French Connection

yes, i'm obsessed, but still, the perfidy of the current french government is such that they can no longer be reliably described as stategic allies of the US. not what the article below is about, but why are they conduction joint naval exercises w/ the PRC while taiwan is holding an election?

http://nationalreview.com/interrogatory/timmerman200403220851.asp

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March 22, 2004, 8:51 a.m.
The French Connection
Kenneth Timmerman reports on deep and tight Chirac-Saddam ties.

Kenneth Timmerman, a New York Times best-selling author, lived and worked as an investigative reporter in France for 18 years. His latest book, The French Betrayal of America, was released last week from Crown Forum. He recently spoke to NRO Editor Kathryn Lopez about the new book.

NRO: It seems "cool" these days for right-of-center Americans to French-bash: Hasn't it gone a little too far? Aren't you just adding to the lifespan of "freedom fries" with a book about a "betrayal?"

Timmerman: It's a serious matter when the leaders of a country such as France show by their actions that they are willing to jettison a friendship with America that goes back 225 years in favor of a dictator such as Saddam Hussein, whose claim to fame includes the massacre of some 300,000 of his own people. And yet, that is precisely what French president Jacques Chirac and his foreign minister Dominique de Villepin have done. They have shown that they were willing to exchange exclusive oil deals with Saddam, and political payoffs, for the French alliance with America.

NRO: Did Chirac actually lie to President Bush before the Iraq war?

Timmerman: Yes, and this is why the president and Secretary of State Powell were so taken aback when foreign minister Dominique de Villepin pulled the rug out from under United Nations negotiations on January 20, 2003, by announcing, apparently out of the blue, that France would never ever agree to using force against Saddam Hussein.

Before the first U.N. vote in early November 2002 (actually, it was the 17th U.N. resolution condemning Saddam and calling on him to voluntarily disarm or suffer the consequences, which included his forceful ouster), Jacques Chirac picked up the phone and called President Bush at the White House, personally reassuring him that France "would be with" us at the U.N. and in Iraq. To demonstrate his intentions, he said, he was sending one of his top generals to Tampa, Florida, to work out the details with U.S. Central Command leaders for integrating French troops into a Coalition force to oust Saddam.

"Chirac's assurances are what gave the president the confidence to keep sending Colin Powell back to the U.N.," one source who was privy to Chirac's phone call to Bush told me. "They also explain why the administration has been going after the French so aggressively ever since. They lied."

NRO: How close was the relationship between Saddam and Chirac?

Timmerman: Like lips and teeth. One of my favorite stories is the bullfight Chirac hosted for Saddam in the southern France resort town les Baux-de-Provence in September 1975, where Saddam bet $600,000 on the bulls. During that first trip Saddam made to France, Chirac stuck to him like glue. He also arranged to sell Saddam a nuclear-research reactor, which Saddam himself called a nuclear-bomb plant. If the Israelis hadn't taken it out in a daring air strike in June 1981, there is no doubt that Saddam would have had the ability to make a nuclear weapon by 1985 — at the latest.

NRO: How much of a friend would France be losing if the people of Iran were to topple the mullahs?

Timmerman: The people of Iran will remember who befriended them in their time of need, and who helped the mullahs retain power by legitimating them, apologizing for them, and letting them — literally — get away with murder. Iranian hit teams operated in Europe with virtual impunity throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, murdering Iranian dissidents, while the Europeans carried out a policy they called "constructive engagement." The only "constructive" thing about it was the number of chemical plants and missile-design centers they built for the mullahs. While Germany certainly led the way, France was never far behind and continues to send trade delegations to Tehran and to defend Iran as it hides its nuclear-weapons program from the IAEA.

NRO: You accuse France of actually encouraging genocide — it seems like an outrageous charge.

Timmerman: It's a very specific charge, made by Hoshyar Zebari, who is now the Iraqi foreign minister. Zebari was referring to the massacre of the Marsh Arabs who used to live in the Howeiza marshes along the southern border between Iran and Iraq. In the mid-1990s, at the urging of the French, who worried about sending their oil engineers into the area, Saddam drained the marshes — an area the size of the state of Delaware — turning the rich, fertile homeland of this ancient people into a dust bowl. Then he sent in the Republican Guards, massacring thousands of civilians. Why? To make the area safe for French oil engineers and French oil workers.

NRO: You say in your new book that the Iraq war was, in fact, all about oil.

Timmerman: The war in Iraq was indeed a war for oil — waged by the French, not the United States. The Chirac government was desperate to maintain its exclusive — and outrageously exploitative — oil contracts with Saddam's regime, which would have earned the French an estimated $100 billion during the first seven years of operations, according to experts I interviewed for my book. My worry today is that a Kerry administration would back the French, who continue to assert that these contracts are legally binding on the new Iraqi government. That would be a travesty and a dishonor to all those Iraqis who died under Saddam.

NRO: What are French motivations when dealing with these regimes — purely economic?

Timmerman: Contracts are certainly very important. Americans need to remember that France is not a free-market economy, as we still are (despite the efforts of Hillary Rodham Clinton to nationalize the U.S. health-care industry!). When French businessmen go abroad, they often travel in delegations led by the prime minister, or the foreign minister, or some other top official. The French government gets involved not just in opening doors, but in negotiating contracts. Often, these contracts have involved substantial kickbacks to French political parties. Even today, French companies can declare as an expense on their income-tax declaration the bribes and commissions they pay to foreign agents. This was banned in the United States in the 1970s under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This is one of the reasons the French like to do business with dictators. In a free and fair market, their companies can't always compete.

NRO: How and why has France stonewalled in the Moussaui case?

Timmerman: Over the past 15 years, I have had the privilege to become close to the top French counterterrorism judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, arguably the world's top expert on al Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks. I went back to meet him at his Paris office in October 2001, and he was grinning like a cat that had swallowed a canary. He had new information, he told me, that would be of tremendous use to U.S. prosecutors on Zacharias Moussaoui, and couldn't wait to turn it over.

Then the politicians got wind of what he wanted to do, and came down on him like a ton of bricks. They ordered him not to turn over evidence that could be used in a U.S. court unless the U.S. promised not to seek the death penalty against Moussaoui. That put the kibosh on Bruguiere's cooperation.

Bruguiere had everything on Moussaoui, who was a French citizen. He knew all about his trips to Afghanistan, his operational ties to Afghanistan, and exactly how he fit into the al Qaeda "spider's web." And while he privately briefed U.S. prosecutors on this information, none of it can be used in court because of the French government's ban. Had Bruguiere been allowed to present this evidence, Moussaoui's trial would have been over long ago.

NRO: And meanwhile, we deal with France on a nuclear level-sharing technologies, you write. Will they pay, in terms of the closing of communication doors with the U.S. for their Iraq position — past and present?

Timmerman: I was quite surprised, as I was investigating the extensive nuclear-weapons cooperation between the U.S. and France, to discover that top Bush-administration officials were not aware that our national nuclear labs were still helping the French. Even today, U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing the French nuclear-weapons establishment. I think it is time for Congress to hold hearings on the U.S.-French nuclear relationship, to shed some daylight on a very murky subject and to open a much-needed debate on whether France can still be trusted with our nuclear secrets.

NRO: Is there any negotiating with France — getting her to see our view of the world? That certainly didn't happen pre-Iraq liberation, but could it come post — or do things just get worse, as France continues to help Iran (and who else?) in ways they once helped Iraq?

Timmerman: When I was in Libya recently, I had the opportunity to meet with the chairman of the foreign-relations committee of the French senate, André Dulait. Dulait complained that the U.S. government was still punishing France for its behavior during the Iraq war, and that it was time to "let bygones be bygones." I recounted the story to him of President Chirac's personal lies to President Bush, and the manner in which foreign minister Dominique de Villepin ambushed Colin Powell at the United Nations on Jan. 20, 2003 — events which were not just political, but personal betrayals. I suggested that perhaps if the French wanted better relations with the United States they might start by putting a new face on their diplomacy.

I see no reason why any U.S. administration should take Mr. De Villepin seriously or take his word on anything, given his track record of deceit and open lies.

NRO: Did the Madrid attacks shake France any, being as it was so close to home?

Timmerman: Al Qaeda has now threatened France because of a new French law banning so-called "Muslim" head scarves in the French public schools. One can debate whether the French were right to ban headscarves; I happen to think they were, because the radical Islamists were using the headscarf as a means of increasing their political power and of terrorizing Muslim girls into submission. What's clear now, however, is that the Islamists are seeking to use this as a means of intimidating the French government and the French people into submission.

France has a long history of caving into terrorists, cutting deals with people such as Abu Daoud, the PLO terrorist who masterminded the Munich Olympics massacre in 1972, or with Imad Mugniyeh, the Iranian-government agent who has killed so many Americans in terrorist attacks in Lebanon. Both the French and the Spanish ought to know that they cannot buy safety by appeasing murderers; and yet, they do so. As the Clinton administration's refusal to strike back at al Qaeda despite five attacks against America during the 1990s shows, appeasement, and a display of weakness only invites attack.

NRO: What did Tocequville get about France and the U.S. that Chirac and company don't today?

Timmerman: Tocqueville understood freedom; Chirac disdains freedom, and has consistently taken France into alliances with dictators and rogue states. Tocqueville was trying to show his fellow Frenchmen a path away from authoritarian government (whether of the Napoleonic blend, or the monarchy who returned to France after his demise). Chirac and his foreign minister Dominique de Villepin believe in a "republican monarchy," a strong authoritarian state that is the antithesis of American democracy.

NRO: Does France miss Saddam, economically, or otherwise?

Timmerman: I believe so. As a former adviser to Jacques Chirac told me when I met with him privately in the mansion of a Lebanese arms dealer in the south of France in 1994, Chirac and others believed France made a mistake by supporting the United States during the first Gulf War in 1991. "Iraq is our natural ally in the Gulf," he said. "France gained nothing and lost much" by its support for the U.S. during the first Gulf war.

 

actually, i've been to the arena there. provence- the carmargue (sp?), is a major area for bullfighting.

 

and he served in Vietnam, and we know what giap did to the french at diem bien phu!

 

windsofchange has a nice article on the geopolitical strategy of france:

http://windsofchange.net/archives/004742.php#more

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France - Pas Comme Les Autres
by "Gabriel Gonzalez" (Paris, France)

After reading Kenneth Timmerman's condemnation of France's $100 billion profiteering from Saddam's cruel regime (The French War For Oil), and my own recent article (From Madrid to Paris), some commentators expressed the view that France is just an ordinary country defending its interests and is no different than any other country, including the U.S. Indeed, for some in the anti-war camp France is even assumed to be necessarily a morally superior nation.

This view is so thoroughly ignorant of French foreign policy realities that it should really be put to rest once and for all.

French Foreign Policy

Timmerman points 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 perhaps even bribes under the UN oil-for-food regime. This was a major part of French policy to undermine the sanctions regime, which was an aspect of its broader policy of triangulating against the U.S. to promote its commercial and strategic interests, especially 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 on 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 would 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 was hoped, at the expense of the U.S.

I can see why the average American would have trouble accepting this view, 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. Still, before dismissing this view out of hand, consider what France has accomplished in the last twelve months (a list by no means exhaustive):

In the months following the Iraq war, France spent much time courting much of the Arab/Muslim world (Sudan, Egypt, Iran, Palestinian Authority, Syria, Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco), filling the void and the "triangulatable" space left behind by the U.S., in order to improve its diplomatic and commercial relations by presenting itself as an alternative pole for opposing U.S. strategic interests. (Just Google de Villepin's itinerary over that period and this will become clear.)

Those interests now clearly extend to opposing U.S. policy for self-determination, liberalization and human rights in the Arab/Muslim world. Chirac has recently officialized, including at a recent joint appearance with Mubarek, French opposition to U.S. policy of encouraging liberalization, denouncing this as "interference" and favoring an "alternative" model of political development from within. Just as France's "alternative" model for "combating" terrorism by opposing U.S. "militarism" is based on nothing of substance, it's "alternative" model for political development in the Middle East would also appear to be little more than a front for promoting French commercial and strategic interests in the region, with the complicity of authoritarian regimes perfectly willing to agree to this "alter" political model.

France's noisy condemnation of U.S. Iraq policy was reported to have spurred residents of Arab countries to name their newborn children "Chirac" and Chirac's 63% favorability rating in Morocco in the most recent Pew survey of Middle East attitudes, an incredibly high figure for a former colony not ordinarily well disposed to the French Republic, is part of the pay-off for its "alternative" "third worldism".

Through its policies, France has recently won defense contracts throughout the Middle East (which are routinely procured through bribery), including for sales of Leclerc tanks to the Emirates and Saudi Arabia (at a loss, I might add).

France has recently announced a new initiative to renew arms sales to China and, just a couple of days ago, conducted joint naval 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 of 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.

Internal States and External Statecraft

What allows France to engage in such conduct much more freely than the U.S. is:
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),

The demonization of an imperialist United States as a distraction, and

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 historical tradition 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.

Note that 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 enthusiastically reported by the media with a shockingly commercial crassness, that is, unless you are French, in which case you are presumably 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 foreign policy matters 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. In this regard, it is entirely hypocritical that France purports to disdain the supposed greater crass commercialism of Americans.

Fermer Les Yeux

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 Kuwait; 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.

Compare the lone visit by Rumsfeld to Iraq in the 1980s, trumpeted by the left here in Paris as ironclad evidence of U.S. complicity – even responsibity for some – in the Hussein regime.

In France, there is very little public debate about French foreign policy. Few Americans realize that French participation in the first Gulf War was approved by a whopping 92% of the National Assembly and 95% of the Senate. And that was under a Socialist Party majority. By contrast, the U.S. Senate could barely eke out a 52-48 majority. France's blowing up Greenpeace's boat in the 1980s was regarded much less as a morally questionable act than a political embarrassment.

Instead, 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. for instance:

I was told several times before the war by French people familiar with French policy, including many knowledgable about the defense industries, "Of course, we are selling illegal arms to Saddam's regime" in violation of the embargo. "But don't tell me that the U.S. isn't". This proves more about a cultural attitude than the existence of actual arms sales. This also reminds me of the surprise expressed by many French people to me as to why Bush hasn't simply "planted" WMD in Iraq.

I often hear French politicians and intellectuals these days reaffirm, "I still believe that the U.S. did invade Iraq for its oil …" almost as an acknowledgement of the implausibility of the view before professing their firm believe in its absolute truth. 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.

Yesterday, I heard a discussion on French radio over U.S. Iraq policy between MPs of Chirac's center-right coalition in power and the center-left (socialist) opposition. 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 (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.

Here's another interesting fact that I note in the discussion about the war. 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 of these being "politico-media" themes that originate from within the U.S./U.K. press establishment before being implanted into the French collective media experience with the appropriate local spin – 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.

Triste, La Difference

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. This might also provide insight on France's more recent criticisms of Israel and alignment with Arafat.

Consider also the recent French public, official and media reaction to the scandals involving the earlier mentioned bribes in the sales of frigates to Taiwan, and to the Executive Life affair in California that was settled at a cost of $760 million.

In the frigate bribes scandal, there is no public or media curiosity to speak of about which government officials were using bribes to procure these contracts and what they might of done. Who cares? 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 6 months for the opposition even to raise any question about the propriety of the government using the public treasury to negotiate protection from criminal prosecution for Chirac's personal friend, the 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, I think it is clear, France will freely overstep in ways that put it closer to the Soviet Union and Pakistan than to the U.S. or Great Britain. This might be arms sales to highly questionable regimes. France stands alone in having sold nuclear weapons capable 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, the closest one can get to a "rogue" state.

The real questions at this point should concern how we should "contain" France - through engagement or through isolation? I am personally undecided here. I find attractive the idea that the Bush administration (or any U.S. administration) should isolate a country whose policies are deeply and irremediably immoral as well as hugely destabilizing of the global order. On the other hand, it might be better to limit the damage the French are capable of through engaging them, giving them an "outlet" for their puerile anti-Americanism and delusional obsession with their own grandeur, and closing up the space in which they can cynically "triangulate" against the U.S. in the wanton pursuit of their deeply cynical and destructive commercial and geopolitical interests.