France’s current president, Jacques Chirac, likens himself more to Charles de Gaulle than to Mitterrand. But never mind. The message is the same. America and France are at war–and it’s no secret anymore. With the conflict winding down in Iraq, both sides are assessing the fallout from their diplomatic battles. The French–85 percent of whom opposed the war–are beginning to realize the consequences of dissent. “If Jacques Chirac persists in making the U.N. his next battlefield… he’ll be dignified, glorious, solitary, and maybe even moving,” opined the weekly L’Express. But the magazine also noted that he would be “without relevance.”
As for Washington? Chirac may claim that his threatened Security Council veto in the run-up to war was a matter of principle. But the White House took it personally. If administration hawks get their way, France will pay. Punish France, ignore Germany and forgive Russia, national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice reportedly said in Moscow last week. George Bush himself is said to deeply mistrust Chirac. U.S. officials fully expect the French to obstruct the next round of Iraq diplomacy at the United Nations. “What is their strategy?” asks one sarcastically. “Are they going to refuse to recognize the new Iraqi government? Are they going to recognize the government of Saddam Hussein?” The last thing anyone wants to see is Iraq’s future bogged down in Paris.
So where does Chirac go from here? Finding the method in the French president’s foreign policy has always been tricky. Chirac’s style is a mercurial mix of passion and pragmatism, opportunism and principle, parochialism and internationalism. For the moment, comparisons to King Lear, stripped of his power but raging against the storm, seem apt. But Chirac may not be a powerless outcast for long. Viewed from Washington and London, his U.N. gamble was a terrible misjudgment. But in France, the man who only a year ago was widely perceived as a sleazy politico, under investigation on a slew of corruption charges, today enjoys an approval rating of 70 percent–on a par with Bush in the United States. “For the first time, it’s no longer ‘Chirac the Fixer’ but ‘Chirac the Hero’,” says Anand Menon, director of the University of Birmingham’s European Research Institute. Some Europeans have even bruited him for a Nobel.
Even as he savors his newfound glory, Chirac last week offered a transatlantic olive branch. As a gesture of good faith, he dropped France’s objections to NATO’s taking over peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan and announced a European Union airlift of injured Iraqi children. He also made a 20-minute phone call to President Bush, indicating that he was prepared to be “pragmatic” about his insistence that the United Nations play a “central role” in Iraq’s future. Explains one French diplomat: “We want to be useful, and we’re not useful off in a corner.”
Trouble is, Chirac is stuck in several corners, not just one. Indeed, his biggest problem is not relations with Washington but within the European Union, badly divided during the prewar hostilities. Next week’s mini summit on European defense–bringing together the antiwar camp of the French, Germans, Belgians and Luxembourgers–will not help mend those ties. To pro-American East Europeans, in particular, the meeting looks suspiciously like an anti-U.S. and anti-NATO club. Such perceptions weren’t helped earlier this month, when Chirac, meeting with Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga in Paris, told her that NATO was no longer relevant.
Ultimately, the solution to Chirac’s various quandaries may be British Prime Minister Tony Blair. While much was made of their split during the furious pre-war diplomacy, these wounds should prove relatively superficial. Even as the two leaders exchanged bitter words on the war in Le Touquet in February, they managed to sign agreements on defense, education and asylum. (Even at the height of their feuding, in fact, one senior British official told NEWSWEEK that working relations on internal European affairs had “never been better.”) Now comes Blair’s drive to promote a Middle East peace–an issue on which Blair and Chirac are far more aligned than are Blair and Bush.
All this suggests, according to some analysts, that Chirac may seek to solve his various political imbroglios over Iraq by “slipstreaming” behind Blair. While making his own views clear, he may entrust Britain with the main job of lobbying Washington to bring the United Nations into a major role in postwar Iraq–and thus avoid antagonizing Washington even further. Meanwhile, France is likely to continue celebrating la difference in its policies. Touting the virtues of what it calls a “multipolar world,” it will go on cultivating a diplomatic axis with Russia and Germany in counterpoise to America, even as those two seek to rebuild ties with Washington. Above all, it will seek to build on France’s special standing in the Middle East, where Chirac in particular is widely viewed as a champion of peace and Arab interests.
Not accidentally, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin was traipsing the Levant last week on a 15,000-kilometer tour, quoting Palestinian poets in Cairo and urging Arabs to “keep the faith” on Palestine. Villepin’s phone calls to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell were read both as a sign of eagerness to help the Americans–and a prod to Washington to accelerate its much-talked-about “road map” for peace in the region. In Paris, some think that Chirac, who essentially delivered Syria in its surprising vote for U.N. Resolution 1441 in November, might use some of his renewed popularity to soothe U.S.-Arab tensions. His Arab popularity is “the only card Chirac has,” notes a French M.P., and thus the president will try to play it as best he can–both to demonstrate France’s independence from Washington, and its desire to help.
Washington’s anti-Gallic sentiments could moderate a bit in early June, if all goes well at the G8 summit in Evian, which Bush will attend. “Evian will be French charm at its best,” notes Simon Serfaty of Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies. “You fight in the morning and charm in the evening.” That’s a strategy. The only question is whether it works on Texans who go to bed early. And like Chirac himself, Bush bases everything on personal relationships, says one senior White House official. “That’s why he likes Blair so much. Blair has been there for him. He will never forget that–and he will never forget what other allies have done, too.” Translation: it’ll take a lot more than charm and Evian water for Chirac to get back into Bush’s good graces, let alone end the Franco-U.S. war.
With Richard Wolffe in Washington, Tracy McNicoll in Paris and Emily Flynn in London
