other EU members, accused by the Elysée to low commitment. With this maneuver, France intends to draw part of their staff engaged outside the national soil for better prevention and control of terrorism. It must however be stated that the French country, to a legitimate claim of fighting terrorism, has often compared the protection of its interests in foreign countries, especially in the energy sector; while a possible distancing from French methods of conducting military actions lies in the bad way in which it was handled the Libyan issue, which was only removed the dictator Gaddafi, without thinking in any way to the future of the country, which, in fact, , it fell in complete anarchy. Beyond the support provided formally to France by the European countries, many government representatives have stressed that this assistance should take place according to its capabilities of each country: this can will mean that, past the initial support, support arrangements will have to go through a difficult negotiation, which could also result in a failure. In contrast to this occasion you could initiate the procedures for building an integrated European military force or, even better, depending directly from Brussels, always make sure that Europe covers the necessary political. In any case the need for military force transnational between European countries is becoming increasingly urgent, but it is unclear if this is the intention of France, which has always opted for a more autonomous in the military field. In this regard it is interesting to wonder about why Paris has appealed to the treaty in force with the European Union, which has its own power immediately able to mobilize, but even more, it is very far away, rather than not to invoke Article 5 of the Atlantic Alliance, which considers an attack on one member as an attack on the alliance as a whole. This would have enabled it to raise an efficient and already tested, but which involved a chain of command that Paris would have to submit. This doubt is confirmed by the cooperation that France has immediately established with Russia, to carry out bombings against the positions of the Islamic state. As is well known the United States, the majority shareholder of the Atlantic Alliance, still look with suspicion to the real reasons for Putin to the Kremlin's commitment to Syria. The Russian air force, so far, hit the caliphate, but more positions of Syrian forces opposed to Assad. In this context, a hypothetical request of French aid to the Atlantic Alliance, would have reduced the room for maneuver of Paris. This is a very important element of analysis to think about the real will of cooperation between the countries fighting the Islamic state and that can promote the caliphate, since it is obvious that you go for continuity in no particular order, with no real unity of purpose which could accelerate the victory Islamic extremism, but that implies, still too many sacrifices over the private interests of individual powers.