Résumé : Diplomacy is the essential means to communicate and gain in power and stability on the international scene, but what really is diplomacy (what if there are, in the plural form, diplomacies?), and is it something that is untouchable by citizens? This paper would like to focus on the Sarkozy-Kadhafi case, in the late 2000s, by asking if the French people’s reaction to the sudden friendship of France with Libya ultimately drove Sarkozy to command a military intervention in order to regain popularity.