A guest post by Gabriel Gonzalez from Winds of Change, concerning the question “Is France behaving any differently than the USA on the world stage?”
France is no different from the US in that respect.
Bullshit. Let me break the rule that I had set for myself - in my first comment above - about not “arguing an issue that should not seriously be a matter of debate”.
I think Timmerman is right to point out France’s irresponsible dealings with Iraq, which included conditional oil contracts, huge infrastructure deals (construction, roads, utilities, etc.), as well as illegal weapons sales and maybe even bribes under the UN oil-for-food regime. This was a major part of French policy to undermine the sanctions regime, which was merely an aspect of its broader policy of triangulating against U.S. policy and promoting its commercial and strategic interests with corrupt regimes abandoned by the U.S. (Saddam, Iran, Sudan, Cuba…).
I don’t believe, as Timmerman, charges that this was a primary reason for opposing the Iraq war, but this would hardly seem to matter. Rather, I think France took a strategic (triangulating) gamble that it would oppose U.S. policy in the control of WMD, proliferation, and fighting the War on Terror, by aligning itself with third world dictatorships, the Arab world and the transnational third world/alter-globalization movements. The payoff is to come in the form of more defense, commercial and infrastructure contracts with third world countries, in particular oil rich Middle Eastern countries, and enhanced geopolitical prestige gained, it is hoped, at the expense of the U.S.
Before dismissing this view out of hand (and I can see why the average American would have trouble accepting this precisely because the U.S. could not pursue its interests in this manner without major condemnation by the rest of the world and by its own citizenry), consider what France has accomplished in the last twelve months (a non-exhausive list):
France has also announced a new policy of selling advanced arms to China and, just a couple of days ago, conducted joint military exercises off the China coast ahead of Taiwan’s elections. This was strongly protested by Taiwan, with whom France is embroiled in a dispute over French bribery to Taiwanese officials in connection with the sale of naval vessels. (The contract included a French warranty of no bribery and indemnification of Taiwan for the full amount of any bribery discovered, all to the great embarrassment of the French state.) As the U.S. is the guarantor of stability in Asia and protection of the democratic government of Taiwan, the French military exercises conducted with China were directed as much at the U.S. as at Taiwan.
What allows France to engage in such conduct much more freely than the U.S. is (i) a thoroughly corrupt business culture and state bureacracy (that has a paranoid view of itself as being in a fierce Machiavellian competition with a U.S. business establishment presumed to be equally or more ruthless), (ii) the demonization of an imperialist United States as a distraction, and (iii) the passive support of its citizenry.
This last point - the passive support of the citizenry - is very important to understand: unlike the U.S., France has effectively no political or citizen control over its foreign policy, which is a purely executive function. This stems from the relationship of the citizen to the State: whereas state power is perceived as inherently dangerous by Americans in our protestant liberal/libertarian tradition (I realize this description is imperfect and incomplete) of scepticism towards official power, the French centralized state is glorified by its citizenry as the ultimate protector of citizen interests, rather than as a danger to them. As a result, the citizenry has little interest in the details, substance or moral dimension of foreign policy, which are fully delegated and blindly entrusted to this Collective Protector. The French media may for example report on the sales of billions of dollars of Leclerc tanks to Saudi Arabia (mentioned above), but only as a matter of national economic pride in generating profits for French industry and jobs. (Despite France’s obsolete 19th Century political paradigm defining society as a struggle between evil capitalists and exploited workers, the fact is that GIAT Industries, which produces the Leclerc, is state-owned and one of the main purposes of selling military hardware at a loss to Arab states is to prevent lay-offs in the failing defense industries.)
When the French president or prime minister makes an official state visit to a foreign country (China, India, Brazil, Cuba, etc.), the major item of interested reported by the French media is how many billions of dollars in defense and infrastructure contracts are signed in the course of the official visit, the more the better. This is reported by the media with a shockingly crass stomach-turning obsession - crass, that is, unless you are French, in which case you are proud that your government is working for you. You really have to live in France to experience this. This unconsciously obscene state bureacratic commercialism in relation to foreign policy was exemplified by France’s naive attempt to have Woody Allen persuade us to “fall in love again” after the Iraq intervention last year, an example of a major failure in cross-cultural marketing policy.
One must keep in mind that the French do not oppose American foreign policy because of a high-minded objection to intervention, militarism, commercialism, etc. Nor is there any democratic or citizen checks on its foreign ventures. Otherwise, France could not have carried out its policy of installing and removing African dictators over the past 40 years resulting in three dozen interventions on that continent. Otherwise, France could not have been complicit in the backing of the Hutu genocide of the Tutsi in Ruanda. Otherwise, France could not have sold bomb-capable nuclear technology to Iraq in the 1970s and 1980s, it could not have sold 8 billion dollars in military equipment; it could not have been training Iraqi pilots in flying Mirage aircraft at the time of Iraq’s invasion of Kuweit; it could not have conducted bombing raids over Iran on behalf of the Hussein regime; nor could it now be openly advocating sales of advanced military hardware to China or conducting exercises to intimidate Taiwan (Cf. the Rumsfeld trip trumpeted by the left as supposed evidence of U.S. complicity in the Hussein regime.)
Rather the French view themselves as in competition with (a more ruthless) United States. The French naturally assume that everybody else is at least as cynical and morally depraved as they are, the only difference being that, in their view, the U.S. plays the game more viciously than they do, acquiring an unfair advantage.
I was listening to a debate over U.S. policy on French radio between MPs of the center-left (socialist) opposition and center-right coalition in power. After expressing universal agreement among themselves that the imperialist Americans were, after all, only interested in oppressive militaristic domination of a helpless country, seizing its oil reserves (in a bid now thought to have gone “awry”, given the economic absurdity of such a thesis) and, of course, enriching “Halliburton”, they proceeded to debate the “real” issues. This, by the way, is entirely reflective of the French establishment’s degree of contact with reality and ability to constructively engage the challenges of the modern world.
It is important to understand that, whereas the French are intimately familiar with Bush’s “sixteen words” about uranium in Africa, the “imminent” threat, the “Halliburton” contracts, Blair’s “forty-five” minutes, all duly provided as “news” by the U.S./U.K. media for recirculation with appropriate spin in the French media, the French citizenry know no more about the ins and outs of French foreign policy than you or I know, for example, about the agreed schedule for eliminating textile tarriffs in Southeast Asia under the WTO accords. Indeed, French foreign policy is viewed by the citizenry as a purely technical matter for unfettered implementation by the State of the interests of the collectivity - no questions asked.
Anyone who says that the U.S. (or the U.K. or Canada) acts just like France has no idea what they’re talking about, is making entirely unwarranted assumptions, and simply has not studied the question in any depth. (A good starting place would be to look at the history of France’s alliance with Israel, followed by its abandonment of that country for the sake of procuring market share in oil-rich Arab countries, or the real history of arms sales by France, Russia and China to Iraq.) Consider also the recent French reaction (public, official and media) to the scandals involving bribes in the sales of frigates to Taiwan as well as the Executive Life affair in California, settled at a cost of 720 million dollars (from memory?). In the first, there is no public or media curiosity to speak of about which government officials were using bribes to procure these contracts. The sole preoccupation is how much the state (and thus the citizenry) stands to lose in the lawsuit brought by Taiwan (currently the subject of French military intimidation, as mentioned). In the Executive Life matter, it took six months for the opposition even to raise questions about the propriety of the government using the public treasury to negotiate protection from criminal prosecution for Chirac’s personal friend and billionaire François Pinault. If you think that France is like everyone else, then you would have no trouble imagining George Bush using U.S. government resources to negotiate protection for Bill Gates in a European criminal proceeding without a word of objection from the public, the Democrats or the media.
The U.S. and most of its allies respect certain bounds of mutually shared collective interest that France will freely overstep in ways that put it closer to the Soviet Union and Pakistan than the U.S. or Great Britain. (Consider that France has in the past sold nuclear technology to two Middle East regimes: Israel and Iraq.) I am not sure that “evil” is the right word, but France is, among Western powers, a virtual rogue state.
[source]
John Kerry rejects any association with former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, an avowed anti-Semite whose views are totally deplorable. The world needs leaders who seek to bring people together, not drive them apart with hateful and divisive rhetoric.
This election will be decided by the American people, and the American people alone. It is simply not appropriate for any foreign leader to endorse a candidate in America’s presidential election. John Kerry does not seek, and will not accept, any such endorsements.
— Randy Beers, Senator John Kerry’s Foreign Policy Advisor
Wow, Kerry goes on a skiing vacation and his campaign starts clicking.