The French Way (38 page)

Despite French pretenses about killing the beast, the Americans succeeded in achieving the reform of the CAP stipulated at Blair
House. Theatrics, manipulation of the EU, and brinkmanship earned France little in the way of concessions.
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If there was a French victory in the Uruguay Round, it was, as we shall see, over “the cultural exception” in which France enjoyed support from other Europeans, but it lost the battle over farm subsidies.

Besides the major clash provoked by the Uruguay Round there were minor dustups over issues like investments, arms sales, and mergers; for example, the French, invoking restraint of trade, stood behind the EU to block a proposed merger of aerospace giants Boeing and McDonnell Douglas in 1997. But a more acute source of trouble was American efforts at imposing international trade sanctions against Cuba and Iran.

Washington's fixation on isolating and weakening the Castro regime led to the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 that threatened lawsuits against foreign companies investing in formerly owned American properties in Cuba. In this case France was not intimidated. Foreign Minister Herve de Charette charged that the legislation was “directly contrary to the rules which govern international trade” and the trade minister added that France would join in any reprisals the EU might take against the United States and also take steps of its own if French firms were harmed.
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Other Europeans rallied to France's side. French officials threatened to take the Clinton administration to task before the World Trade Organization (WTO) to test the legality of the Helms-Burton Act.
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A year later France signed an agreement with Havana that protected French firms investing in the island. In the end France resisted American pressure, insisted on maintaining normal relations with Cuba, and the United States had to back down.

In 1996 President Clinton signed the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, which imposed penalties on foreign companies investing more than $40 million in these countries' hydrocarbon industries. Iran and Libya had been singled out as sponsors of international terrorism. Here again the French were not intimidated. President Chirac pointedly told his ambassadors that “a great country's unilateralism is threatening the international rule of law.”
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At the G7 meeting in Lyon he warned Clinton
that the trade sanctions were unacceptable and they were going to produce a cycle of action and reaction that might damage the unity of the alliance.
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Charette snidely added that “behind the intentions and the moralizing often lie powerful economic interests.”
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One senior White House official dismissed the opposition of the French and other allies to the policy of tough trade sanctions, noting that “it breaks the rules, but it works and the President says, ‘we're doing it. In the end, they'll get over it. We're America, and they'll get over it.'”
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The American hegemon spoke. But the French oil company Total escalated the conflict by signing a $2 billion contract to develop natural gas in Iran. Secretary of State Albright declared that the deal was “beyond her understanding” and accused France of undermining U.S. efforts at isolating Iran.
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The White House proposed to enact sanctions against the French multinational, but Europeans objected. A spokesman for the EU warned that retaliation against Total was “illegal and unacceptable” and would trigger the renewal of Europe's complaint to the WTO over sanctions.
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Neither the United States nor the EU wanted to bring the issue before the WTO. In 1998 the Clinton administration conceded and waived sanctions against Total. With the help of the EU, France had scored a small victory over Gulliver.

The Indispensable Nation

“America stands alone as the world's indispensable nation,” intoned Bill Clinton at his second inaugural address.
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Or, as he had proclaimed months earlier, “We cannot become the world's policeman, but where our values and our interests are at stake, and where we can make a difference, we must act and we must lead.”
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Gone was the reticence in foreign affairs of his first administration replaced now by a sense of American triumphalism. This new assertiveness translated into a series of setbacks for France and a high level of transatlantic discord at the end of the decade in spite of Chirac's courtship of the White House.

Most of the bilateral problems emerged from basic policy differences that were acute enough to antagonize officials, engage the media, and, at times, arouse the public. The concerns besides NATO reform were the UN, Africa, the Middle East, and, at the end of the 1990s, war again over Iraq and the former Yugoslavia (Kosovo).

Reappointment of Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a graduate of the Sorbonne and a French favorite, as secretary-general of the United Nations should have been routine since every member of the UN Security Council, save one, recommended him. But that one was the United States, which vetoed his renewal in 1996. His critics, some in the White House, castigated Boutros-Ghali for involving the U.S. military in the violence in Somalia and for interfering with the operations of NATO in Bosnia; they also viewed him as aloof and arrogant, and as a lousy administrator. Madeleine Albright, then delegate to the UN, had had several altercations with the secretary-general. Republicans in the U.S. Senate blamed him for the shortcomings of the organization and the U.S. Congress withheld payment of its funding obligations unless he was removed. Jacques Chirac personally championed Boutros-Ghali's reappointment, pointing out his overwhelming support in the Security Council. But the indispensable nation had made up its mind. Reform of the UN was impossible under Boutros-Ghali, the White House argued, and Congress had dug in. Faced with American determination, the phalanx of the secretary-general's supporters collapsed and France had to submit. Boutros-Ghali withdrew his name and the U.S. choice, Kofi Annan, became the new secretary-general.

In Africa, the United States and France worked together in supporting human rights and democracy, as they did in Somalia in 1992. But they were also rivals. As the United States became more engaged on the continent, France became more defensive.
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Francophone areas were the country's
domaine reserve
, and these African nations lent credence to its claim to global influence and legitimated its seat on the UN Security Council. As one French official boasted, “Thanks to this tie, France will never be a Liechtenstein or even a Germany.”
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In the
mid-1990s the Clinton administration became more actively engaged in Africa, openly criticized France for its postcolonial habit of propping up repressive regimes, and advocated opening up of the continent's economy.
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Officially speaking, the Quai d'Orsay denied that it ever considered Africa as a domaine reserve, saying it welcomed America on the continent if it meant an increase in foreign aid. Yet some French officials, especially among the military and those most closely associated with maintaining the notorious patron-client networks that Mitterrand had condoned, spoke of an “Anglo-Saxon conspiracy” aimed at replacing France in central Africa.
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Washington and Paris were at loggerheads over Zaire and Rwanda, where they acted at cross-purposes in ending civil strife that eventually turned into genocide. In central Africa, France's influence “drastically declined” to the advantage of the United States and various local interests.
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French forces were also withdrawn from Gabon, Chad, and the Central African Republic and the number of troops scaled down on the continent. In Africa, France and the United States both cooperated and contended, but where they competed, France lost ground.

In the Middle East, France saw its once formidable influence in places like Lebanon dwindle. It tried to become a player in the Israeli-Palestinian question without much success. In 1996 President Chirac toured several Arab capitals and Israel searching for a role for France in the ongoing peace negotiations. In Damascus he spoke about the reasons why France and the European Union should be part of the negotiations, noting that “people have to get used to a return to the presence of France, in particular in this part of the world. We have interests and ideas and are determined to be seen and heard.”
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The U.S. government was equally determined, and its interests and ideas were different. It did not want the French government to complicate its mediation of the crisis. Israel also suspected Chirac of bias, and his visit to Jerusalem was marked by some tense moments. In the end the United States prevailed in preventing France as well as the EU from inserting themselves in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
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The testy character of transatlantic relations took the form of a media uproar in late 1996. According to the
Washington Post
, Herve de Charette's snub of Warren Christopher—that is, his inopportune departure at the NATO dinner—had been an “incredible display of petulant behavior.”
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The gesture was supposedly an act of Gallic retaliation for being spurned over NATO's southern command, for subverting French dominance in Africa, for vetoing Boutros-Ghali's reappointment, and for monopolizing the Middle East peace process. The
New York Post
chimed, in accusing the Chirac government with playing the anti-American card to bolster its political standing at home. In response the French Consul General in New York denounced the
Post's
insinuation about domestic politics, arguing that the issues were purely diplomatic and that a good alliance partner was not a sycophant.
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The American media, according to
Le Point
, were not just expressing their irritability but showing the French who was in charge and telling them to fall in line. And
Le Nouvel Observateur
opined that Washington simply expected France to implement its decisions: “Paris is either the spokesperson for the losers, or the grain of sand that fouls things up, or, in the best of circumstances, initiates policies that are often effective, but that are ultimately credited to the United States as in the Middle East or Bosnia.” The bad blood between Charette and Christopher continued, clouding a gracious effort by the French foreign minister at making amends by staging a sumptuous dinner party for the outgoing secretary of state.
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War Again: From Desert Fox to Kosovo

This media firefight served as a prelude to a far more substantial transatlantic skirmish over Iraq at the end of the decade. France and the United States had fought together in the Gulf War, but that did not mean they agreed on how to manage Saddam Hussein after the liberation of Kuwait. Earlier differences reemerged. For example, France
sided with the United States in trying to use sanctions to force a chastised Baghdad to comply with UN resolutions controlling its nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. But later when Paris sought to weaken sanctions Washington suspected it did so simply to protect its oil interests.

In general France sought a more conciliatory policy toward Iraq, much like it had in 1991-92. From a geopolitical perspective, Paris hoped to maintain its standing in the Arab world and did not want to see Baghdad so weakened that it would invite Iran to exploit its ties with the Shi'a population. There was, in addition, a major difference in opinion between Washington and Paris about how to treat rogue states like Iraq.
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The French believed sanctions had been ineffective: the Iraqi people suffered, Saddam survived, and the West's standing with the Arab world deteriorated. They concluded that negotiation and trade were the best ways to bring Iraq back into the international fold. In contrast the Americans thought engaging, rather than containing, Saddam was either naive or cynical. It would assist the dictatorship economically and eventually fail, or at least it would not succeed before the rogue state had wreaked massive damage. Engagement was also considered a cover for gaining advantage in the competition for Iraqi oil. The best approach for the regime in Baghdad was isolation and punishment, if necessary using military might. Thus, while the French were eager to weaken or drop economic sanctions against Saddam, U.S. Secretary of State Albright insisted they remain in place as long as it took to bring the Iraqi dictator to heel.