After U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003, President George Bush was asked to comment on the French government's diplomatic interference with U.S. military moves. "There are some strains in the relationship, obviously," Bush admitted, "because it appeared to some in our administration and our country that the French position was anti-American."
Few relationships have been as important to America as its relationship with France. Without France, America's independence from Britain may not have been possible. Without America the French would not have emerged victorious in World War I. Without America, France would not have been liberated from Nazi occupation in 1944.
There have been times of tension between the U.S. and France, the worst coming during the administration of John Adams, America's second president. The French government was then concerned that the United States had occupied certain forts along the Mississippi. In July 1797 Talleyrand became the French Minister for Foreign Affairs. He regarded the United States with hostility and suspicion. Furthermore, he wanted to recover the Louisiana Territories in order to rebuild the French empire in North America. Talleyrand warned his colleagues that the United States meant to rule alone in America. If this was allowed to happen, Europe was bound to fall under the sway of America. Therefore, his instructions to the French Minister in Madrid stated: "[American] conduct ever since the moment of their independence is enough to prove this truth: the Americans are devoured by pride, ambition, and cupidity; the mercantile spirit of the city of London ferments from Charleston to Boston, and the Cabinet of St. James directs the Cabinet of the Federal Union."
When American commissioners landed in France to secure an amicable settlement of differences, Talleyrand demanded a huge bribe before he would agree to negotiations. This became known as the X, Y, Z affair. As might be expected, the American's were insulted by Talleyrand's behavior. War between America and France seemed all but inevitable. Meanwhile, Talleyrand explained his policy to his Spanish minister: "There are no other means of putting an end to the ambition of the Americans than that of shutting them up within the limits which Nature seems to have traced for them; but Spain is not in a condition to do this great work alone. She cannot, therefore, hasten too quickly to engage the aid of a preponderating Power, yielding to it a small part of her immense domains in order to preserve the rest." Talleyrand argued for the return of Louisiana to France - all the better to bottle up the Americans, thwarting U.S. "pride, ambition, and cupidity."
Luckily for the United States, Talleyrand's scheme fell apart. The young General Bonaparte was sent to Egypt instead of America. Therefore, France was in no position to fight a war with the United States. Talleyrand was compelled to reverse his policy, and this reversal eventually led to America's acquisition of the Louisiana Territories.
Today the French are not as happy with America as they were in 1944, though relations are not as bad as the crisis of 1798. By no means as cynical as Talleyrand, French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin did something on the eve of the Iraq War that damaged U.S.-French relations. On 20 January 2003, while Powell was waiting to meet Villepin for lunch, the French foreign minister held a press conference outside the United Nations to say that France would not support American intervention in Iraq. Secretary of State Powell was shocked. According to Kenneth R. Timmerman's account in The French Betrayal of America, "As Powell saw the man he thought was his friend appear on the video monitors in the French Ambassador's residence, his jaw dropped...." During the press conference Villepin said that "France's position on Iraq, as on all subjects, is guided by strong principles: law, morality, solidarity and justice." The implication was that America's position was lawless and immoral.
The moral argument made by Villepin was unfortunate in its implications, just as France's role in the oil-for-food scandal gave an altogether different account of French motives. It is now known that French politicians and businessmen took bribes from Saddam Hussein. Many were in business with the Iraqi dictator, having a vested interest in keeping the dictator in power. The United Nations administrators of the oil-for-food program, along with Russian and French collaborators, profited from a scheme that enabled Iraq to evade sanctions. According to Bill Gertz, "the French had worked closely with Saddam Hussein's regime right up to the outbreak of war." After turning himself over to U.S. authorities Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz admitted that France and Russia had secretly pledged full diplomatic support to Iraq - promising to block a U.S. invasion through the U.N. Security Council. While America was accused of coveting Iraqi oil, French and Russian oil companies were negotiating profitable deals with Baghdad. The perceived cupidity of the French was doubly cynical considering the corruption of the United Nations itself. "In this temple of the United Nations," Villepin opined, "we are the guardians of an ideal, the guardians of a conscience." In reality they were guardians of graft.
On purely intellectual grounds, the arguments of the French foreign minister have the ring of plausibility. Despite the fact that Villepin's rhetoric was partly driven by French commercial involvement in Iraq, his reasoning may nonetheless prove valid. Villepin is sensitive to Arab feelings and regional stability. "The outbreak of force in this area which is so unstable can only exacerbate the tensions and fractures on which the terrorists feed," Villepin explained. "Two principles must guide our action: respect for the territorial integrity of Iraq; and the preservation of its sovereignty." But has Iraqi sovereignty or territorial integrity been sacrificed? For that matter, has the situation in the Middle East worsened since America's invasion? For the moment, at least, American troops are holding the line against Saddam's guerrilla fighters and Iranian-backed Islamists. Should America's resolve crumble, a fiasco would certainly follow - and a great unraveling. To be sure, many French executives may wish for such an outcome, given the money that would flow to Paris. But is the argument of instability - the argument made by Villepin before the United Nations - a valid reason to uphold a tyrant?
There is another issue here, of course. It is the larger issue of unity within the Western alliance. If the United States stands isolated in the wake of the Iraq invasion, then France deserves a share of credit for that isolation. With the Western alliance split over the Iraq issue, a disastrous parting of the ways could occur in the near future. With the renewal of open dictatorship in Russia, with the growth of Chinese military power, can the West afford a split between the U.S. and France, or the U.S. and Europe?
Another point needs to be made, and this point deserves careful consideration. The corruption of the French Fifth Republic is not the issue. France's attachment to Saddam's regime was not a special case of French wickedness. All Western governments are sensitive to big business, and big business long ago began to make deals with totalitarian governments. The business community in the United States is presently courting disaster in China just as the French courted it in Iraq. Dictator regimes are gangster regimes. You do not go into business with gangsters. They will rob you in the end, or they will rob someone else and put you in a compromising position. And this is exactly what Saddam Hussein did to the French and Germans. If a dictator weds himself to Western financial interests, he purchases a kind of insurance policy or amnesty. He wins friends and influences the influential. America and France have not come to terms with this reality.
The possibility of financial corruption has always been a basic feature of democracy - in France and in America. In 1896 William Lecky described the U.S. Congress in the following way: "All that can be safely said is, that personal dishonesty in the exercise of legislative powers ... prevails largely and unquestionably in America." Today we must reckon with the fact that dictators can use the everyday corruption of the democratic process to advance their agendas. The Chinese government has done so in Canada, as the 1997 Sidewider Report documented. Saddam Hussein did so in relation to France and Germany.
In the future, France and America must come together with the understanding that both countries are vulnerable to economic influence by regimes that are hostile to Western values and long-term interests.
