France's Game: French opposition to the U.S. is not about Iraq but about who runs the world

Time Magazine ^ | Monday, Mar. 24, 2003 | CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

[yonif]

What is it with France? It is one thing to oppose American policy on Iraq. Germany, China and many others have done so. France, however, has gone beyond mere opposition. France has been bent on organizing a worldwide coalition — a coalition of the unwilling — to stop the U.S., not just lining up other major powers like Russia but even sending its Foreign Minister on a tour of Africa to persuade three members of the U.N. Security Council to vote against the U.S. and ensure an American defeat.

Why? The usual reasons apply — France's enormous Iraqi oil contracts and enormous unpaid Iraqi loans that would vanish with Saddam Hussein. But they don't suffice to explain such an ambitious enterprise. There is another reason, far more powerful. The Iraq crisis, and the roiling uneasiness in the world about U.S. policy, have provided France with an opportunity for the ultimate grand stroke — an attempt to actually break the American monopoly of power in the world. This is geopolitics at the highest level, and the French, who have been banished from the game for a good half-century, cannot resist the lure of playing it again.

France is not trying to contain Iraq. After all, it spent the 1990s at the U.N. relentlessly trying to undo containment of Iraq. France is trying to contain the U.S.

In 1991, the bipolar world of U.S.-Soviet domination collapsed. At the time, it was assumed that the new world would be multipolar, with the U.S., the European Union, Japan, Russia and a rising China sharing power and balancing one another.

That did not happen. What emerged instead was a unipolar world, the U.S. bestriding the globe like a colossus, more dominant in every field of endeavor — economic, military, diplomatic, cultural, even linguistic — than any other nation since Rome.

This the French cannot abide. We Americans marvel at the polls showing how many people consider George W. Bush a greater danger to the world than Saddam Hussein. Yet the President of France himself flirts with this demonology when he tells TIME, "Any community with only one dominant power is always a dangerous one." Translation: American power in and of itself is a global menace.

"This is not about Saddam Hussein, and this is not even about regime change in Iraq or ... missiles or chemical weapons," explains Pierre Lellouche, a conservative Parliament member and former foreign-policy adviser to Jacques Chirac. "It's about whether the United States is allowed to run world affairs."

Chirac does not imagine that he will create a military bloc to confront the U.S., as did the Soviet Union. What he is trying to establish is something only slightly less ambitious: an oppositional bloc, a restraining bloc, a French-led coalition of nations challenging the hegemony of American power and the legitimacy of American dominance.

It was Charles de Gaulle who first charted this course. He tried to break away from the U.S. by, for example, ordering American troops out of France and withdrawing from the military structure of NATO. But during the cold war this was not realistic. The Soviet threat loomed. Today, with the Warsaw Pact dead, France can safely make its reach for grandeur.

De Gaulle said he was motivated always by "a certain idea of France." Nostalgia for that exalted status, hunger for imperial gloire, is what animates French policy today. France does not expect to rival America but to tame it, restrain it, thwart it — and to accept the world's laurels for having led the way.

Not only would this make France leader of the global opposition. It would also restore France to what it sees as its rightful place as leader of Europe. Which is why the great subplot in the Iraq drama is the fate of Tony Blair. Blair represents precisely the alternative vision — Churchillian vs. Gaullist — of accepting and working with American leadership in the world. Chirac's U.N. stand has caused Blair huge political difficulties at home, where much of his own Labour Party opposes him on Iraq. If Blair can be politically destroyed, France will have demonstrated to the world the price of going with America — and defying France. Other players — such as the East Europeans, whom Chirac has already rudely threatened for supporting the U.S.--will have to think twice when deciding whether to go with America or the French-led opposition.

Dean Acheson famously said, "Britain has lost an empire but has not yet found a role." France too lost an empire but has found its role: giant killer. Remaker of the post — cold war world. Leader of the global anti-American camp.

Heady stuff. And Iraq is the least of it.

[newgeezer]

Is there not even one Frenchman left in all of France who remembers 1944? Where is the French equivalent of Gordon Sinclair's The Americans?

[Enduring Freedom]

In every living thing you do, boycott France, for yourself, your family, your country.

BOYCOTT FRANCE FOREVER

[rwgal]

"This is not about Saddam Hussein, and this is not even about regime change in Iraq or ... missiles or chemical weapons," explains Pierre Lellouche, a conservative Parliament member and former foreign-policy adviser to Jacques Chirac. "It's about whether the United States is allowed to run world affairs."

This statement could have been made by Mad Maddie or both of the Klintoons. This is their goal. I wonder when/if the American people will ever understand this.

[new cruelty]

This reminds me of something...

[jigsaw]

President Bush should call for France to be eliminated from the Security Council and replaced by India.

[umgud]

I still believe France's opposition was to avoid being found to be the biggest supplier of banned materials to Iraq. I really look forward to the US exposing their duplicity.

[Seeking the truth]

Screw La France

[js1138]

Man I hate leftists. For the last 150 years the one an only American foreign policy imperitave has been constitutional democracy + religious freedom + freedom of speech + economic freedom = good government. We have given away every worthwhile piece of territory that so much as asked politely. We don't lecture Sweden on the evils of socialism, nor did we lecture England when it was socialist.

The simply stated Bush policy is that countries where people have individual liberty don't start wars.

[Billthedrill]

It isn't only France, it's the whole collection of internationalists who have heretofore found opposing the U.S. a risk-free means of self-aggrandizment. It is ultimately an attempt to avoid the necessary expenses and commitments of Mao's dictum that "all political power comes from the barrel of a gun" by subordinating economic and military power to the power of opinion, rhetoric, and public relations. In short, a con game.

[Tacis]

When you give the French credit for acting on principle, any principle, good or bad, you give them far too much credit. The French are all petty thieves. Jack Chiraq is simply motivated by the bribe he will receive (more likely, the bribe he has been getting that will cease) for blindly supporting Saddam.

[what's up]

France is also trying to enlist some of her African nations against the US. I believe the US will turn its attention to Africa next, after the Middle East is dealt with.

[Plutarch]

Except for the names and a few other changes, the story is the same one....

[magua]

france must be driven out of europe and pushed to north africa.it time fot them to play defense.

[newgeezer]

Already posted here.

[Plutarch]

The common denominator of the countries against us--- China, Russia, Germany, and France is Leftist politics.

Ask yourself, who is the greater threat to Socialism, a Republican U.S. President or Iraq?

The problem is that since socialism = economic failure, these countries (aside from China) find their GNP and military potential ebbing away.

So use bureacracy instead of military power to try to impede a vigorous U.S. policy. That won't get them very far.

[wretchard]

France believes it can position itself as the head of a global opposition to America. It believes that American dominance has reduced global politics to a simple choice between alternatives.

But it really doesn't want the mantle of the former USSR; really doesn't want to fight a Cold War. That would require too much muscular conflict. Rather, it plans to turn the diplomatic forums of the world into a debating platform for anti-Americanism. For it is in talk, rather than action, that France excels.

Abandoning the United Nations will bring America only a temporary respite. France will hound America like a paid chicken-suited protestor. Not a Greenpeace rally, not a World Wildlife Fundraisers, not an Organization of African Unity meeting, without France in attendance.

The American answer should be assymetrical warfare: attack the French weaknesses. The principal weaknesses of France are manifold: a plethora of dictatorially run African countries; a tendency to dominate other European countries; a large and hostile Muslim population; and a weak economy.

The first line of action should be to encourage France's African dependents to break away from Madame Le Republique. The second should be to encourage other European countries to challenge France for leadership positions in the EU. The third would be the flood France with every Arab refugee that emerges.

We should take the offensive. Hound France at every international gathering the way we hounded the USSR. Aren't there human rights violations in France? Why is there no First Amendment in France? Is it true that women are raped in the French Muslim tenements because they have no veils? Is is true that France is supporting dictators in Africa? Isn't it true that Chirac has engaged in corrupt practices? Isn't it true that France is reviving the Dreyfuss wave of anti-semitism?

Psychologically, France is like a rude and supercilious waiter with its hand out for a tip. The best way to deflate a creature like this is put a mousetrap in his pocket, a knuckle sandwich in his gut, and stogie in his puking mouth.

[ApesForEvolution]

ChIraq will pay dearly for this...

[Political Junkie Too]

This column is along the same lines as Mark Steyn's more in-depth column of a few weeks ago, It's not really about Saddam.

-PJ

[KeyWest]

Good comments.