Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

France is no Eurowimp
National Post ^ | 30 Jan 2003 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 01/31/2003 8:03:41 AM PST by Rummyfan

France is no Eurowimp

Mark Steyn National Post

Thursday, January 30, 2003 ADVERTISEMENT

Let's say you're the head of government of a middle-rank power. You have no feelings one way or the other on the morality of things, that being a simplistic Texan cowboy concept. What then should your line on Iraq be?

The first question to ask yourself is: Is Bush serious about war? If your answer is yes, the next question is: Will he win that war?

Answer: Yes, and very quickly. You know that, even if the drooling quagmire predictors of the press don't. So the next question is: How will the Iraqi people feel about it?

Answer: They'll be dancing in the streets. You know that, even if Susan Sarandon and Ed Asner don't. They don't know because, although the "peace" movement claims to be standing shoulder to shoulder with the Iraqi people, no Iraqi person wants to put his shoulder anywhere near them. They know the scale of Saddam's murder and torture. And once the vaults are unpadlocked so will the rest of the world. So the obvious question is: If, for the cost of chipping in a couple of fighter jets, you can pass yourself off as an heroic co-liberator of a monstrous tyranny and position yourself for a big piece of the economic action from the new regime, why not go for it? It would appear to be, in the ghastly vernacular of the cretinous Yanks, a "no-brainer."

Ah, but for those with a big sophisticated Continental brain it's all more complicated than that. There are many idiotic incoherent leaders in the world, several of them francophone (hint), but Jacques Chirac is not among them. Say what you like about M. le President -- call him irresponsible, call him unreliable, throw in shifty, devious, corrupt, and almost absurdly conceited. But he's not stupid. The issue for the French is very straightforward: What's in it for us?

The answer to that may vary, but frame the question as a negative and the reply is always the same: What's not in it for France is that America should emerge with its present pre-eminence even more enhanced. France is in the business of la gloire de la republique, and right now the main obstacle to that is the post-Soviet unipolar geopolitical settlement. They are not temperamentally suited to being anyone's sidekick: If Tony Blair wants to play Athens to America's Rome, or Tonto to Bush's Lone Ranger, or Sandy the dog to Dubya's Little Orphan Annie, fine. The French aren't interested in any awards for Best Supporting Actor.

This isn't quite the same as being a bunch of spineless appeasers. As far as I can see, American pop culture only ever has room for one joke about the French. For three decades, the Single French Joke was that they were the guys who thought Jerry Lewis was a genius. I don't particularly see the harm in that myself, at least when compared to thinking, say, Jean-Paul Sartre is a genius. But, since September 11th, the new Single French Joke has been that they're "cheese-eating surrender monkeys," a phrase introduced on The Simpsons but greatly popularized by Jonah Goldberg of National Review. Jonah, you'll recall, recently flayed us Canadians for being a bunch of northern pussies, but it's a measure of the contempt in which he holds our D-list Dominion that we didn't even merit a pithy four-word sneer-in-a-can.

The trouble is the cheese-eating surrender paradigm is insufficient. If you want to go monkey fishing, there's certainly no shortage of Eurowimps: Since the unpleasantness of 60 years ago, the Germans have become as aggressively and obnoxiously pacifist as they once were militarist; they loathe their own armed forces, never mind anybody else's. But France is one of only five official nuclear powers in the world, a status it takes seriously. When Greenpeace were interfering with French nuclear tests in the Pacific, they blew up the damn boat. Even I, a right-wing detester of the eco-loonies, would balk at killing the buggers.

A few weeks ago, there was a spot of bother in Ivory Coast. Don't ask me what's going on: President Wossname represents the southern Wotchamacallit tribe and they're unpopular with natives in the northern province of Hoogivsadam. Something like that. But next thing you know, French troops have locked down the entire joint and forced both parties into a deeply unpopular peace deal that suits the Quai d'Orsay but nobody else. All of this while the UN is hunkered down in a month-long debate on whether to approve Article IV Sub-section 7.3 (d) of Hans Blix's hotel bill. Ivory Coast is nominally a sovereign state. The French have no more right to treat it as a colony than the British have to treat Iraq as a colony. But they do. And they don't care what you think about it.

So they're not appeasing Saddam. On the matter of Islamic terrorists killing American office workers and American forces killing Iraqi psychopaths, they are equally insouciant. Let's say Saddam has long-range WMDs. If he nuked Montpelier (Vermont), M. Chirac would insist that Bush needed to get a strong Security Council resolution before responding. If he nuked Montpellier (France), Iraq would be a crater by lunchtime.

It's true that for a couple of centuries the French have not performed impressively on the battlefield per se. But even a surrender monkey can wind up king of the swingers. In the Second World War, half of France was occupied, the rest was run by a collaborationist regime; there were a couple of dozen in the French Resistance listening to the BBC under the bed, and a gazillion on the other side, enthusiastically shipping Jews east. And yet, miracle of miracles, in the post-war order France wound up with one of only five UN Security Council vetoes. Canada did far more heavy lifting and was far more deserving of a seat at the top table. But the point is, despite being deeply compromised and tainted, the French came out a big winner.

Their next ingenious wheeze was to co-opt the new Germany, a country with formidable economic muscle but paralyzed by self-doubt. Overlooked in last week's fuss about Schroeder and Chirac's thumbs-down to Bush was the real meat of their confab: the proposal to create a merged Franco-German citizenship. There's already a "European" citizenship, largely meaningless at the moment but intended (or so it was assumed) to be a legal identity that would eventually supersede national citizenship. Now Schroeder and Chirac have effectively announced that at the heart of the European Union will be a Franco-German superstate of 140 million people around which the Dutch and Austrians and other minor satellites cluster like the princely states around British India.

Even the ostensibly risible constitutional proposal that there should be two Presidents of Europe has a kind of sense: one will be, as a general rule, French or, if necessary, German; the other will be some nonentity from Luxembourg or Denmark. Whatever you think of all this, it's not the behaviour of surrender monkeys. A year ago, David Warren dismissed Canada and other fence-sitters as "spectators in their own fates." That's not the French. The startling suggestion that the French government will fund and run state mosques, in order to obstruct the malign spread of Saudi Wahhabism, may sound kooky to American ears. But to sly French Machiavels, it has the potential of neutering the potential Muslim threat as thoroughly as they permanently neutered the German threat.

Meanwhile, the peacenik predisposition of the other Continentals is a useful cover for French ambition. Last year Paavo Lipponen, the Finnish Prime Minister, declared that "the EU must not develop into a military superpower but must become a great power that will not take up arms at any occasion in order to defend its own interests." This sounds insane. But, to France, it has a compelling logic. You can't beat the Americans on the battlefield, but you can tie them down limb by limb in the UN and other supranational bodies.

In other words, this is the war, this is the real battlefield, not the sands of Mesopotamia. And, on this terrain, Americans always lose. Either they win but get no credit, as in Afghanistan. Or they win a temporary constrained victory to be subverted by subsequent French machinations, as in the last Gulf War. This time round, who knows? But through it all France is admirably upfront in its unilateralism: It reserves the right to treat French Africa as its colonies, Middle Eastern dictators as its clients, the European Union as a Greater France and the UN as a kind of global condom to prevent the spread of Americanization. All this it does shamelessly and relatively effectively. It's time the rest of the West was so clear-sighted.


TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: marksteynlist
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-6061-8081-100 ... 141-158 next last
To: Nonstatist
Oh- I am sure- The French and Russians both have interests in Iraq and have for a long time. It was Russian tanks and SCUDS we were up against in the first Gulf War and the French were the ones building the nuke reactor the Isrealis blew up in 81'. But they were not the ones who stopped us from taking Baghdad and kicking out Sadaam. We never had any intention of doing that.
61 posted on 01/31/2003 10:55:44 AM PST by Burkeman1
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 57 | View Replies]

To: Burkeman1
>>IMO- we would have been better off if Iraq had taken Kuwait and Saudi Arabia back in 91'. I doubt 9/11 would have happened.<<

No, you would just be paying $10/gallon for gas and watching Saddam use that money to grow his army into the second biggest in the world and taking over neigboring countries, including nuclear-posessing Isreal, the resulkt being an eventual stand off we would have a heck of more difficult time winning.

Had Bill Clinton ACCEPTED Bin-Laden when he was offered up, 9/11 would not have happened. You're blaming the wrong president.


62 posted on 01/31/2003 10:56:20 AM PST by freedumb2003
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies]

To: Britton J Wingfield
The best form of government for Iraq after the ouster of Saddam IMHO is a confederation of cantons.
63 posted on 01/31/2003 10:56:20 AM PST by Siobhan (+ Pray +)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 45 | View Replies]

To: yendu bwam
Nobody likes the French in my experience, except the French themselves.

That is my experience as well. Where were you in W. Africa?

64 posted on 01/31/2003 10:58:20 AM PST by Siobhan (+ Pray +)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 55 | View Replies]

To: Rummyfan
You know, it tells you a lot about the French that there only famous fighting force is the French Foreign Legion
65 posted on 01/31/2003 11:01:34 AM PST by tophat9000
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: freedumb2003
We get ten percent of our oil from the Gulf states. The market is the market. Opec tried that price fixing scheme in the 70's and it was disasterous for them in the long run. We could have bought from Sadaam as easily as we do the Saudi's and the nutjobs who make up AQ would be setting off bombs and crashing planes in Baghdad instead of America and Isreal. Bush I was still in cold war geo strategy mold of thinking back in 91' and that should have ended after the cold war. As for Clinton- well- he was just an incompetent criminal.
66 posted on 01/31/2003 11:04:21 AM PST by Burkeman1
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 62 | View Replies]

To: Rummyfan
Very interesting article. Would explain a few things...

Overlooked in last week's fuss about Schroeder and Chirac's thumbs-down to Bush was the real meat of their confab: the proposal to create a merged Franco-German citizenship... Now Schroeder and Chirac have effectively announced that at the heart of the European Union will be a Franco-German superstate of 140 million people around which the Dutch and Austrians and other minor satellites cluster like the princely states around British India.

Whoa! Now that's news. That's the first I heard of it. Any link?

67 posted on 01/31/2003 11:07:27 AM PST by Elenya ( And So It Begins...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Burkeman1
Even if I grant you the increased cost argument (which I do not) you fail to address my larger and more compelling argument about Saddam taking over the region.

He would have and it would have been very bad for us indeed -- look at the trouble he is causing WITH a modicum of containment. Imagine if his power grew unchecked.

68 posted on 01/31/2003 11:08:13 AM PST by freedumb2003
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 66 | View Replies]

To: Rummyfan
France is no Eurowimp

France should be called "Euranus", and it is full of Europu$$ies, not Eurowimps. I might go with Eurowussies as a compromise.

69 posted on 01/31/2003 11:10:27 AM PST by SpinyNorman
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: VaBthang4
I love Steyn but I will not stomach a defense of France under any circumstance or perspective. They've had some fifty years to dig this hole and one article doesnt do much to bring them out of it. 60 posted on 01/31/2003 10:55 AM PST by VaBthang4

It's not a defense of France.

To define a thing, is not to defend a thing. An example:

Steyn is simply defining France as a nation-state which rigorously attends to its own interests. That definition of French foreign policy does not amount to a defense of that policy -- especially since the French see their national interest as being served by a competition between 4 or 5 "Great Powers" with France (or Franco-German Europe) being one of them, and Steyn sees the US national interest as being the sole SuperPower in the world.

Thus, Steyn is not defending the French foreign policy at all -- he is well aware that he (favoring an unchallenged SuperPower status for the US) and the French (who seek the diminution of unilateral US Power in favor of a multilateral Great Power game) are opposed to eachother.

He is simply defining France'sw foreign policy for what it is -- rigorously self-interested (moreso than that of the US).

70 posted on 01/31/2003 11:18:15 AM PST by OrthodoxPresbyterian (We are unworthy servants; We have only done our duty.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 60 | View Replies]

To: Elenya
( And So It Begins...)

From whence does this line originate?

It's sampled at the beginning of an Industrial album which I own, but I do not remember the original source.

Thanks, OP

71 posted on 01/31/2003 11:19:59 AM PST by OrthodoxPresbyterian (We are unworthy servants; We have only done our duty.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 67 | View Replies]

To: from occupied ga
"Maybe the taliban were on to something about the women not showing their faces."

Man, I hear that!


72 posted on 01/31/2003 11:21:34 AM PST by walkingdead (easy, you just don't lead 'em as much....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 44 | View Replies]

To: OrthodoxPresbyterian
>>He is simply defining France'sw foreign policy for what it is -- rigorously self-interested (moreso than that of the US).<<

And backward looking. His definition also notes that France will be sidekick to no one, so the only place to be is on their own and totally irrelevant.




73 posted on 01/31/2003 11:21:41 AM PST by freedumb2003
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 70 | View Replies]

To: babaloo999
"They do have nuclear capabilities. Could be trouble when the muslims take over the country."

Nah, we'll just take out the nukes before that, just like the Brits took out their navy when Hitler was coming...


74 posted on 01/31/2003 11:23:37 AM PST by walkingdead (easy, you just don't lead 'em as much....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 51 | View Replies]

To: Dionysius
the last time the french sank anything, it was the Rainbow Warrior, from Greenpeace
75 posted on 01/31/2003 11:26:02 AM PST by camle (Camle pox?!?!? I hope there's a vaccine!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies]

To: freedumb2003
Well- now we can't let him out of the box with all that has happened.

But for the sake of argument let's say that Bush I didn't do anything when Sadaam went into Kuwait. And let's also speculate that Sadaam kept on rolling and took the Saudi penisula as well. So you have Sadaam Hussein controlling most of the Mideast oil reserves. We haven't done a thing to him. He is not going to sell us oil? He knows that we can still squash him at any time. And who gets all the rage of these Wahhabist Muslem extremeists? Hussein- that's who. I think you would also find Syria suddenly not so much concerned with little Isreal and Lebanon but scared as hell of a Greater Iraq. And further- no more Saudi money going to Islamic extremists. Iran as well would be spending a hell of a lot less time messing about with terrorists groups attacking Isreal and more time dealing with this increased Iraqi threat.

Now lets say that with all this new wealth pouring in Sadaam is able to get the bomb. In fact several bombs. ANd? So what? At this point we are buying oil from him and not his enemy. His regime is most likely plauged with guerilla bands and rebellions of muslem fanatics and he has enemies all about him. We are just a neutral disinterested buyer of oil. His problems are his problems. Is he going to support terrorism against the US? What for? Is he going to attack us? Again- what for and also how?

Who knows? Doesn't matter. At the minimum Sadaam has to be contained now.
76 posted on 01/31/2003 11:28:02 AM PST by Burkeman1
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 68 | View Replies]

To: Rummyfan
As I wash down my snail, frog and garlic sandwich with my 5th glass of Beaujolais (just getting the old foie in shape for Bastille Day), I hope your clear and rational post scores some points with the rabid francophobes on the site.The French and Germans are merely trying to revive the Holy Roman Empire, at which time we were just a rumor at some Viking Yacht Club.

I just hope it is clear to my friends in France that the next time the Germans or anyone else gets militarily upset with them, they are on their own. Of course, being a sort of transplanted Frenchman myself, I shall immediately volunteer for the Escadrille Lafayette (Geriatric Wing).

77 posted on 01/31/2003 11:30:43 AM PST by Kenny Bunk
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: camle
The submarine "Tricolor" used to be an automobole transport. It sunk in a shipping lane and to this date three vessels have struck her and gone to watery graves. Vive la France!
78 posted on 01/31/2003 11:33:28 AM PST by Dionysius
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 75 | View Replies]

To: dogbyte12
The best nationalistic slur out there is not our's for the French, but the Australian's for us:

Seppos.

Don't get it? The etymology is thus:

Yank rhymes with Septic 'Tank' = Seppo.

Get it? BTW, it's never said condescendingly; on the contrary, it usually uttered over a couple of bears down at the beach as in, "you bloody Seppos get all the girls".

79 posted on 01/31/2003 11:34:27 AM PST by Snerfling
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Snerfling
bears = beers

Yipes, I may have started a new series.

80 posted on 01/31/2003 11:38:13 AM PST by Snerfling
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 79 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-6061-8081-100 ... 141-158 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson