WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN A POET DRIVES A BULLDOZER?:

Jacques Chirac's Iraq Agenda (Amir Taheri, Wall Street Journal Europe, 4/4/2003)

Last April, when he regained control of France's foreign policy after a five-year "cohabitation" with a Socialist prime minister, Jacques Chirac quickly fixed the priorities of his new five-year presidential term. According to officials involved with the plan, top of the list was the rehabilitation of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.

Of course, France had nothing better to contribute to humanity.

A documentary broadcast by FR3 television in Paris last month narrated the 30-year old Chirac-Saddam personal friendship. But it also missed the point: Mr. Chirac sought Saddam's friendship not out of personal empathy but in the framework of a political vision.

That vision is part of the legacy left by the late General Charles De Gaulle who believed that France should counterbalance the German weight in Europe, and the Anglo-American axis across the Atlantic, with a Mediterranean "profondeur" which, in practice, means a special relationship with the Arab states of North Africa and the Middle East.

Mr. Chirac's tactics during the Iraq crisis at the United Nations made him something of a hero for the Ba'athist ruling elite in Baghdad. The newspaper Babel, owned by Saddam's son Uday, gave Mr. Chirac the coveted title of "Great Combatant" (Al-Munadhil al-Akbar)... Abdallah Jaballah, the Algerian fundamentalist leader, praised Mr. Chirac as "the only truly Arab leader today."

Most Arab leaders, however, express surprise at Mr. Chirac's decision ...

"We cannot understand Chirac," says a senior Egyptian official. "It is a mystery why he wanted to save Saddam when that meant wrecking relations with Washington and London."...

How did Mr. Chirac, a man who was in government when Lyndon Johnson was in the White House, work himself into such a tight corner? Some of his friends blame it all on Mr. de Villepin, an amateur poet who tends to get carried away when delivering his flowery speeches.

Mr. Chirac earned his nickname of "le bulldozer" when he was minister of agriculture in 1969 for his rough tactics when negotiating European fish quotas and farm subsidies. His friends say he is only encouraged on his confrontational course by Mr. de Villepin.

"When a bulldozer is driven by a poet the result is bound to be catastrophic," says one of Chirac's political friends. "Mr. Chirac is always excited and needs someone to calm him down. In Mr. de Villepin, however, we have someone even more excited. With these two France is going to quarrel with a lot more people in the next four years."

That individuals could have such a devastating effect on French foreign policy is a direct result of what one could describe as a deficit of democracy in France.

A deficit of democracy which they are now trying to extend to Europe as a whole.

The curious thing is that the French public, though not entirely blind to Chirac's folly, loves it. When I left a good position in academia, the department chair dubbed the move "Jaminet's folly." "La folie de Chirac," if it continues, may be quite a bit more costly, to France, Europe, and the world.

Posted by Paul Jaminet at April 4, 2003 8:27 AM