Le Petit Cold War

France.

Their policy to act as a counterweight to the US on the world stage has caused them to behave in a way that will prolong suffering in the developing world and in the Arab/Muslim world, and that will hamper the US and its allies in the global war against Islamofascism.

Like the Soviets during the Cold War, they're engaged in a policy of bringing nations into their sphere of influence, this sphere being defined as in opposition to the American sphere. The French sphere, like the American one, is built from both diplomatic, military, and economic influence. But the French sphere doesn't have a strong ideological underpinning as the Soviet sphere had. If it has any ideology it is one of anti-Americanism, and perhaps a touch of continental disdain for liberalism.

Iraq was in the French sphere, and this was the only reason that the French opposed the US and allied invasion. France realized of course that Iraq would be ripped from the French sphere in an American-led invasion. All the talk we heard from the French concerning international law and the "requirement" of another UN Security Council resolution was a tactic designed to keep Iraq within the French sphere. The oil deals and the arms sales, the oil-for-fraud accommodation, and as importantly, French political influence in Iraq, would all be swept away.

The Western left, particularly in the US and UK, have largely bought into the fiction that the French opposition to the war was built on anti-war principals. (The anti-war principal is more likely in the case of Germany, which insists on a pacifist international demeanor to a large degree because we insisted that they assume a pacifist demeanor 60 years ago.) In fact, the French opposition was based on maintaining and securing the French sphere. The French have no difficulty deploying troops within the French sphere without UNSC mandates, so their legal argument against US military action without a UN mandate is clearly an artifact of their interests, and not of their morality.

Unlike the Soviets, whose opposition to the US and the West after the WWII alliance with it was made clear soon after WWII, the French opposition to the US and the Anglosphere, the UK in particular of course, had not been revealed in such stark terms at the conclusion of the Cold War, the war which kept the French and Americans fighting on the same side within NATO and the broader western alliance. Unlike the Soviets 10 years after WWII, the French still belong to several international institutions within which they can, and have, done some damage to US efforts in the next war. Most important are NATO and the EU.

The French are also different from the two current competitors of the US in the Arab/Muslim word, China and Russia, for the same reason. China and Russia are competing with the US from outside these Western institutions. France is playing the game from within these Western institutions upon which the US relies.

In NATO, they are blockers. As long as France can veto initiatives there which are seen as supporting the US-led Anglosphere, they will, as with the military assistance to Turkey before the Iraq war and with the Iraqi training program most recently. To accomplish anything in NATO, the US will need to move NATO decision-making to the defense planning committee where France doesn't have a seat. It is probably not politically viable for the US to kick France out of NATO altogether. So for now NATO is essentially neutralized as an agent in the allied cause.

In the EU, the French are attempting, and succeeding to some degree, in leveraging their influence within the EU to form an anti-US block, and using that block to steer the whole of the EU in a direction away from supporting the US. It's main allies in this endeavor have been Germany and Belgium. Spain may be amenable to playing ball with the French. However, the recent addition of 10 states to the EU has thrown a monkey wrench into this French plan, when some of the new states famously missed their opportunity to shut-up. The EU has, for the moment, shifted slightly towards the US.

Within the UN, the French have, just as the Soviets had throughout the Cold War, their UNSC veto. The French record there is clear. They are using their vote to protect the French sphere even when it conflicts with broader Western interests, as in Iraq, and incontrovertably, in Sudan. French oil interests and diplomatic investment were/are at stake in both. The suffering of the Iraqi people under totalitarian Saddam, and the suffering of the people of Darfur in genocidal Sudan, are not sufficient to move the French to vote against their own economic interests.

Even now, after the allied invasion of Iraq has taken place, the French are blocking international efforts to support a stable democracy there. The only rationale for doing so at this point is to prevent the US from successfully expanding its sphere of influence, even though this French intransigence will also harm the West in general. It is a dangerous game that the French are playing.

Neither side in the US presidential race will admit to this state of affairs. Bush cannot afford to bring a conflict between the US and France any further into the open, for fear of escalating it. We need France to support US efforts within the bodies where France has its (outsized) influence, and for no other reason I might add. There is certainly little promise of French military or economic assistance to the allies worth mentioning. Nevertheless, Bush sees it as politcially necessary to paper over the division.

Kerry on the other hand, is using the French opposition to the US, and not merely French opposition to Bush's policies, as a weapon to see Bush defeated. Whether Kerry is conscious of the fact that the French aim is to defeat the US, and not merely to defeat George W. Bush, is a question I'll leave to others for now. This question also applies to others who are against the Iraq war and who use French oppositon to the US as a weapon.

The entirety of the "go-it-alone" unilateralism charge against Bush is built upon the foundation that France has built to protect French interests, and nothing more. The lack of EU support is due to narrow French interests. The lack of a further UNSC resolution was due to narrow French interests. The lack of significant NATO support is due to narrow French interests. To attack Bush for the Iraq war on the grounds that he "alienated our traditional allies" is to support French anti-American interests over American interests.

A case can be made that the US is seeking too much power in the world, and that our interests are not as far-ranging as the current administration claims. Perhaps democracy in the Middle East is not something that we should be pursuing, or indeed have any right to demand. I disagree with that assesment. But those who do make that argument should not be using France's opposition, and the opposition of international bodies that French opposition infects, as an argument in their favor. France's only interest is French power. French opposition should not be an argument to dissuade Americans, and the West, from doing what needs to be done to win the war against Islamofascism.

We have to recognize that in France we have an opponent who does not place US security interests in a position of high regard. We have to recognize that Paris seeks to diminish Washington's influence and promote its own influence in a similar manner as Moscow once did. France has and will again support its own narrow interests over those of the West. If Americans and others who seek to defeat Islamofascism keep this in mind, we'd have an easier time of it.