Posted on 02/27/2003 5:28:53 AM PST by kattracks
PARIS, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Hailed only last week as a "peace warrior", President Jacques Chirac is now arousing some concern in Paris that his determined drive against war in Iraq could trap France in an uncomfortable anti-American corner.
The rumbling started earlier this week when some deputies in his centre-right ranks, preparing for a placid parliamentary debate on Iraq on Wednesday, began asking what the longer-term effects of France's campaign would be.
The French press took up the call on Thursday, with comments shifting from the satisfaction of recent weeks to questioning whether Chirac is not seriously damaging relations with his U.S. and European allies over a war he cannot prevent.
"What's got into him?" the conservative weekly Le Point asked on its latest cover. The left-leaning daily Liberation wondered: "What is Chirac seeking in Iraq?"
Even the pro-Chirac daily Le Figaro aired grave doubts about the audacious strategy that won Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin the name "peace warriors" on the glossy cover of the weekly Paris-Match last week.
"The Achilles heel of the French position is that France can only emerge from this crisis a winner if the least probable outcome happens, that is, that Saddam Hussein turns himself into a zealous servant of the U.N.'s orders," it wrote.
Concern about France's insistence on United Nations arms inspections for months to come rose after Washington decided last week to call Paris's bluff and demand a vote on a second U.N. Security Council resolution to authorise war in Iraq.
If Washington can rally nine votes behind its proposal, France will have to decide whether to use its veto and risk serious damage to relations with the United States or abstain and face scorn and isolation.
HIGH TIME TO ASSESS POTENTIAL DAMAGE
"It's high time we weighed up the damage of an Atlantic rupture," Le Point wrote, adding it would be "wiser to save the United Nations and NATO from ruin".
The magazine noted Chirac, reinvigorated after his landslide re-election in May, had charged ahead on several fronts, including berating east Europeans for backing U.S. President George Bush and resuming France's active role in African affairs.
"He is sticking to his conviction that he's not a little mosquito biting the American elephant but that a majority of world public opinion and governments is with him," it wrote.
Le Figaro said Chirac wanted to keep his options open to the end, which is why the National Assembly was not asked to vote on the Iraq issue even after the Wednesday session where support for his anti-war stand was strong across the board.
Speaking for Chirac's UMP party, former prime minister Alain Juppe said France was wise not to tip its hand on using its U.N. veto, a step the left-wing opposition clamoured for.
But, Le Figaro noted, Paris will be in a serious bind if Washington rounds up the needed votes in the Security Council and a resolution can only be stopped by a French veto.
"Renouncing its veto and fleeing into abstention would not only weaken positions defended by Jacques Chirac for the past six months, it would also make obsolete one of the essential levers of French foreign policy," it wrote. "But using it would spark a serious crisis with the United States and its allies."
NO INFLUENCE
Guillaume Parmentier, head of the French Center on the United States, said France did not start out as anti-American in the Iraq crisis but had gradually moved that way.
He stressed, however, that Paris has always said it would back force if arms inspectors say they cannot work any more.
The argument that France would lose influence if it did not swing behind the war effort holds no water, he added, because Paris is convinced it will have no influence anyway with the United States after an Iraq war, or win any contracts there.
"The French are quite reconciled to the fact that they will have no influence," he said. "But they might have more influence over the other people in the region if they take a principled stand than if they don't." ((Reporting by Tom Heneghan;
It is fairly clear that Chirac is following the traditional French disdain for what they consider an unduly U.S.-influenced NATO, preferring to place the emphasis on a more closely regional EU structure dominated by themselves. But I don't think Chirac intended to damage the UN, which is turning out to be an unavoidable consequence.
The reason it is unavoidable is that the means Chirac is using to implement this program do not threaten only one component, but collective security as a whole. This behavior by a nominal NATO member, if practiced within the EU by EU members other than France, would be as threatening to that structure as it is here to NATO and the UN. France will probably find herself in the position of attempting to prohibit it for that reason, a course of action which will be as threatening to the EU as a whole as permitting it. This is simply not a well-thought-out policy, even if it is a temporarily popular one.
For all their alleged Machiavellian brilliance, it strikes me that the French have been extremely slow on the uptake. First they celebrate Chirac on magazine covers, and then a week later they realize, "Uh oh, this could be trouble."
It seems to me that at this point it's not "high time," it's several weeks too late. The Bush administration and Americans in general will NEVER see France the same way again. It's too late. When some sneak unexpectedly knocks you down and you're lying bloody in the street, and your friend who was walking with you refuses to help, he's no longer your friend. That's the way most Americans feel about this. No self pity, we'll get up and finish the job ourselves, but no friendship. It's gone, finished.
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