Perfidious France

by John Thompson

01/27/03

The French have decided to throw a spanner into American-British plans to topple Saddam Hussein and rid the world of a menace. As usual, by running interference in the UN and NATO, the French claim to be working from moral principles and a regard for all of humanity — which is pretty much what they said when they lopped off the head of Louis XVI and invaded their neighbors.

Principles? Hah! More like common base petulance.

After emerging out of the chaos of the 14^th to 16^th Centuries, France became the largest and wealthiest state in Europe; whereupon they destabilized Germany in the 30 Years War, trashed Spain, and fought repeated naval encounters with Britain to ensure that they were the leading land power in Europe. Napoleon certainly proved France was top dog in Europe, and bled it white while making his case. France then slipped out of leading place as Germany united (an act celebrated by the Kaiser in Versailles whilst his guns shelled Paris in 1871 — the Germans can be a bit brutal in making their feelings known too).

In the 20^th Century, France has been repeatedly humiliated. Barely able to stave off the Germans in 1914, it took the ‘Anglo-Saxon Mafia’ (a German term for the Americans, British, Canadians, Australians, et al) to retrieve the situation. France got overrun completely in 1940 and the Anglo-Saxon Mafia had to liberate them. France then found that the world had changed on them, particularly when Churchill and Roosevelt (without consulting the French) decided on the shape of the Post-War world while meeting off Newfoundland in 1941.

The French lost their colonies in Vietnam, largely because Eisenhower selfishly wouldn’t let them have an atom bomb or a wing of B-29s to break the siege at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. This was compounded by the French loss of Algeria in 1960, partly because the Americans also insisted that the Algerians were entitled to decide to run their own affairs.

De Gaulle, whose outsize ego was injured by his treatment during the War Years never lost a chance to put his thumb in the American eye after 1945, and sought repeated chances to limit their influence in Europe while clinging to the tattered vestiges of French status as a great power. They developed their own nuclear weapons, asked foreign NATO contingents to base themselves outside of France (while remaining inside the Alliance), and sought to improve European unity both as a reasonable end in itself, but also to lessen US influence.

Nowadays, major arms purchases are a way of doing business with close Allies. Predictably, with the Americans and British supplying much of NATO, the French chose to develop their weapons, and have paid the R&D bills by supplying states that the ‘Anglo-Saxon Mafia’ wouldn’t touch with a ten foot cattle prod. Among other things, the French sold nuclear reactors to Iraq that almost gave Saddam Hussein his first atomic bomb in 1981 (whereupon the Israelis bombed the Osiric reactor site, and set Iraq’s program back to the drawing board for the first time). In 1991, when looking at the arms in Iraq’s giant army, it was plain to see that the French had been one of their top three suppliers after the USSR and China.

The French shouldn’t really have any objections to unilateral military action — French Legionnaires and Paratroops have left the bodies of thousands of assorted guerrillas, rebels and malcontents cooling behind them in a score of nations over the last few decades. Curiously, all of these nations are former Colonial possessions with natural resources that are exploited by French owned corporations…. hmm.

France has been a frequent victim of Islamic Fundamentalist terrorism, and has led the rest of Europe in acting against them; even nagging Canada to finally take a look at Ahmed Ressam’s Al-Qaeda cell in Montreal before it became active. This makes their current behavior almost inexplicable, unless…

1. France wants to make more arms sales in the Middle East, and particularly so with a post-Saddam Iraq;
2. France is envious of America’s military prowess, and is thus acting to thwart it;
3. France is nervous about the large number of Muslim immigrants inside its cities (a problem shared by all of the G-7 Western nations except Japan);
4. The French are acting out of a concern that the UN is being co-opted by the US… not that Paris has really cared much for what the UN has thought before.
5. The selfless genius of the French people has come to the fore for the good of all humanity.

Take your pick, but the smart money rests with the first two reasons.

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca