THE PRIMUM MOBILE (via Tom Morin)

The choices French diplomacy made (Francoise Thom, Translated by Douglas Gillison, 2003/05/06, Institut Hayek Institute)

To evaluate a foreign policy, one must ask oneself two questions. The first is whether this policy favors the realization of the desired objectives. The second consists in asking whether those objectives correspond to the real interest of the nation.

The prime objective of French diplomacy is the unconditional containment of the United States.

Whatever the Americans do, France feels it is absolutely necessary to put a stick between their spokes. The neo-Gaulists think that France will attain a role worthy of itself in the international scene if it takes the lead in opposition to the American "hyper-power."

Chriac's France is European because it views Europe as a rival pillar to the United States and it easily imagines itself in an hegemonic position in this anti-American Europe.

Chirac's France champions the UN, which general de Gaulle once called a "contraption," because it thinks its seat on the Security Council is a privileged instrument for the containment of the United States while bestowing a certain gravity upon France in the international community, to which neither its economic successes nor its cultural importance permit it to lay claim.

And therefore the goals that Chirac's foreign policy has set for itself are the struggle against American unilateralism, the transformation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy from a statement of intentions to an institutional reality and the elevation of France to the status of a power whose voice is heard on the global stage. [...]

Now for the fundamental point, namely: to what degree does the attitude of French diplomacy correspond to the real interests of our country.

In its foreign policy, France has in a way put on the boots of the defunct Soviet Union:

*same obstructionist policy at the UN,
*same third-world-ist demagoguery,
*same alliance with the Arab world,
*same ambition to take the lead in a coalition of "anti-imperialist" states against Washington.

France has resurrected Primakov's old Eurasian master plan, which consisted in creating a Paris-Berlin-Moscow-Beijing axis against the Anglo-Saxons, a goal in which Putin's Russia no longer believes but in which it encourages Paris because Russia sees it as a way of improving its position in negotiating with Washington.

The anti-American obsession means that France is less than inquisitive as to the nature of regimes to which it lends its support in the name of multipolarity. Iraq, Algeria, Zimbabwe, Sudan: in a word, France seems to get on better with the rogue states and failed states than with the United States whose civilization it shares. It claims to defend international law by leaning on states that ignore all laws.

The comparison to the Soviet Union goes further than it may seem. Indeed, French diplomacy is less inspired by a cynical Realpolitik (whence the failures mentioned above) than by an ideological view of the world. Its anti-Americanism is the projection of its internal jacobinism onto the global stage. The unhealthy French communion in anti-Americanism reveals the start of a drift towards totalitarianism in our country, which was already noticeable by the second round of the elections: Bush has replaced Le Pen in the role of enemy of the people. "Anti-Bushism" can be compared to the "anti-fascism" of the `30s and `40s: it conceals an obligatory communist-type consensus.

Like those in the USSR of Brezhnev, French leaders compensate with a ruinous foreign activism for their inability to begin crucial internal reforms, which are impossible because they would call into question the socialist dogma at the foundation of the French state. In both cases, foreign activism both accelerates and accentuates the internal crisis. We saw what became of the Soviet Union.

This is excellent on the too-little comprehended point of the American/French confrontation, a point that is particularly obscured because of the proximity of the American and French Revolutions in time, and the desire of Left academia to see the French Revolution carried out here: we represent the opposite sides of human nature and must ever be at odds. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 19, 2003 9:20 PM