France’s foreign policy. Ever awkward, sometimes risky

Date: 01/02/03

Why France continues to annoy the United States

THE president, apparently in a fit of pique, in October abruptly postpones a long-planned summit with Britain. The agriculture minister criss-crosses the European Union to sabotage the European Commission's plan to reform EU farm policy. The foreign minister last week enrages the United States by implicitly threatening a veto at the United Nations over any assault on Iraq. Such is the behaviour of France over the past four months - and doubtless there is more to come.

Next week, for example, a reconvened summit with the British (previously postponed thanks to a row between Tony Blair and President Jacques Chirac over that aborted farm reform) takes place just as France again has enraged the British (and many others besides) by inviting Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe to an impending Franco-African summit in Paris. Mr Mugabe's murderous campaign to squash his black opposition and steal white farms makes him a British bete noire, and the EU has banned him from visiting any part of the Union, but the ban runs out on February 18th, albeit that it is expected to be promptly renewed. The French say they have asked him to their conference, starting on February 19th, in the cause of bringing peace to the Congo. What else, yawn the cynics, is new?

France has been an awkward member of the western alliance ever since the end of the second world war, witness a string of diplomatic clashes with America over the Suez campaign in 1956; over France's colonies in North Africa and elsewhere; over France's insistence on its own nuclear force de frappe; and over its decision to leave NATO's military structure. Witness, too, General de Gaulle's veto on British membership of what is now the EU.

But all that is relatively ancient history. Why is President Jacques Chirac, heir to the Gaullist tradition, now so keen to revive its mannerisms? One reason may be personal. Until the French left lost the general election last June, the centre-right Mr Chirac had spent five years in a loveless “cohabitation” with a Socialist government. Now he is free to release his pent-up energy and fulfil his re-election promises to “make a united Europe our horizon” and to “do everything to resolve international conflicts” - free, of course, to fulfil those promises on his own terms as the EU's senior leader.

A second reason is that Mr Chirac, in common with virtually all French politicians, is uneasy with the concept of an American “hyperpower” (the word was coined by the Socialists' foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine) that has no need or (in French eyes) no willingness to listen to the advice of lesser powers. Mr Chirac is not instinctively eager for a supranational EU; like De Gaulle, however, he sees a united Europe as a necessary counterweight to the American hegemon. (“What is the point of Europe?” asked De Gaulle. “It must serve to prevent domination either by the Americans or by the Russians.”)

In that French sense, Britain is an untrustworthy European, since its first reflex is to side with America. Indeed, that reflex is as true with the professedly pro-European Tony Blair as it was with his Eurosceptic predecessors, despite a Franco-British defence agreement signed by Mr Blair at St Malo in 1998. In their hearts, the French saw that accord, along with plans for an EU rapid-reaction force, as a step towards creating a Europe-only alternative to NATO. Britain, however, worried that such an alternative might weaken NATO and lead to American disengagement from Europe. The consequence now, with little to show for the St Malo accord, is disappointment on both sides of the Channel.

It has often worked - in the past

The third reason is that being awkward has often paid dividends. After all, it enabled De Gaulle's France to “punch above its weight”, for instance by boycotting meetings of European ministers in 1965, so forcing its partners in the then-European Economic Community to recognise a national veto even when Europe's treaties demanded decisions by a majority vote.

The question is how to ensure that being awkward will still pay dividends when the EU ups its membership from 15 countries to 25 and when American military and technological power is greater than ever. In short, how to be relevant - a problem that became humiliatingly obvious to France when the Americans virtually ignored its allies' offers of help against the Afghan Taliban in October 2001, despite the allies' first-ever invocation of the NATO treaty's article 5, namely that an attack on one member, in this case on the United States, is an attack on all.

France has three answers to the challenge. One is to underline Mr Chirac's declared view that “war is always the worst solution”, especially in the Middle East. America's recent neglect of the Arab-Israeli dispute, so the French argue, is bound to lead to more anti-western terror; a war against Iraq will only worsen the problem.

The second answer is France's strong belief that multilateralism is a better guarantee of a stable world than unilateralism. The French acknowledge, of course, that America can win on its own a war against Iraq - but winning the peace will mean a sustained effort for which America on its own may, fear the French, have neither the patience nor the means.

The third method is the one used by every president of modern France: the forging of a common European policy shaped, as much as possible, to satisfy France's interests, in particular by persuading Germany to take its cue from France. Over time, it is this last effort which may prove the most significant. Look carefully through the joint Franco-German contributions to the convention now meeting in Brussels to design the EU's future, and there is a commitment to decide foreign policy issues by majority voting.

Losing independence?

On the face of it, this is an about-turn by France, which has always jealously guarded its independence (and so its veto) in Europe's so-called common policies on foreign affairs and defence. In fact, the EU's Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997 had already whittled away a need for unanimity, with France and others talking about “coalitions of the willing and able”. By allowing “constructive abstention” for those who by nature or constitution would oppose any military intervention, the treaty made sure that powerful players, such as France and Britain, could not be stymied.

Now, by endorsing majority voting, France satisfies Germany's federalist instincts while giving up little of substance: after all, France will surely muster a majority for most of its foreign-policy and military wishes, yet preserve its own right to go ahead unilaterally (shades of Mr Bush's America), as in its dispatch of troops last September to an ex-colony, Cote d'Ivoire.

But in the meantime, there is Iraq. Ever since President Bush began talking of regime change and the disarming of Iraq, France has insisted that the road to Baghdad must be via the UN. Prompted also by Mr Blair, Mr Bush has so far stayed on this multilateral track, as in the UN's Security Council resolution 1441. However ambiguous its wording, France hailed the resolution as its own diplomatic victory.

Is France now, however, about to suffer a diplomatic defeat? Arguably Dominique de Villepin, France's foreign minister and long-time adviser to Mr Chirac, made a mistake when, after a UN meeting on January 20th supposedly on terrorism, he declared: “If war is the only way to resolve this problem, we are going down a dead end. Already we know for a fact that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs are being largely blocked, even frozen. We must do everything possible to strengthen this process.” At which point, he added that France would remain “true to its principles, to the very end.” Since Colin Powell, the United States's secretary of state, viewed by the French as a sane and lonely moderate in the administration, had been at the same meeting, Mr De Villepin's remarks amounted to a diplomatic ambush for no apparent reason. Why embarrass, and so weaken, a potential friend?

Whatever the reason, France is playing a risky game. Threatening to use its UN veto may persuade America to give the arms inspectors more time. But if the veto is used, and American goes ahead regardless, the veto and the Security Council system suddenly become meaningless - and France's claim to be the guardian of multilateralism may look empty. Which is why it is still quite likely that France, in the end, will back an American war, especially if it comes a bit later rather than sooner.

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