WHO KNEW FRANCE HAD THREE STRIKES AND YOU'RE OUT?:

Chirac missed his opportunity to revitalise France (John O'Sullivan, 3/14/07, Chicago Sun-Times)

WHAT had happened to block Chirac's reforming instincts [following his election in 1995] was that France had three fundamental state policies supported by the entire political establishment: membership of Europe's Exchange Realignment Mechanism that would mutate in January 2000 into the Euro single currency, the retention of the French "social model" of a regulated welfare capitalism, and the construction of a federal Europe, made in France's image, that would rival the US as an independent superpower.

Unfortunately, the first two policies were incompatible with cutting taxes and bringing down unemployment. The third, besides being incompatible with a pro-American foreign policy, could only be sustained on the back of a growing French economy that the first two policies effectively ruled out.

It begins to look as if Chirac's failure to reform and revitalise the French economy a decade ago was a vital but missed opportunity. There is now a firm majority in France opposed to reforms and a permanent minority embittered at its economic exclusion. And because that embittered minority is Muslim, Chirac has found his foreign policy distorted too. His main ambition to shape a Europe led by France, powered by Germany and opposed to the US foundered on the Iraq war. Chirac's policy on the war -- a deliberate frustration of the US in support of Saddam Hussein -- was prompted in part as a way of appeasing his Muslim minority. Though he is now widely praised in Europe because of how the intervention turned out, the real story is that most European states, especially the new democracies of central Europe, failed to follow Chirac's lead at the time. They made it clear they had no wish to separate Europe from America and openly defied Paris. A larger and more diverse Europe is slipping out of the control of Paris.

Note how badly he fares on all three issues by comparison to W and Blair. History will be very unkind to him.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 14, 2007 12:21 PM