Rosemay Mangin is also at Charles de Gaulle airport, flying to Chile where she owns a hotel and cybercafe. She, too, thinks France’s behavior was “shameful.” What should President Jacques Chirac do now? “Get down on his knees.”
Plenty of Americans–including President George W. Bush, no doubt–would be quick to agree. Along with his Defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and other crusaders in the administration, he’d be more than willing to scourge the sinner. While Southern rednecks sport T shirts proclaiming Iraq first, then France, talk-radio revels in frog-bashing. Neocon intellectuals opine on France’s impudence–or worse, its irrelevance in a modern world utterly and absolutely dominated by the U.S.A.
What greater offense to a proud nation than to brand it a has-been? France, too, has memories of empire and clearly yearns for power on today’s geopolitical stage. But what precisely do the French want? That’s the rub. To rival American power? To balance it? Or merely to frustrate it? Chirac and his charismatic foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, talk as if they covet all those roles–if not for France, per se, then for a united Europe effectively led by France. The world “is multipolar whether one wants it or not,” Chirac insisted last month at a meeting with the other leaders of France, Belgium and Luxembourg. As for de Villepin, “we have to grasp the scale of the challenges confronting us, which are in no way confined to the Iraq crisis: terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, regional crises,” he told Le Monde last week. “A multipolar world based on cooperation, not rivalry, is more capable than a unipolar one of mobilizing everyone to do everything they can.”
Talk of this sort played very well in the run-up to war, when 80 percent of the French opposed the U.S. invasion. But today, faced with Washington’s triumph (and its sometimes vindictive triumphalism), even Chirac’s core right-wing supporters are getting edgy about their country’s avant-garde anti-Americanism. Some fear their government is just making a play for Arab votes, or for better relations with Arab governments that opposed the war. Others think Chirac got carried away by the global limelight of opposition. And nearly everyone frets about potential retaliation. Last month two parodies of Le Monde appeared. Both led with stories about the United States’ invading France.
Realistically, France’s economy may be the fifth largest in the world–but it’s not a fifth the size of America’s. Its military may be ready and willing to deploy in Africa every so often, but the forces are puny and practically immobile when compared with the juggernaut that swept from Basra to Baghdad in three weeks. In order to even dream of balancing American power, France has to think of itself as Europe, which has a collective GDP rivaling that of the United States. But Europe, despite years of French urging, has no common foreign policy or an army of its own. Nor does it see itself as France.
Confronted by such cold facts, even Paris intellectuals have been rethinking their reflexive anti-Americanism. A shelf-full of books published over the last year captures the sense of ambivalence; some vilify the U.S. “hyperpower,” others eulogize the giant across the sea. Perhaps the most surrealistic volume, by one Thierry Meyssan, claims that the September 11 attack on the Pentagon never happened. It was all a nefarious plot by the U.S. Defense establishment. (Even weirder, the book became a best seller.) Jean-Francois Revel’s “L’Obsession Anti-Americaine,” on the other hand, sees the United States as a model and French criticism as petty. Emmanuel Todd’s “Apres l’Empire” hopefully predicts the decline and fall of Pax Americana. But try as some might, the French are discovering (not for the first time) that they can’t just wish the United States away, much less sneer themselves into parity.
Chirac knows this, but his government struggles to fit policies to the new reality. He was quick to call Bush after the fall of Baghdad to say Paris was willing to be “pragmatic” in recognizing America’s role in Iraq. But what does that mean? “More than symbolic gestures are needed,” says Dominique Moisi of the French Institute for International Relations. “We must recognize that the United States won the war without us. But we must not beg the United States to forgive us. We have to show there are things we can do together.” Not that the shouting’s over. France’s ambassador to Washington, Jean-David Levitte, wrote a letter to Bush last week complaining of a “disinformation campaign"against France in the American press, aided and abetted by anonymous sources from the administration.
Washington, meanwhile, dispatched one of its most senior diplomats, Richard Haass, to Paris on what was presumed to be a fence-mending trip. Indeed, he talked explicitly about “fencing off” areas of disagreement so the two countries could concentrate on mutual concerns like fighting terrorism. But Haass, director of policy planning at the State Department, also preached the gospel of power. There’s nothing wrong with the United States’ having the whole world in its hands, he suggested. U.S power is “benign,” he said. “I think the notion of a multipolar world is both undesirable and unsustainable,” he told reporters, adding, “I simply have doubts… as to France’s ability to provide that balance.”
Haass allowed that the United States and France could find ways to overcome their “dysfunctional marriage.” But there’s no doubt who the submissive partner is supposed to be, and Haass, for one, was perfectly happy to use the word “punish” when referring to the Chirac government’s diplomatic infidelity on Iraq. “France has paid some price already,” he said. “Its reputation in the United States has taken a hit.” Bush, personally, is said to be so angry with Chirac, he’d just as soon not speak to him.
Yet France can’t be wished away, either, and Washington, if it didn’t know that before, is starting to find it out. Despite all the sniping, the French and the Americans have continued to work together very closely in the war on terror, in Afghanistan and on peacekeeping in the Balkans. With the quick victory in Iraq developing into an open-ended ordeal, the United States is looking to share the burden of occupation. While Congress wants to keep French businesses out of the game, French troops would be very useful indeed. With 260,000 men and women on active duty, the French military pales besides America’s, but it’s just as big as Britain’s. “France is one of two European countries with expeditionary military capability,” says Dana Allin of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “And it’s not weighted down with pacifist baggage.” Could Poland do the same job? Would Italy? As French-born Simon Serfaty at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington notes, “It’s not enough to have a coalition of the willing. On occasion, the willing also have to be capable.”
France’s greatest abilities, however, lie in the fields of diplomacy. Right now, delicate negotiations are underway for a new U.N. Security Council resolution to remove sanctions on Baghdad so some U.S.-anointed administration there can start spending the country’s oil money. No resolution will pass unless the French give the nod. Interestingly, France’s proposal that sanctions be suspended rather than ended now looks like it will carry the day. Even higher-level encounters are in the offing at the beginning of June, when the annual G8 summit of leaders from the world’s most industrialized countries will be held in the French spa of Evian. To make preparations, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Treasury Secretary John Snow have already made their way to France to see their counterparts. Secretary of State Colin Powell is due on the banks of the Seine this week.
Like it or not, Bush and Chirac are going to get a lot of face time at Evian, and overt snubs will simply look silly. “The American reaction [to France] is very emotional and, on the part of some people in the administration, a bit infantile,” says Olivier Roy, a French academic. Bush’s spokesmen recently let it be known that Chirac won’t be invited to the ranch in Texas. Is that threat really supposed to be taken seriously? asks Roy. Perhaps it’s time for both men to stop posturing about power and use their strengths to make the world more prosperous and safe than it seems right now.
