and the Figaro newspaper.

French President François Hollande is the country’s least popular head of state on record, with approval ratings that have been consistently below 20 percent for months. A significant element in his government’s unpopularity is its perceived impotence in stopping terrorist attacks.

In essence, few in France are willing to accept the inevitability of nightmarish scenes like that on the night of July 14 in Nice, when Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old local man, plowed a 19-ton truck through celebrating crowds on the famed Promande des Anglais, killing 84 people and injuring hundreds more, many of them children.

On the heels of the January 2015 assault on the editorial offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and the November 2015 attacks by Islamic State-affiliated militants on a stadium,concert hall and series of cafes across Paris, the Nice attack has thrust the question of national security to the center of public debate with a renewed sense of urgency.

A crucial element in that debate is the question of French police coordination, a source of particular tension after the November attacks, when the first officer to reach the besieged Bataclan concert hall was withdrawn in favor of more elite anti-terrorism forces.

As French news media reported at the time, eliciting tremendous public outrage, one of those dispatched squadrons arrived a half-hour later, while another was apparently never deployed.

France’s National Assembly concluded a bipartisan, six-month investigation into the 2015 attacks this month. It faulted the byzantine nature of France’s domestic security apparatus, which includes “national police” for major urban centers,