France and Iraq: L’Europe, c’est moi / Jacques Chirac’s Samson option

Date: 22/02/03

France and Iraq: L'Europe, c'est moi

The president is raging, but his rhetoric is calculated - and popular

JACQUES CHIRAC, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize? Maybe not, but this week the French president found himself (along with the pope and U2's Bono) officially on the list of candidates, one reward for his opposition to an American-led war on Iraq. A second reward is closer to home: the latest French opinion polls give him sky-high ratings. In one poll, 65% call his attitude “daring”; 77% say “courageous”; and 83% “justified”. Mr Chirac is on a roll.

But he has also poisoned France's relations with many of its allies. British and, still more, American media have raised their tradition of “frog-bashing” to new heights; American politicians talk of boycotting French products and the Paris air-show; and the prime ministers of Britain, Spain and Italy find it hard to hide their exasperation (made worse, in Britain's case, by the participation in this week's Franco-African summit in Paris of Zimbabwe's dictatorial Robert Mugabe).

Such rifts in the transatlantic alliance and within Europe carry obvious risks. Yet at an emergency summit of the European Union on February 17th, Mr Chirac seemed determined to make them worse. Referring to their recent declarations of support for American policy on Iraq, he hinted that France might veto the applications by former communist countries to join the EU. They “have not been very well behaved,” he said, “and have been rather reckless of the danger of aligning themselves too rapidly with the American position.” As to Romania and Bulgaria, whose membership is still to be negotiated, “if they wanted to diminish their chances of joining the EU, they could not have chosen a better way.”

Hmmm. Has Mr Chirac caught an attack of folie de grandeur? His tirade against the ex-communist applicants echoes his sharp words at an EU summit last October, when he told off Tony Blair as “badly brought up” for daring to criticise France's addiction to agricultural subsidies. Now it is the Latvians, Estonians, Slovenians and others who are being “childish” in pledging support for America.

Yet the French president's outbursts are not irrational. The “Chirac doctrine” that has emerged since his re-election last year is the Gaullist one of old: Europe must act as a counterweight to America, and France, aided by Germany, must be its directing force. If the candidate countries, all of them present or potential members of NATO, now side with America over Iraq, their presence in the enlarged EU will lessen French influence and turn the union into a NATO look-alike, Atlanticist by conviction and Anglophone by language.

Yet Mr Chirac's ambitions may fall foul of his tactics. To hold EU enlargement hostage will not worry his voters (few French people have any real enthusiasm for a greater EU), but it will upset many EU governments, not least Germany's.

Nor is his view that the arms inspectors should be given longer in Iraq a simple no to America. It raises the question of how much longer. Talking to Time this month, Mr Chirac picked his words. Though it is “probable”, he said, that Iraq indeed has biological and chemical weapons, it does not “in the present situation pose a clear and present danger to the region.” In contrast, a war would breed more terrorism and “create a large number of little bin Ladens.” Hence France's potential veto of a new, war-justifying resolution at the UN. Yet France is not pledged to avoid war come what may: Dominique de Villepin, its foreign minister, was careful to argue in the Security Council that war, while “always the outcome of failure”, could not be ruled out if the arms inspections failed.

But just how would Mr Chirac switch from peace to war? If war indeed comes, and France stays out, it risks being damned by many others as the country that split the Atlantic alliance and the EU alike. Yet the more popular Mr Chirac's tactics so far, the harder it would be to join in.

France's high-risk diplomacy is in danger of hurting France itself

France and Iraq: Jacques Chirac's Samson option

THEY wouldn't do it, would they? They wouldn't be rash enough to push things to the limit and use their veto, gravely undermining an institution they cherish? The French have greatly enjoyed keeping the world guessing about their intentions in the United Nations Security Council. But the UN is not the only place where France is threatening to use a veto. At a European Union summit in Brussels on February 17th, Jacques Chirac, France's president, warned none too subtly that France might still block the enlargement of the EU to take in ten more countries, mainly from central Europe, which are due to join next year. Most diplomats still regard it as a done deal and think it inconceivable that France would really do something as spiteful and destructive as rejecting countries from the old Soviet block. But just as it is a mistake to underestimate France's willingness to confront the United States at the UN, so it would be unwise to ignore the real threat that France now poses to enlargement.

Iraq and the EU's enlargement may look unrelated. In fact, for the French, they are closely linked. France has long cherished the ambition that the EU would one day act as a superpower that could stand up to the United States. It has also long suspected the central Europeans of being a Trojan horse for the Atlantic alliance within the EU. For the French, the Iraq crisis has dramatically illustrated these fears. Here, they argue, are the Americans, clearly acting dangerously, providing Europe with both an opportunity and a duty to block the “hyperpower”. But France's ambition to present a united European front has been undermined by expressions of support for the Americans. First came a letter from eight European countries - five current EU members, plus Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, the three biggest members-to-be. Then came a letter from “the Vilnius ten”, a central European and Balkan group which includes five more countries due to join the Union next year.

President Chirac's fury became evident at this week's Eurosummit. With a mixture of arrogance and rudeness that made Donald Rumsfeld, America's abrasive defence secretary, look like Mary Poppins, the French president upbraided the candidate countries for their pro-American statements. The central Europeans, he opined, were “badly brought up”, “childish” and “irresponsible”. They should remember that all the current EU members still have to ratify the treaties of accession to let the newcomers into the club. France, he hinted, could call a referendum on enlargement. The state of public opinion in France, where 18% of the votes were recently cast for a xenophobe for president, suggests that the French might give a resounding no. Though it would be highly unusual for the Union's existing members to vote on letting newcomers in, there is a precedent: France had a referendum on admitting Britain in the 1970s.

The next day Michele Alliot-Marie, the French defence minister, rammed home her country's message. On a visit to Warsaw, she warned the Poles that their support for America was endangering their chances of joining the EU. The Poles particularly angered France recently by having the temerity to order American F-16 fighter aircraft rather than French Mirages. Alain Duhamel, an influential pro-European commentator, gave an insight into the French establishment's thinking in a recent article in the left-leaning newspaper Liberation headlined “Europe: stop enlargement”. He gave warning that the dreams of those who want a “European Europe” are in danger of being swamped by new arrivals “fascinated” by the United States: “the Europe of Brussels is encircled by the Europe of Washington.” Mr Duhamel urged the French parliament to refuse to ratify enlargement.

Are such threats for real? Blocking enlargement would cause a severe crisis in the Union. It could tear the club apart, even destroy it. It would enrage many other EU countries, not least France's key ally, Germany, which deems enlargement a strategic and moral imperative. On the other hand, muse some French pundits, the Germans share some French worries about enlargement. Sure, they say, the Germans might protest at first. But in the long run, might they not fall back into the comfortable French embrace of old? Using Iraq as a pretext for provoking a crisis over enlargement could also be attractive, given that European public opinion is sympathetic to France's anti-war position. And if some EU members - the British and the Nordics, say - were to walk out of the club in disgust if France did indeed veto enlargement? Well, in the view of the real head-bangers in Paris, so much the better.

Bring the European temple down on your own head?

Yet destroying the EU in order to save it (or at least France's vision of it) is so extreme and high-risk an option that it is still hard to envisage France taking that route. It is more probable that Mr Chirac's threats against the candidate countries are driven more directly by Iraq. If America and Britain cannot get a second UN resolution before an attack on Iraq, they may look instead for expressions of support such as the recent letters from central Europeans. Mr Chirac's aim, as he candidly put it at a recent press conference, is to persuade such people to “shut up”.

Such a strategy could backfire. The day after the French president's outburst, the central Europeans were trying to bite their tongues. Peter Medgyessy, the Hungarian prime minister, remarked (in immaculate French), that he was “too well brought up” to respond to Mr Chirac's gibes. But several other central European leaders emphasised their right to think and speak independently. In the longer term, France's strategy is even harder to fathom. If and when the ten newcomers do in the end join the club in May next year, they are hardly likely to feel well-disposed to a French president who has made it clear that he regards them as a bunch of ungrateful and unhousetrained peasants. Mr Chirac's fear that France will lose control of a larger European Union would then risk becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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