Interesting essay on French Foreign Policy

[MKSheppard]

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/Gues ... 1224.shtml

Has France shot itself in the foot?
Amir Taheri (archive)

December 24, 2003 | Print | Send

Has France shot itself in the foot by trying to prevent the toppling of Saddam Hussein?

The question is keeping French foreign policy circles buzzing as the year draws to the close.

Even a month ago, few would have dared pose the question.

In denial mode, the French elite did not wish to consider the possibility that President Jacques Chirac may have made a mistake by leading the bloc that opposed the liberation of Iraq last March.

Now, however, the search is on for someone to blame for what the daily newspaper Liberation describes as “the disarray of French foreign policy.”

There are several reasons for this.

The French have seen Saddam Hussein’s capture on television and found him not worthy of the efforts that their government deployed to prolong his rule. They have also seen the Iranian mullahs agreeing to curtail their nuclear programme under the threat of US military action. And just this week they saw Muammar al-Kaddhafi, possibly the most egocentric windbag among despots, crawl into a humiliating surrender to the “ Anglo- Saxons”.

The fact that France was not even informed of the Kaddhafi deal is seen in Paris as particularly painful.

The episode provoked some cacophony at the top of the French state.

On Monday, the Defence Minister , Mrs. Michelle Alliot-Marie, claimed that Paris had been informed of the deal with Libya. Moments later, Dominique de Villepin, the Foreign Minister, denied any knowledge. Chirac was forced to intervene through his Elysee spokeswoman who tried to pretend that the French knew what was afoot but not directly from the US and Britain.

Some French commentators believe that the Bush administration is determined to isolate France and “teach her a lesson” as punishment for the French campaign in favour of Saddam.

“ Vengeance is a hamburger that is eaten cold,” writes Georges Dupuy in Liberation. “The fingerprint of the United States could be detected in the setbacks suffered by France’s diplomacy.”

A similar analysis is made by some academics and politicians.

“France over did it,” says Dominique Moisi, a foreign policy researcher close to the Chirac administration. “Our opposition to the war was principled. But the way we expressed it was excessive. The Americans might have accepted such behaviour from Russia, but not from France which was regarded as an ally and friend.”

Moisi describes as “needlessly provocative” the campaign that Villepin conducted last spring to persuade Security Council members to vote against the US-backed draft resolution on Iraq, He says that the Chirac administration did not understand the impact of the 9/11 tragedy on America’s view of the world.

Pierre Lellouche, a member of parliament, claims that the US has “a deliberate strategy to isolate France, echoing what happened during the Iraqi crisis.”

There is no doubt that France has suffered a number of diplomatic setbacks in the past year or so. But not all were linked to the Iraq issue or, as many French believe, the result of score-settling by Washington.

Soon after winning his second term as president last year, Chirac quarrelled with British Prime Minister Tony Blair over a range of European issues. The two were not on speaking term for almost six months.

Chirac then had a row with Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi after a French minister described the Italian leader as a “dangerous populist”.

In the course of the past year Chirac has also quarrelled with Spain’s Prime Minister Jose-Maria Aznar, both about Iraq and on a range of European issues. Last spring Chirac invited the leaders of central and eastern European nations to “shut up” after they published an op-ed in support of US policy on Iraq.

In September France decided to ignore the European Stability Pact, the cornerstone of the euro, to accommodate the biggest budget deficit of any European Union member. And last month, Chirac together with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, provoked a diplomatic fight with Poland and Spain, thus preventing the adoption of the much-advertised European Union Constitution.

France’s policy in the Middle East and Africa is also in a mess.

France’s passionate campaign to keep Saddam in power won no plaudits from the Arabs.

Many Arab leaders regard France as a maverick power that could get them involved in an unnecessary, and ultimately self-defeating, conflict with the United States.

“I cannot imagine what Chirac was thinking,” says a senior Saudi official on condition of anonymity. “How could he expect us to join him in preventing the Americans from solving our biggest problem which was the presence of Saddam Hussein in power in Baghdad?”

Another senior Arab diplomat, from Egypt, echoes the sentiment.

“The French did not understand that the Arabs desired the end of Saddam, although they had to pretend that this was not the case,” he says.

In Africa, the recent Libyan accord with Britain and the US deals a severe blow to French prestige. Libya is the most active member of the African Union and its exclusion of France, also from talks on compensation for victims of Libyan terrorism, sets an example for other African nations.

To be fair, France is trying to repair some of the damage it has done to itself, and its allies, by trying to prolong Saddam’s rule.

This month, Chirac unrolled the red carpet for a delegation from the Iraqi Governing Council which had been described by Villepin as “an American tool” a few weeks earlier.

France has also agreed to write-off part of the Iraqi debt and to side with the US and Britain in convening the Paris Club of creditor nations to give new Iraq a helping hand.

And, yet, it is unlikely that France can restore its credibility without a reform of the way its foreign policy is made.

Villepin may end up as the scapegoat .

Liberation complains about what it sees as Villepin’s decision to “practice the art of eating humble pie” by praising the Anglo-American success in Libya.

“What happened to Villepin’s flamboyance?” the paper demands. “How far have we come from the famous French Arab and African policies!”

But to blame all on Villepin, a rather excitable amateur poet, is unfair. In France, foreign policy is the exclusive domain of the president, with the foreign minister acting as his secretary.

The system was created by General De Gaulle, a larger than life figure, in 1958, and a time that France, involved in the Algerian war and under attack from the Soviet bloc and its French Communist allies in the context of the Cold War, needed a single foreign policy voice.

Since then the world has changed and France with it.

It is not normal that France should be the only major democracy in which the prime minister and his Cabinet and the parliament, not to mention he political parties and the media, have virtually no say in shaping foreign policy.

The cliché about foreign policy being “ the domain of the president” is an insult to democracy.

Had France had the debates over Iraq that other democracies, notably the United States and Britain, organised at all levels, especially in their respective legislatures, it is more than possible that Chirac would not have been able to impose a pro-Saddam strategy that was clearly doomed to failure.

France might have ended up opposing the war, all the same, as did Germany. But it would not have become involved in an active campaign against its allies and in favour of an Arab despot.

France must certainly review its foreign policy. But what it needs even more urgently is a reform of its institutions to end the monarchic aspects of the Fifth Republic.

Amir Taheri is an Iranian author of 10 books on the Middle East and Islam. He's reachable through www.benadorassociates.com .

[TheDarkling]

Interesting indeed, interesting in that it is an interesting take on reality.

France European issues are hardly Frances fault (they didn't provoke Poland and Spain, Poland and Spain provoked/were in disagreement with Germany and it is they who have taken the blame for the failure of the constitution summit), the growth and stability pact breaking has made them look bad but the same is true of Germany and that is far more an issue of Economics than of Diplomacy.

The other issues (Chirac being arrogant with regard to Eastern Europe and earlier with Blair) are legitimate criticisms of French foreign policy with regard to the rest of the EU but the rest of the supposed European issues don't provide any evidence for the case put forward.

On Iran, the US seems to be taking credit there but in reality it seems rather obvious that the EU's policy won out (if the US was getting what they wanted they wouldn't have been whining in the UN when the EU Big Three were patting each other on the back) and France was intimately involved in that plan.

Libya is an embarrassment but France was cut out of that loop back when the UK opened negotiations over Lockerbie and the French threatened to oppose the lifting sanctions until they got what they wanted for their airline bombing, they backed down and lost power in the situation (opposing the lifting of sanctions wouldn't have done them any better though so again they didn't really have much choice).

This leaves Iraq, which wasn't about keeping Saddam in power (although it is nice to say so) as much as stopping the US from doing whatever they liked with virtually no pretext because that sets a dangerous precedent and weakens Frances power (which only exists at the UN).

So much for the evidence (of which little is valid) and onto the conclusion, saying Britain foreign policy isn't Blair’s province alone is ludicrous, Blair's foreign policy with regard to Iraq was so much of a cooperative effort that he had members of his cabinet resign (including his former Foreign secretary) over it and a rebellion in his party at large.

Foreign policy is often down to the man in charge because it requires a single voice; France is hardly an exception in having such a “monarchic” setup in this regard and it doesn’t explain their foreign policy failures (which can easily be linked to arrogance stemming from their over inflated view of their position compared to other nations and the desperate desire to expand this power further).

[Dahak]

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/Gues ... 1224.shtmlIn September France decided to ignore the European Stability Pact, the cornerstone of the euro, to accommodate the biggest budget deficit of any European Union member. And last month, Chirac together with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, provoked a diplomatic fight with Poland and Spain, thus preventing the adoption of the much-advertised European Union Constitution.

We didn't provoke a fight. It was Spain and Poland who steadfastly refused to move one single bit.
We have Aznar, who lives in a fancy world, where Spain is a European Superpower and generally just hates Germany, and Poland, who is just greedy.
That Spain and Poland should have together more votes than Germany, while having together less citizens than Germany, is something I wouldn't be willing to accept.

[MKSheppard]

That Spain and Poland should have together more votes than Germany, while having together less citizens than Germany, is something I wouldn't be willing to accept.

You know, it's so simple, a bicameral legislature. One side is based on population, the other side, every contry has two votes....but that's the
way the eeevil Yankee pig-dogs do it

[Dahak]

That Spain and Poland should have together more votes than Germany, while having together less citizens than Germany, is something I wouldn't be willing to accept.

You know, it's so simple, a bicameral legislature. One side is based on population, the other side, every contry has two votes....but that's the
way the eeevil Yankee pig-dogs do it

But the EU isn't the USA. Booo.

[Tsyroc]

But the EU isn't the USA. Booo.

So are you saying it wouldn't be evil if the EU did it?


It does seem like it might solve some of the problems the EU is currently having. It doesn't mean that it won't cause more down the road but it is more democratic if the representation per person is more equal as Shep suggests.

The other legislature where all members have the same fixed amount of reprsentatives is there more as protection of the minority from the majority.

[MKSheppard]

The other legislature where all members have the same fixed amount of reprsentatives is there more as protection of the minority from the majority.

And the bills have to be passed in BOTH legislatures before it can be
signed into law.. if one legislature wants it, and the other doesn't, boo hoo
too bad

[dummnutzer]

You know, it's so simple, a bicameral legislature.

But the proposed EU reform de facto creates a bicameral system:

You would need 50 percent of the EU member states and 60 % of the population to pass a law, this should prevent any evil Gallo-Germanic Hegemony.

On the other hand, why should Poland give up its overrepresentation without a compensation? In Nice, they got 1 Billion € in additional funds to say YES. Wait for the fall discussions on agrarian subsidies to see a change in Polands stance in exchange for additional EU dole.

[Dahak]

You know, it's so simple, a bicameral legislature.

But the proposed EU reform de facto creates a bicameral system:

You would need 50 percent of the EU member states and 60 % of the population to pass a law, this should prevent any evil Gallo-Germanic Hegemony.

On the other hand, why should Poland give up its overrepresentation without a compensation? In Nice, they got 1 Billion ? in additional funds to say YES. Wait for the fall discussions on agrarian subsidies to see a change in Polands stance in exchange for additional EU dole.

I hope Poland and SPain will eat dust by the ton.
If all else fails, let's go with the "Europe of two speeds". I'm happy with a Franco-Germanic superstate

[dummnutzer]

I hope Poland and SPain will eat dust by the ton.

Spain was the only EU country not to oppose German Re-Unification, in sharp contrast to France and England, which offered East Germany money to delay Unification. Aznar is retiring, btw.

Poland is afraid of Germany. And not without reason, German companies already own e.g. the majority of Polnish media companies. The talk about a Museum of Ethnic Cleansing in Berlin was not helpful; Polnish nationalists ranting about German Vertriebene reclaiming their lost real estate ...

If all else fails, let's go with the "Europe of two speeds". I'm happy with a Franco-Germanic superstate

The close alliance between France and Germany is only a temporary anomaly IMHO, caused by NeoCon ideology in the States. Germany already tries to repair relations with the US/humiliates itself. The question is whether Bush is re-elected in 2004 ...

[grayburst]

I do not think that many of the issues facing the European Union are going to be solved rapidly. It is a dilemnia. The smaller states do not want to give up any of their power as nation states without more reassurances, but they have to recognize that the economies of the United Kingdom, Germany, and France are what currently really drive serious economic growth in the EU. What ever the next attempt at compromise is, if it is as mixed a result of a patchworked pile of paper as the EU constitution the process will never get past the argument stage and the backroom deals.