Posted on 10/13/2007 11:54:18 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
He talks a good talk. It is harder to say what the policies of France's new foreign minister will add up to.
IT IS hard to see Bernard Kouchner as a diplomat. This free-wheeling, plain-talking humanitarian campaigner, who is now France's foreign minister, has little time for diplomatic niceties, stiff formality or professional caution. Yet his frank, sleeves-rolled-up approach is helping to define a new French diplomacy—and not just in style, but in substance too.
Less than six months into the job, Mr Kouchner has been a blast of fresh air. The popular co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières, a charity, who once waded ashore in Somalia carrying a sack of rice (see picture), looks out of place besuited in his grand office at the Quai d'Orsay. In fact, he is seldom there. Part of the new style is to be constantly on the go. Mr Kouchner's visit to Iraq in August was the first by a French foreign minister since 1988. He spent three days there, staying outside the American-secured Green Zone.
The new style is also one of straight talking. Mr Kouchner caused shockwaves last month by invoking, to the consternation of his own diplomats, the prospect of “war” in Iran—even if, as he later stressed, he was only trying to spell out a worst-case scenario. Like his boss, President Nicolas Sarkozy, he seeks to deploy a mix of charm and coercion in order to strike deals. He worked hard to help push through recent United Nations resolutions on peacekeeping forces in Sudan and Chad. “Bernard is not a homework-oriented person,” comments a foreign-policy wonk who watched him as UN administrator in Kosovo. “But put him in a high-stress environment, and he's phenomenal.”
The new approach is also pragmatic. Mr Kouchner's starting-point is not la gloire, but a flexible effort to listen and see what works. Can he persuade reluctant fellow Europeans to accept tougher sanctions on Iran? He is not sure, he says, but he will give it a go. Will his efforts to get adversaries talking—in Kosovo or Lebanon, say—come to anything? He cannot say, but he knows the protagonists, and will try.
In many ways, Mr Kouchner's style matches that of his boss. This Socialist and Gaullist have forged improbably close ties. Both are energetic and impatient, with little time for political correctness. Both have the assertiveness and vanity to get things done. They like each other; they even jog together. “Sarkozy likes the image of France that Kouchner projects abroad,” comments an Elysée adviser. Mr Kouchner is not always in the loop: the mission to rescue Bulgarian nurses in Libya was orchestrated by the Elysée. But he insists that he is free to get on with his job. He told Mr Sarkozy about his trip to Baghdad only a few days before he went.
Are these not just cosmetic changes? Mr Kouchner is categorical: “It is more than a change of style,” he says, in an interview with The Economist. For 40 years, French diplomacy has been marked by pro-Arabism, an anti-American reflex and a Gaullist desire to act as a balance between Moscow and Washington. Jacques Chirac embodied this tradition, taking his cues from the Arab street, and arguing for a European counterweight to America.
Today Mr Kouchner says that France needs rather to build new ties with emerging powers: in Asia, Latin America and beyond francophone Africa. And, as Mr Sarkozy made clear from the outset of his presidency, this involves working with the Americans, not against them. “The president and I both believe that our diplomacy is no longer founded on anti-Americanism,” says Mr Kouchner. “But that does not mean we are aligned with America.” He ticks off several possible areas of disagreement, such as climate change. But the French have dropped the habit of opposition for its own sake.
The other shift is to a values-based diplomacy. First marked by his experience as a volunteer doctor in the Biafran war, Mr Kouchner went on to develop the theory of a humanitarian “right to intervene” in other states' affairs. French foreign policy, he argues now, is not only about defending France's interests and guaranteeing its security, but also about “the image we have of ourselves”, and the promotion of human rights. This is not a foreign minister who is happy at banquets. Like other idealistic foreign ministers before him (eg, Robin Cook in Britain), he sees himself as a healer to the world: no conflicts, no oppressed people, leave him indifferent.
What can the French bring to the table? One answer is their ties to people whom America shuns. When Mr Kouchner invited Lebanese leaders to talks in France, for instance, he included Hizbullah—unthinkable to the Americans. Less happily, France has invited Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, to Paris, in support of his efforts to mediate over the liberation of hostages (who include three Americans and a Franco-Colombian, Ingrid Betancourt) held in Colombia—although an intervention by Mr Sarkozy to try to secure Ms Betancourt's release was no more successful than previous efforts.
Another answer is the credibility that France enjoys in the Arab world, thanks to its opposition to the invasion of Iraq—although Mr Kouchner himself was in favour of Saddam's overthrow. He now suggests that he could act as a mediator in Iraq. France also sounds tougher on Russia and China, as well as on Iran. Mr Kouchner insists that he used the word “war” in relation to Iran not to prepare for war but to avoid it, and to that end he stresses the need to work on a political solution as well as sanctions. Even so, his comments may have served France by hardening its image. Mr Sarkozy himself had previously referred to the military option when he said that all efforts had to be made to avoid “a catastrophic alternative: the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran.”
Mr Kouchner's brand of French diplomacy may have its limits, however, as he is now discovering. One is the inevitable clash between commercial interests and humanitarian ideals. Mr Kouchner says that he has asked Total and Gaz de France to hold back from any new investment in Iran. But he knows that, without the support of Italy and Germany, let alone Russia, the only loser from a push for disinvestment would be France.
Another is the unpredictability of his straight-talking approach. Mr Kouchner had to apologise after unwisely revealing in an interview his opinion that the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, should go. He now says that, although it is still too early to visit Tehran, he is ready to go “within months, if not weeks”. But if he did, he might undermine European Union solidarity, since the EU has agreed to use its foreign-policy supremo, Javier Solana, as sole negotiator with the Iranians.
Yet another limit may be possible conflict with the Elysée. So far, Mr Kouchner and Mr Sarkozy have kept remarkably in step. Mr Kouchner has put aside differences, notably over Turkey's membership of the EU—though as a personal advocate of Turkish entry, he hints that, though he applies official French policy, he has not given up “advancing a few arguments” to his boss. Yet their co-operation has not been tested. For all the tough talk on Russia, Mr Sarkozy announced in Moscow this week that French companies were eager to invest more. It remains to be seen whether the president will always prefer Mr Kouchner's idealism to France's traditional regard for its national interest.
AN EXCELLENT ARTICLE ON FRANCE’S FOREIGN MINISTER, BERNARD KOUCHNER, APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT NICHOLAS SARKOZY.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1845225.ece
Kouchner has also been a long-term outspoken proponent of euthanasia, admitting to having practised it by giving large morphine injections or turning off life-support machines, although significantly never in France.
“When people were suffering too much and I knew they were going to die I helped them. I did that in Lebanon, I did that in Vietnam. I gave injections to people, never pills, injections with lots of morphine,” he told the Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland when he was health minister in 2001.
Even more controversially, he called the nurse Christine Malèvre, who was arrested and charged with killing up to 30 terminally ill patients at a hospital in a Paris suburb in 1998, “an angel of mercy”. She was later sentenced to 10 years in jail for murder. When his colleague in government, the then interior minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement, fell into a coma after a routine operation later in 1998, his first words on regaining consciousness were: “Keep that man Kouchner away from my bedside.”
I like that one. Right up GW's alley.
When it comes to terrorists the French must also believe that GW meant it when he said "You're either with us or with the terrorists." “The president and I both believe that our diplomacy is no longer founded on anti-Americanism,” says Mr Kouchner.
yitbos
Kouchner gives me the creeps. He is one of those socialists that talk about ‘human rights’ and then you find out he means the right to kill the sick and unborn because in socialism they are a burden. I can’t stand culture of death socialists.
Considering France's foreign policy under Jaqi Chiraqi, I shall give Kouchner the benefit of the doubt.
From your URL above, "Kouchner has insisted that “agreeing to work with people whose opinions on many things I do not share” does not mean that he is abandoning his 'socialist convictions', claiming that foreign policy 'belongs to neither the right nor the left'."
yitbos
Typically, those who think they are doing someone a service by putting them out of their misery are referred to as "someone who thinks they are an angel of mercy". It is a figure of speech and does not connote innocence.
I see The Times attributes the three words "angel of mercy" to Kouchner with absolutely no context.
yitbos
What context do you need? Sheesh. You want more? Sorry to ruin your Kouchner love fest...
How about that he killed his patients with his own hands? Is that contextual enough for you? He is a murderer. How is that for context?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1455521.stm
The French Health Minister, Bernard Kouchner, has admitted he practised euthanasia when he worked as a doctor.
"When people were suffering too much pain and I knew in advance they would die, I would help them," he said.
http://www.1000questions.net/en/euthanasie/
The French Minister of Health, Bernard Kouchner, himself a medical doctor, has declared that euthanasia « shows a great deal of humanity ».
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/04/01/netherlands.euthanasia/
French Health Minister Bernard Kouchner, a trained doctor, said last year he would use the Dutch decision to press for the legalisation of euthanasia in France, and has confessed to performing mercy killings himself in Vietnam and Lebanon.
"But euthanasia is a sensitive issue in France, and Mr Kouchner says he has no intention of introducing legislation to allow it.
He said if there is to be discussion on any changes to the practice it will focus on protecting the patient.
"Euthanasia contradicts medical ethics," he said. "Doctors exist to protect life, not to end it. But if someone says he wants to die, society has to take that into account."
Mr Kouchner has a reputation as an outspoken critic of human rights abuses throughout the world "
yitbos
“When people were suffering too much and I knew they were going to die I helped them. I did that in Lebanon, I did that in Vietnam. I gave injections to people, never pills, injections with lots of morphine,” he told the Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland when he was health minister in 2001.
Kouchner is an admitted MURDERER.
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