Posted on 07/27/2003 10:24:06 PM PDT by pcx99
Stand firm against the United States? Try—not too hard—to make friends again? France's leaders are divided, and debating
THE further the Americans and British have got mired in Iraq, the harder it has become for the French to conceal their sense that their opposition to the war has been vindicated. So far, despite lingering bitterness at their treatment by George Bush's team, Jacques Chirac's have put on an air of studied non-triumphalism, and a public tone of reconciliation. Franco-American difficulties “have been essentially superficial,” said the president in his usual July 14th television interview, saying the media had exaggerated them. But though all quarters of his administration share a remarkably unshaken view that France took the right line, there is a vigorous internal debate over how now to manage, or heal, the soured relationship.
Public opinion has been astonishingly uniform in its support for Mr Chirac's opposition to the war. Now, every unfound weapon of mass destruction, every unfounded intelligence claim, every American casualty, only adds to this view. “We said that winning the peace was going to be much harder,” Dominique de Villepin, the foreign minister, told Le Figaro recently: “We see day after day just how difficult the situation is.”“Iraqi weapons, lies and manipulations,” crowed a recent headline in Le Monde.
But has France paid a price in other ways? Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush's national security adviser, reportedly urged his administration to “punish France, ignore Germany, forgive Russia.” And the French have indeed been snubbed. President Bush left the G8 summit at Evian early. This week, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's pro-war prime minister, got to ride about the Bush ranch in Texas, while Mr Chirac has been firmly told not to expect an invitation “any time soon”. Yet an evaluation by the French foreign ministry suggests that the economic damage amounts to little more than a drop in wine sales and American tourists. France's exports have been hurt more by the strength of the euro than by “French-bashing” in Washington.
Beyond the odd political gesture, the French do not believe that they have paid much price at all. Yes, it may be more difficult to get their voice heard in Washington: certainly they get a frosty reception at the Pentagon. But relations with the State Department are reasonable: they have been working well, for instance, with John Bolton, Mr Bush's under-secretary of state for arms control, on Iran. Yes, the Americans may well ignore the United Nations Security Council, a crucial forum for the exercise of French influence. But that is seen less as a punishment for France than a policy that the Bush administration was determined to pursue anyway.
Where does this leave the relationship? French policy now towards America appears to consist chiefly of agreeing to disagree. Mr Chirac utters soothing words about friendship, while urging the creation of a “multipolar world”, a term that by itself antagonises the Americans. This seems to mean supplying Europe with the means and the will to stand up to America. Since the reality is a unipolar world, in which American power outweighs European, and about which some Europeans are not at all uncomfortable, this implies quite a project. Less controversially for other Europeans, the French president also reaffirms his line that multilateral rules should apply to all, Americans included.
Both elements reflect a deep French unease at the idea of unrivalled American power, commercial, political and military. These misgivings have a long history. As one senior French official puts it, “The Iraq war did not create differences between America and France, but exposed ones that were masked for years and that intensified after the fall of the Soviet Union.” Indeed, and barely masked, at that: think back to de Gaulle in the 1960s, or even to 1944, when he had to fight off plans to install an Allied military government, not a French one, in liberated France.
This unease is widely shared. But beyond it there is disagreement behind the scenes on what now is to be done. Crudely, the hard-line position, based largely around President Chirac, at the Elysée, is that the French should hold firm, let events play themselves out in Iraq, and rely on France's informal alliance with Russia and Germany to give it a global voice. The other view, found in parts of the foreign ministry, is that France was right to oppose the war but overplayed its hand diplomatically; that it cannot depend on Germany and Russia alone, but must work with the Americans; and that it should act accordingly, for instance by offering to relieve American troops in Iraq.
For all his passionate promotion of the French anti-war position earlier this year, Mr de Villepin seems to be injecting some of this more conciliatory thinking into official policy, especially over the need to work with America on future security threats. In general, however, it is the harder line from the Elysée that prevails. Much attention is now being paid to strengthening European military capacity, and forging an inner core within an enlarged European Union, as a balance to American power.
The two views could find common ground on one immediate issue: helping the Americans in Iraq. “The more they get into a mess there, the easier it will be for France to be generous,” argues Dominique Moïsi, of the French Institute for International Relations. In some ways, the French would quite like to be asked for help, enabling them to appear magnanimous in spirit and be useful in practice. But not without a UN mandate. Whether Mr Bush could face asking, let alone agree to a UN banner, is another matter. The real long-term trouble for France may be its complacency about the depth of America's wounded feelings.
The Bush administration is sending out these feelers for help not because we are becoming "mired" in Iraq, but because we're hemorrhaging cash at an alarming rate. It's the expense that's got Dubya worried, as well he should be.
France to allies: "Give us stuff."
The only thing in common with French's Mustard and France is:
They are both yellow!
The country of castrati that Lance Armstrong bitch-slapped for the fifth time running.
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