All absurd tangents between Hurricane Katrina and Iraq aside, here is a very long excerpt from an interesting article regarding relations between the French and US. The full article can be found at: http://www.mafhoum.com/press6/176P3.pdf
IRWIN M. WALL Visiting Scholar Center for European Studies, New York University …So even Washington’s skittishness about the European integration it had once so enthusiastically supported was evident before the Bush administration took power. Nevertheless, Bush rapidly worsened relations with his unilateral policies. The administration’s hostility to the use of U.S. forces for peacekeeping, and the implicit threat to withdraw the few remaining forces in Bosnia, did not inspire European confidence. 11 September won Washington a respite; the world rallied behind the United States, NATO invoked Article 5 committing all its members to their mutual defense, and offers of support were proffered for the administration’s war to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan when the latter refused to surrender Osama Bin Laden. The Afghan war was of a new type, however, in which Special Forces supported by air power and precision bombing dominated; the administration clearly signaled its NATO partners that it preferred to conduct this struggle itself. Victory was rapid but much of the good will engendered by 11 September was lost. Whatever remained was squandered by a series of events: the Bush declaration that there existed an “axis of evil”in the world consisting of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, the administration’s stated goal of dealing once and for all with the Iraq question, and the publication of the administration’s National Security Strategy declaring that the United States was prepared to engage in preventive war when necessary. This was met with a widespread chorus of disapproval, and in Paris it seemed to have caused genuine alarm. The Quai d’Orsay, France’s Foreign Ministry, does not seem initially to have become alarmed over the U.S. call for regime change in Iraq; after all, that had been Clinton’s stated policy since 1998. There seemed no reason to suppose that the Bush administration would be more focused on it than its predecessor. There was great fear in France that weapons of mass destruction in Iraq might fall into the hands of terrorist groups willing to use them. Saddam Hussein was in flagrant violation of UN resolutions, and the return of inspectors to Iraq seemed a legitimate goal for Washington to demand. Chirac encouraged Bush to take the problem to the UN, offering the appealing prospect of international legitimation of whatever action might be taken with regard to Iraq. In retrospect one may wonder why the administration, if it was determined to act militarily against Iraq, ran the risk that the UN would refuse to sanction invasion. Washington had carried out regime change unilaterally many times in the past: Guatemala in 1952, Iran in 1953, the Dominican Republic in 1965, Chile in 1973, to mention only a few instances. Moreover, the French had carried out numerous military interventions in their former African colonies for the purpose of regime stabilization or regime change; the latest was already under way in the Ivory Coast. But Iraq threatened to dwarf these operations and require a major military operation with potentially destabilizing effects in the Middle East; during the lengthy preparations for war opposition was bound to grow. If the UN authorized the use of force against Saddam Hussein the opposition would abate. France had a history of successful economic penetration of Iraq dating from the period before the Gulf War. The French policy was to coax Saddam Hussein into compliance with UN resolutions so that sanctions could be lifted and trade resumed. Throughout the 1990s, France and the United States clashed repeatedly over UN Se-The Quai d’Orsay was not initially alarmed over the American call for regime change in Iraq, afterall that had been Clinton’s stated policy since 1998.* *If the United States could be constrained from attacking Iraq by a successful UN inspections regime, Paris hoped that the goal of reintegrating Iraq might still be achieved. But if inspections failed and the United States invaded Iraq with UN authorization, France would play its role as a great power and participate in what were expected to be lucrative postwar reconstruction projects. A serious clash of French and U.S. policies—U.S. arrogation of the right to unilateral action versus French attempts to constrain it through international institutions—underlay the attempt to forge a compromise, which took the form of UN Resolution 1441 in November 2002. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin both participated in the drafting and signed off on the result, each apparently expecting that his own interpretation of the resolution would be implemented. Paris hoped for Iraqi compliance and the lifting of sanctions; the United States hoped for clear evidence of an Iraqi “material breach,” leading to Security Council authorization of military invasion and the fall of the regime. In that sense, the resolution was not so much “bathed in ambiguity” as it was a contest of wills.22 The French faced the realistic possibility that the inspections would fail: it seemed likely that Saddam would stop the inspectors once they got too close to his weapons, in which case Paris was ready to join Washington in military action. The carrier *Charles de Gaulle *was deployed to the Middle East by President Chirac for that eventuality. On the other hand, the French hoped that, in the event of successful inspections accepted by Saddam, sufficient pressure could be brought to bear on Washington so that war could be averted. Chirac, Quai d‘Orsay confidential sources insist, genuinely feared war and would accept it only as a last resort. He feared its destabilizing effect on the Middle East and its potential to spur the recruitment of terrorists rather than deterring them. He felt repugnance at the Bush administration’s doctrine justifying preemptive war, and he was afraid that a united western campaign against Iraq would be considered by the Muslim world a new crusade against Islam. Curiously, two men, Saddam Hussein and Chief UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix, had the ability to give satisfaction to either the France or the the United States. But neither would do so. Saddam Hussein declined to cooperate by accounting for whatever weapons either existed or had been destroyed. However, Secretary Powell could produce no satisfactory proof during his dramatic Security Council expose of 5February 2003 that hidden weapons of mass destruction in Iraq existed. Saddam Hussein did not obstruct the inspections, and when the inspectors found missiles to be in violation of permissible pre-determined range the Iraqis proceeded to destroy them. Blix termed the Iraqi response passive cooperation with the inspections regime; the Iraqis neither obstructed nor assisted the inspectors. For the French, this was sufficient; the inspections were working, and the UN had been able to force compliance with its resolutions on a “rogue state,” a critically important precedent for the future. Under these circumstances, there seemed to Paris no clear justification for war. Background interviews at the Quai d’Orsay confirm the account of the last days of the crisis that appeared in the Financial Times of London, 26-29 May 2002. Dominique de Villepin called the Security Council meeting of 20 January to discuss terrorism, but it should have been clear to everyone that Iraq would come up for discussion and the situation was clearly reaching crisis point. At a Directors’ Meeting of the Quai d’Orsay on 8 January 2003, several diplomats told de Villepin their belief that the United States could not be dissuaded from military action. De Villepin refused to accept this; he would do everything possible, he said, to prevent war so long as the inspections were working. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw claimed that there was still a 60-40 chance for diplomacy to settle the crisis without war. De Villepin did, however, dispatch a special envoy, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, to Washington to assess the U.S. position. U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice took him to lunch on 13 January and told him bluntly that the decision had been made in December that the war must proceed. De Villepin was reportedly shocked at this news. Prior to the Security Council Meeting on 20 January, he dined with Colin Powell and pleaded for more time for the inspections to work; war could not be fought because Iraq was cooperating passively instead of “actively.”25 But Powell was impassive; the French underestimated the administration’s determination. In anger de Villepin told a journalist after the Security Council meeting that “nothing justified a resort to force.” According to this point on, relations were poisoned. Paris had set a trap for Washington: the administration had been dragged to the UN Security Council in the expectation that authorization for war against Saddam Hussein would be forthcoming.26 Now, the French were giving notice that they would refuse any legitimization of war. And France had a veto on the Council, which it openly threatened to use. Powell was further angered by the show of French and German unity in opposition to the war in Paris on 22 January. Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, celebrating the French-German Elysée treaty of 1963, affirmed an identity of views that prompted U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to dismiss them as “old Europe.” The French faced several choices, all of them bad. They could join the United States in the war, but this would be embarrassing, given the confrontation that had just occurred, and it smacked of “suivisme,” playing follow-the-leader, which was taboo for any self-respecting French government. Realistically, the United States was likely to monopolize the reconstruction effort anyway once they controlled Iraqi oil. France could abstain in the UN, or encourage the United States not to bring the matter up at all, but the French had earlier insisted on the need for another vote before Iraq could be found non-compliant with UN Resolution 1441. This option was blocked by Tony Blair, who needed a second resolution for reasons of public opinion at home. The Quai wanted to temporize, but President Chirac decided to confront the United States. One can only speculate about his motives. He is said by sources in the Quai d’Orsay to have felt that it was a genuine matter of principle; war must be a last resort, and preemptive war was unacceptable. To go along for the sake of “saving” the UN from division was to turn it into a rubber stamp for U.S. policy and to render it worthless. By denying Washington the legitimacy it sought, Chirac hoped to make the United States hesitate before once more attempting a preemptive war. There were also less lofty considerations at work. By championing the movement against the war, Chirac put himself at the head of a vast majority of opinion in Europe. There were between 5 and 6 million Muslims in France who were bitterly opposed to the war, and Chirac wanted to improve relations with Algeria and avoid incurring the enmity of the Muslim world. Then there was the German question. Washington had set Germany adrift and rebuffed its efforts to restore relations, following Chancellor Schröder’s declaration during his election campaign that he would never support a war against Iraq. Germany pressured France not to approve of the war, and provided Chirac with what appeared to be a golden opportunity to win it definitively from its dependence on Washington into an enduring relationship and alliance with France, a goal of French policy since the 1950s. Moreover, the Russians preferred to align themselves with Paris and Berlin on this issue, as did the Chinese. Washington made concerted efforts to get support from the Europeans where itcould, and isolate the French and Germans. It won a declaration of support from eight European nations, including some of the largest—Great Britain, Spain, Italy, and Poland—and a declaration of ten smaller nations, most of them candidates to join the EU. The declarations were drafted by the United States; the first by the Wall Street Journal, the second by an itinerant U.S. ambassador to Eastern Europe, Bruce Jackson. They were preceded by Secretary Rumsfeld’s scornful contrast between the “new Europe” of the Eastern bloc and the “old Europe” of France and Germany, neither of whom had been informed about the declarations before their publication. Furthermore, the EU’s official in charge of security, Xavier Solano, had not been been approached or informed. The EU had just hammered out a compromise resolution on Iraq calling for the inspections regime to continue. The instances of the supposed common European foreign and defense policies had been deliberately by-passed by Washington and the administration was aware that the project for a European constitution was under discussion and bound to be jeopardized by the divisions over Iraq. To add to the French fury, the declaration mentioned the “convincing” presentation of Secretary Powell to the UN Security Council, but it was signed and made ready for issuance before that presentation had been made. Chirac now blundered by declaring that the Eastern European candidate members of the EU had “missed an opportunity to keep quiet.” This genre of scolding exacerbated the existing divisions, and if the French had won their struggle for the hearts of the Germans, they had lost the Spanish, Italian, and Eastern European governments if not their peoples. The U.S. victory in the Iraq war was more rapid than expected. When the war concluded, Paris sought to restore relations, ignoring talk of “punishment” or “consequences” that continued to come out of Washington. Officially, the Quai d’Orsay does not accept that there has been a revolution in U.S. diplomacy, that Washington has abandoned the UN, NATO, or the European Union, and the U.S. embassy in Paris denies any such radical agenda as well. The Quai insists that the two countries are still working together on 95 percent of the questions on the agenda between them. These questions include the war against terrorism, efforts to block nuclear proliferation, and the reconstruction of Iraq. France disapproved of the invasion, but no one can seriously want the United States to fail in the occupation. Privately, some Quai officials are a little less sanguine. The U.S. administration does not speak with one voice with regard to relations with France. Bush, Powell, and Rice may be cordial, but all warned of lasting consequences of the French “betrayal,” and Rumsfeld “punished” the French by pointedly leaving them out of military maneuvers and reducing U.S. participation in the Paris air show. These were minor irritants, but they did not go unnoticed. The U.S. embassy tried to claim that relations were back to normal, and Ambassador Howard Leach wrote an article to that effect that appeared in Le Figaro. But privately, embassy officials admitted that the Defense Department has some “loose canons” in it, including Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. The Defense Department is thought to have leaked various postwar rumors suggesting that France helped spirit Saddam Hussein and other top officials out of the country, and that France stocked Iraq with weapons of mass destruction in the immediate past. Ambassador Levitte was instructed to protest formally in Washington against what hetermed “a campaign of disinformation in the U.S. press.” An ambiguous détente has followed since in relations between the two countries. The French assumed a cooperative attitude in the UN once the war was over, voting for a resolution authorizing the U.S. military occupation. But they continued to argue that the UN must have a central role in Iraq and actually assume sovereignty there and oversee its transfer to Iraqi authorities without delay. During the war’s early aftermath, Washington appeared determined to go it alone in Iraq, angrily rejecting French suggestions and retaining sovereignty there for itself; however, despite a brilliant victory on the ground, U.S. forces were unable to restore security in Iraq, and terrorist incidents costly in U.S. lives mounted in scale and intensity, ultimately targeting not only the United States but Jordan, Spain, and even the UN itself. U.S. forces, moreover, were stretched thin; with 140,000 troops in Iraq and possible crises (or interventions) looming in Iran, Syria, or North Korea, while President Bush was constrained to request 87 billion dollars in supplemental appropriations for the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq in the face of unprecedented budget deficits caused by the administration’s tax cuts. The administration appealed for international help, but other nations would commit neither funds nor troops in the absence of explicit UN authorization. Washington turned again to the UN in early September, hoping for a resolution that would keep U.S. control of the transitional process in Iraq while providing justification for other nations to contribute funds and troops. The projected resolution was submitted just as Chirac and Schröder were holding one of their periodic Franco-German friendship meetings in Dresden. The meeting was unusually harmonious, one diplomat sarcastically complaining that, since agreement was total, there remained nothing to discuss. Agreement between the two was immediately reached on the insufficiency of the U.S. resolution as well, as Schröder joined Chirac in calling for an immediate transfer of sovereignty to Iraq under UN control. The Financial Times reported a “resurrection” of the Franco-German alliance against the United States of the previous winter, a story which was reprinted in Le Monde. During September, indeed, the climate between the two nations deteriorated once again, and Chirac and Bush delivered directly contradictory speeches to the UN. Chirac defended the earlier French opposition to the U.S. war, arguing that no use of military force should be tolerated unless explicitly authorized by the UN Security Council. This proved popular with the UN delegates and this time the isolation of Washington appeared total. If the war was unpopular, the U.S. occupation of Iraq was even more so, and the apparent support for the French position in the world body prompted President Bush to accuse the French of enticing other nations into a systematic opposition to everything the United States was trying to do in Iraq. Moreover, Bush’s charge coincided with a resurrection of U.S. French-bashing. It was at this point that Friedman wrote his column accusing France of deliberately undermining U.S. policy in the hope it would fail. This is not to say that some French commentators have not replied in kind; Alain Gresh, in Le Monde Diplomatique, delivered a particularly harsh critique of U.S. policy, noting that if the United States was interested in restoring services to Baghdad, they had only to call on Siemens, which installed the electricity grid, and Alcatel, which did the telephones. But Washington wanted to “punish” old Europe, and in the meantime punished itself (while rewarding Halliburton). But Chirac had made it clear from the outset that although he would seek to amend the U.S. Security Council resolution, he had no intention of blocking it; there would be no repeat of the French “veto” of the previous March. Underlying this is the French realization that ultimately the United Nations cannot be effective without the United States, and while the United States are unlikely to participate in an organization that seeks to limit the exercise of U.S. power.33 For a time the Bush administration appeared once again to want to abandon its renewed appeal to the UN. But it remained clear that to do so was to forgo foreign troops and funds. But the resolution that was passed, although seeming to meet U.S. demands for the most part while calling for an enlarged UN role, did not seem to promise the scale of assistance from the international community for which Washington was hoping; nor was it clear that it would help achieve stability in Iraq, even if the unanimity of the Council seemed a clear statement that such stability was in everyone’s interest. For in the last analysis, the U.S. war in Iraq, as so many predicted, destabilized Iraq and the region, and was part of a deliberate U.S. project to do so. And despite the difficulties Washington has encountered in its occupation of Iraq, it is not yet clear that the destabilizing with the eventual achievement of “democratization” of the region has been abandoned as a goal of U.S. policy. DIFFERENCES CUT FROM THE SAME CLOTH The substantive issues between France and the United States have been present since the immediate postwar period. France has consistently pushed its agenda of independence of the United States on a reluctant Europe. To the administration’s annoyance it continues to advocate “multi-polarity” in international relations, a pointed way of saying that multiple foci of power will one day characterize the world as opposed to the contemporary U.S. hegemony, and that this will be beneficial and desirable. This has brought a pointed rejoinder from the British, who argue instead for a single center of power emanating not from Washington but from the European-U.S. partnership. When divisions over Iraq threatened to paralyze the existing European defense policy, the French tried to create a smaller force based on the cooperation of the dissenters on Iraq policy, France, Germany, and Belgium. This brought an immediate condemnation from the U.S. embassy and from Tony Blair. These reactions are in themselves somewhat mystifying. There is no single European defense policy; rather, there are three of them, as one observer has recently noted, reflecting the continent’s three largest military powers, England, Germany, and France. The British project is to make Europe the junior partner of the United States. The German project seeks to make of Europe a Switzerland. The French are alone in their project to make Europe a superpower and the French are unlikely to succeed at this given the materials in Europe of the 25 different that they will have to work with. And supposing they did succeed; suppose Charles Kupchan is right, that a united Europe will emerge and take its place as a superpower alongside the United States in an increasingly multi-polar world. It is hard to see in any such development a threat to U.S. interests as far as Europe is concerned. That such a world might resemble the Europe of 1914 does not mean that it need repeat Europe’s folly of World War I. Even a united Europe is unlikely to spend on its military anything remotely resembling what the United Sates spends, and if it did it is hard to conceive of its using its power except in alliance with the United States. French and U.S. policies diverge, but their divergence is hardly substantive. Even if the French succeed in their European strategy there is no guarantee that the policy of a united Europe of the 25 would even reflect any of the major thrusts of French policy. The French-U.S. argument strategically is about very little; the differences, as a recent book argues, are indeed reconcilable. Pragmatically, however, the countries will continue to disagree. If history is any guide, neither is likely to always, or even often, approve of wars initiated by the other. Economic spats will continue about bananas and chickens and mutual European and U.S. agricultural policies, and cultural arguments persist concerning language, film, and television as well as about values and the policies reflecting them, including the death penalty. But these are now more European-U.S. arguments than Franco-U.S. ones, despite what Washington may think at times. There are bound to be such arguments about policies toward each other and toward the rest of the world as well, and these are likely to be more pronounced when they involve military action. It is sad to have to say that the United States must still learn to expect and tolerate disagreement with its allies; and sadder still to have to reflect that the United States, which has a virtual monopoly on power, has no exclusive claim to wisdom. France believes its the equal of the United States in devising policies and strategies toward the less-developed world. If Washington were a bit more willing to entertain that possibility, a good deal of grief between the countries might be avoided.