HOW FRANCE WILL ENGAGE AMERICA
By Michel Gurfinkiel
New York Sun, NY
May 2 2007
PARIS – Next Sunday, the French will elect their president.
Strangely, foreign policy has been largely absent, so far, from the
campaign. Insiders say this will be the case again tonight, when 20
million viewers will watch Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolène Royal engage
in their only debate on television.
Both sides have agreed that most voters are chiefly interested in
domestic issues: unemployment, rising public debt, immigration, and
law and order. But other factors come into play. Many foreign policy
issues are seen as too volatile and divisive. On Iran, for instance,
hard-liners and appeasers can be found both on the right and the
left. The same is true of Europhiles and Euroskeptics.
Both candidates may also fear that some issues may get too personal.
Ms. Royal has been attacked for her lack of experience in foreign
policy. And Mr. Sarkozy has been targeted as a "foreigner" – he is
the son and grandson of immigrants from Hungary and the Balkans –
and as an "agent" of America and Israel. One caricature to be found
on the Internet refers to "the infernal triangle: Washington- Tel
Aviv-Sarkozy" and features Mr. Sarkozy’s face in the middle of a Star
of David.
Discussion about foreign affairs will return, however, shortly after
May 6. What can be expected from Mr. Sarkozy or Ms. Royal?
Mr. Sarkozy is the most pro-American political leader France has had
for decades. Whereas Gaullists from General de Gaulle to President
Chirac have made clear since the 1960s that the "national independence"
of France or Europe’s emergence as a "world power" entails resisting
"American hegemony," Mr. Sarkozy has insisted on the common culture
and values that bind America to France, or America to Europe. His
foreign policy will be closer to Prime Minister Blair’s or Chancellor
Merkel’s than to Mr. Chirac’s. The problem is that few of the top
people around him share his views in full or have been trained in
approaching world affairs in this way.
There is speculation that Mr. Sarkozy will appoint a former Gaullist
foreign minister and prime minister in the 1990s, Alain Juppe, as
foreign minister. Not a bad choice. A dry, cold, no-nonsense man, Mr.
Juppe undertook as foreign minister to modernize France’s foreign
office, the Quai d’Orsay, and in particular to give younger diplomats
a better, less prejudiced, understanding of America.
He also engaged in discreet talks to bring France back into NATO,
which he achieved as prime minister in 1976. In 2003, Mr. Juppe was
reported to be lukewarm about France’s anti-American stance on Iraq.
When he was deprived of his electoral rights for three years due
to financial crimes committed as an aide to Mr. Chirac, he moved to
Canada as a visiting professor, a highly symbolic indication that he
believes in trans-Atlantic links.
On the other hand, Mr. Juppe, who is now mayor of Bordeaux and
could be elected speaker of a conservative National Assembly, may
not be quite interested in the Foreign Ministry or any other Cabinet
position. Other pro-American politicians have been mentioned as Mr.
Sarkozy’s foreign minister, from Patrick Devedjian, who is of Armenian
descent, to Pierre Lellouche, of Jewish-Tunisian descent.
Another likely scenario is that Mr. Sarkozy would select one of the
defeated third party candidate Francois Bayrou’s supporters who have
endorsed him for the second ballot.
Ms. Royal was seen last year, when she made her meteoric rise to
the Socialist Party’s leadership, as a promising Blairite, even on
foreign affairs issues. Her finest hour, in this respect, was her
trip to the Middle East last October. She agreed to talk to Hezbollah
representatives in Lebanon, but the next day, in Israel, she made a
trenchant statement against Iran’s nuclear ambitions, going so far
as to question the mullahs’ right even to civilian nuclear facilities.
The only flaw in the picture was her failure to visit America.
Apparently, she was reluctant to pay a visit to President Bush, as
Mr. Sarkozy did in September. Instead, she made grandiose plans for a
"women’s summit" with Hillary Clinton, but the junior senator from
New York was not interested.
This year, as the campaigning gathered speed, Ms. Royal has been
gradually taken over by old left orthodoxies. She had bitter words
about Mr. Sarkozy "shaking hands with Bush." And she mentioned
Jean-Pierre Chevènement as her mentor in foreign affairs, if not as
her foreign minister.
Mr. Chevènement, a socialist minister under President Mitterrand
and the leader since 1993 of a minuscule party of his own, the
Citizens Movement, is arguably the most rabid anti-American and
pro-Arab political leader in France. In 1991, he resigned from the
Ministry of Defense in order to protest France’s involvement in the
first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In 2003, he supported
Mr. Chirac’s stance on the second Gulf War. In 2005, he opposed the
E.U. constitutional treaty, which Ms. Royal supported.
Some say Ms. Royal’s infatuation with Mr. Chevènement is opportunistic
and merely designed to attract the growing Muslim vote.
According to a CSA/Cisco poll, 64% of French Muslims backed the
socialist candidate on April 22, 19% supported Mr. Bayrou, and only 1%
rallied for Mr. Sarkozy.
–Boundary_(ID_3gNxLvUCBUYyqn+bDCYj+A)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
