I'm not sure I'd use the word "evil", perhaps uniquely pernicious. I am also tired of arguing an issue that should not seriously be a matter of debate.

The real questions at this point should concern how we should "contain" France - through engagement or through isolation? I am personally undecided here. I find attractive the idea that the Bush administration (or any U.S. administration) should isolate a country whose policies are deeply and irremediably immoral as well as hugely destabilizing of the global order. On the other hand, it might be better to limit the damage the French are capable of through engaging them, giving them an "outlet" for their puerile anti-Americanism and delusional obsession with their own grandeur, and closing up the space in which they can cynically "triangulate" against the U.S. in the wanton pursuit of their deeply cynical and destructive commercial and geopolitical interests. (I know Trent will probably disagree with me here, but I think Clinton might have managed this better than Bush.)

Nah, they're not evil. They just enjoy conducting joint military exercises with evil. I wonder what the Taiwanese think about the French taking part in the Chinese government's attempt to intimidate their elections...

Greed, Avarice, if you like, is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Since the leaders of France have shown such an liking to it, at the expense of everyone else, and with no gain to anyone else, I dare say I find it hard not to argue that the French leadership is evil.

Trent - nice to see you posting again.

I still suspect that even this level of 'financial incentive' was a second-order consideration.

Had France made a deal with the US (and stuck to it) before things got to the UNSC, it might have been possible that something could be salvaged for the French.

Why risk the whole pot in a breach with the US when it was quite plain that war was inevitable? Which was surely obvious to French professional diplomats.
It is possible that Chirac and de Villepin overode such advice, out of domestic political calculations, arrogance, incompetence, frivolity, and financial interests.

But there is, IMHO, a slightly more reasoned explanation (though still based on an underlying irrationality).

A goal of French foreign policy for 40 years has been to promote a Franco-German alignment, with France in the driving seat.
With the end of the Soviet threat, it became practicable to aim even at engineering a complete between Germany and the US in foriegn and defence policy.
Once it became evident that Schroder's domestic political troubles made him eager to play up and then pander to German pacifism, and to placate the anti-American left, France was given a diplomatic opening that was worth paying even a very high price to exploit.

Gabriel,

The French government is well aware of the WMD break out potential of a UN Sanctions free Iraq. They were inking the contracts to sell Saddam the precursor materials for those WMD.

They just didn't care what the results of that would be. That is one of the great signs -- and the greatest sins -- of evil.

The only good thing about having the Frogs in alliance with us would be that we'd have Frogs as test targets for their own military export goods.

Weren't the French occupied in the war before last?

Do you suppose they will have the honor again?

As I recall in that war we got to bomb France and be their ally.

Does it get any better than that?

Except of course for the American generals during the liberation wishing France was on the other side?

America would be honored to bomb France again.

Ummm, I am no fan of the French government, that's for damn sure, but how big are the contracts for American oil companies in Iraq gonna be now that the U.S. has invaded and occupied the country? Would it be in the $100 billion ballpark I wonder? Also, how exactly are the oil companies gonna carry out those contracts if terrorists inside Iraq keep killing those same Americans trying to help rebuild the country. Oh oh, I know -- let's keep tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed there indefinitely! That will "stabilize" Iraq while the U.S. oil companies exploit -- ummm, sorry, I mean "develop" -- Iraq's petroleum export capacity so it can earn "vital" foreign currency. I mean, to the victors go the spoils, right? All this will take place so that Iraqis can sell fat-assed -- oops, I mean "big boned" -- Americans oil for their SUVs. Meanwhile, some unlucky poor kids will get shot at and bombed by frigging terrorists so the oil companies can get their pound of flesh. A moment to be proud of -- we sacrifice the lives of innocent American kids, driven by patriotism and economic necessity to enlist in the armed forces, so that Ivy League oil-industry execs can make a lot of money, which they probably will then funnel to off-shore entities to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Great plan. Shame on all of you. The Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves! John

I suppose that puts France on par with Haliburton, who loves doing business with terrorist supporting countries through subsidiaries set up in oil-rich regions of the world such as Grand Cayman.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Feb04/Leopold0224.htm

john:
Iraq does need oil for foreign exchange; that's a reality. Companies are needed now to repair and operate oil facilities. Later other contracts will be arranged for additional exploration and development. Whether you term this exploitation or development is irrelevant. It is necessary for Iraq.

The current repair and operations contracts are being handled by the Coalition Provisional Authority; in effect by the US Defense Department. However, the long-term, and much bigger, development contracts are being held back until Iraqi self-government is established.

The corporations involved will make profits; that's what business deals are for.
The difference from the contracts with Saddam (setting aside the nature of the regime) is that those provided illicit extra profit through selling oil contracts below value.

This benefitted the regime and its foreign clientage network at the expense of the Iraqi people.

Do you believe that similarly rigged contracts can be arranged by a conspiracy of oil companies and administration officials, and go undetected by Congress, foreign and domestic media, interested groups and individuals, foreign governments, and the future Iraqi government itself? Unlikely.

As selling "fat-assed ... Americans oil for their SUVs" I can't claim to be an expert on the size of American posteriors. What I do know is that oil is fungible.
Oil is bought and sold in a global market. So the global price depends on global supply and demand, and oil goes to whoever buys the stuff. And the size of their arses is neither here nor there.

IIRC, the northern fields, lacking export pipelines, are serving Iraqi needs. The presently exporting oilfields are in the southern provinces of Basrah, Maysan, Dhi Qar and Al Muthanna.

The troops there aren't Americans, they're the Multi-National Division (South-East) ie 3(UK)Division. That is the British, along with Italians, Dutch, Danes, Lithuanians, Czechs, Norweigans, Portuguese and New Zealanders.

I wouldn't be surprised if Chirac made that decision -- of not going to war -- for a range of reasons that surely includes other reasons than the ones he disclosed, would NOT be surprised, so maybe it was in the French's best interests NOT to go to war, although France has been cut out of many of the post war deals, which they wouldn't if they HAD gone to war -- their rulers knew the US wouldn't like it and there would be economic losses involved if they dared disagree with the mighty USofA.

So, all in all, surely this might be true, still what does it change? The US went to war because it was in its best economic interest, argued it was b/c Iraq was a threat (defensive wars are not really on, are they? though, !) because of WMD, but then they claimed they did so in the name of democracy....

The big powers: France, US, UK... have the same flaws, they do everything for power and money -
France is no different from the US in that respect ...

But they have so much LESS military power, it makes anything the US does a lot more worrying, don't you think?
And the US did whatever it wanted regardless of the UN interdiction, so....

Where has the US ever managed to install a democracy? Nicaragua? Chile? Southeast Asia?
Come on: NOWHERE! check your history books, you people who live on the land of the braves!!!

Kathryn:
"Where has the US ever managed to install a democracy? ... NOWHERE"

You are mistaken.

France.
Germany.
Japan.

In addition to considerable efforts to encourage democracy in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
And, yes, I do know all about the support of various unsavoury regimes during the Cold War. That was a time of hard choices, and even mistakes, which nonetheless preserved democracy in Western Europe.

You say "big powers: France, US, UK... have the same flaws, they do everything for power and money"
Maybe. I'm sure the reason the US and the UK landed troops on the shores of France was for the valuable cheese monopoly, and restored its liberty entirely by accident.

As I have said in a previous comment, Iraq is not, and will not be, under the present dispensation, the river of ill-gotten oil wealth that it was under Saddam, but simply another ordinary producing country in a global oil market.

As for an ethical comparison of France, the US, and the UK: take the cases of Rwanda, Somalia, and Sierra Leone and study at leisure.

Kathryn said "The US went to war because it was in its best economic interest"

Oops, the old "No blood for oil argument".

No point in debating that for the millionth time.

France is no different from the US in that respect.

Bullshit. Let me break the rule that I had set for myself - in my first comment above - about not "arguing an issue that should not seriously be a matter of debate".

- I think Timmerman is right to point out France's irresponsible dealings with Iraq, which included conditional oil contracts, huge infrastructure deals (construction, roads, utilities, etc.), as well as illegal weapons sales and maybe even bribes under the UN oil-for-food regime. This was a major part of French policy to undermine the sanctions regime, which was merely an aspect of its broader policy of triangulating against U.S. policy and promoting its commercial and strategic interests with corrupt regimes abandoned by the U.S. (Saddam, Iran, Sudan, Cuba...).

- I don't believe, as Timmerman, charges that this was a primary reason for opposing the Iraq war, but this would hardly seem to matter. Rather, I think France took a strategic (triangulating) gamble that it would oppose U.S. policy in the control of WMD, proliferation, and fighting the War on Terror, by aligning itself with third world dictatorships, the Arab world and the transnational third world/alter-globalization movements. The payoff is to come in the form of more defense, commercial and infrastructure contracts with third world countries, in particular oil rich Middle Eastern countries, and enhanced geopolitical prestige gained, it is hoped, at the expense of the U.S.

- Before dismissing this view out of hand (and I can see why the average American would have trouble accepting this precisely because the U.S. could not pursue its interests in this manner without major condemnation by the rest of the world and by its own citizenry), consider what France has accomplished in the last twelve months (a non-exhausive list):

• In the months following the Iraq war, France (through its foreign minister Dominique de Villepin), has courted repeatedly most of the Arab world (Sudan, Egypt, Iran, Palestinian Authority, Syria, Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco), filling the void and the "triangulatable" space left behind by the U.S., in order to improve its diplomatic and commercial relations by presenting itself as an alternative pole for opposing U.S. strategic interests. (Just google de villepin's itinerary over that period and this will become clear.)

• Those interests now clearly extend to opposing U.S. policy for self-determination, liberalization and human rights in the Arab/Muslim world. Chirac recently announced in a joint meeting with Mubarek that it was opposed to the U.S. policy of encouraging liberalization, denouncing this as "interference" and favoring an "alternative" model of political development from within. Just as France's "alter" model for "combating" terrorism by opposing U.S. "militarism" is based on nothing of substance, it's "alter" model for political development in the Middle East would also appear to be little more than a front for promoting French commercial and strategic interests in the region, with the complicity of authoritarian regimes perfectly willing to agree to this "alter" political model.

• Chirac's 62% favorability rating in Morocco in the recent Pew survey of Middle East attitudes (I am citing this figure from memory), which is incredibly high for a former colony naturally indisposed to the French Republic, is part of the pay-off for its "alter" "third worldism".

• Through its policies, France has recently won defense contracts throughout the Middle East; all of which should be assumed to have been procured through bribery (you'll just have to take my word for this), including sales of Leclerc tanks to the Emirates and Saudi Arabia (at a loss, I might add).

• France has also announced a new policy of selling advanced arms to China and, just a couple of days ago, conducted joint military exercises off the China coast ahead of Taiwan's elections. This was strongly protested by Taiwan, with whom France is embroiled in a dispute over French bribery to Taiwanese officials in connection with the sale of naval vessels. (The contract included a French warranty of no bribery and indemnification of Taiwan for the full amount of any bribery discovered, all to the great embarrassment of the French state.) As the U.S. is the guarantor of stability in Asia and protection of the democratic government of Taiwan, the French military exercises conducted with China were directed as much at the U.S. as at Taiwan.

- What allows France to engage in such conduct much more freely than the U.S. is (i) a thoroughly corrupt business culture and state bureacracy (that has a paranoid view of itself as being in a fierce Machiavellian competition with a U.S. business establishment presumed to be equally or more ruthless), (ii) the demonization of an imperialist United States as a distraction, and (iii) the passive support of its citizenry.

- This last point - the passive support of the citizenry - is very important to understand: unlike the U.S., France has effectively no political or citizen control over its foreign policy, which is a purely executive function. This stems from the relationship of the citizen to the State: whereas state power is perceived as inherently dangerous by Americans in our protestant liberal/libertarian tradition (I realize this description is imperfect and incomplete) of scepticism towards official power, the French centralized state is glorified by its citizenry as the ultimate protector of citizen interests, rather than as a danger to them. As a result, the citizenry has little interest in the details, substance or moral dimension of foreign policy, which are fully delegated and blindly entrusted to this Collective Protector. The French media may for example report on the sales of billions of dollars of Leclerc tanks to Saudi Arabia (mentioned above), but only as a matter of national economic pride in generating profits for French industry and jobs. (Despite France's obsolete 19th Century political paradigm defining society as a struggle between evil capitalists and exploited workers, the fact is that GIAT Industries, which produces the Leclerc, is state-owned and one of the main purposes of selling military hardware at a loss to Arab states is to prevent lay-offs in the failing defense industries.)

- When the French president or prime minister makes an official state visit to a foreign country (China, India, Brazil, Cuba, etc.), the major item of interested reported by the French media is how many billions of dollars in defense and infrastructure contracts are signed in the course of the official visit, the more the better. This is reported by the media with a shockingly crass stomach-turning obsession - crass, that is, unless you are French, in which case you are proud that your government is working for you. You really have to live in France to experience this. This unconsciously obscene state bureacratic commercialism in relation to foreign policy was exemplified by France's naive attempt to have Woody Allen persuade us to "fall in love again" after the Iraq intervention last year, an example of a major failure in cross-cultural marketing policy.

- One must keep in mind that the French do not oppose American foreign policy because of a high-minded objection to intervention, militarism, commercialism, etc. Nor is there any democratic or citizen checks on its foreign ventures. Otherwise, France could not have carried out its policy of installing and removing African dictators over the past 40 years resulting in three dozen interventions on that continent. Otherwise, France could not have been complicit in the backing of the Hutu genocide of the Tutsi in Ruanda. Otherwise, France could not have sold bomb-capable nuclear technology to Iraq in the 1970s and 1980s, it could not have sold 8 billion dollars in military equipment; it could not have been training Iraqi pilots in flying Mirage aircraft at the time of Iraq's invasion of Kuweit; it could not have conducted bombing raids over Iran on behalf of the Hussein regime; nor could it now be openly advocating sales of advanced military hardware to China or conducting exercises to intimidate Taiwan (Cf. the Rumsfeld trip trumpeted by the left as supposed evidence of U.S. complicity in the Hussein regime.)

- Rather the French view themselves as in competition with (a more ruthless) United States. The French naturally assume that everybody else is at least as cynical and morally depraved as they are, the only difference being that, in their view, the U.S. plays the game more viciously than they do, acquiring an unfair advantage.

- I was listening to a debate over U.S. policy on French radio between MPs of the center-left (socialist) opposition and center-right coalition in power. After expressing universal agreement among themselves that the imperialist Americans were, after all, only interested in oppressive militaristic domination of a helpless country, seizing its oil reserves (in a bid now thought to have gone "awry", given the economic absurdity of such a thesis) and, of course, enriching "Halliburton", they proceeded to debate the "real" issues. This, by the way, is entirely reflective of the French establishment's degree of contact with reality and ability to constructively engage the challenges of the modern world.

It is important to understand that, whereas the French are intimately familiar with Bush's "sixteen words" about uranium in Africa, the "imminent" threat, the "Halliburton" contracts, Blair's "forty-five" minutes, all duly provided as "news" by the U.S./U.K. media for recirculation with appropriate spin in the French media, the French citizenry know no more about the ins and outs of French foreign policy than you or I know, for example, about the agreed schedule for eliminating textile tarriffs in Southeast Asia under the WTO accords. Indeed, French foreign policy is viewed by the citizenry as a purely technical matter for unfettered implementation by the State of the interests of the collectivity - no questions asked.

- Anyone who says that the U.S. (or the U.K. or Canada) acts just like France has no idea what they're talking about, is making entirely unwarranted assumptions, and simply has not studied the question in any depth. (A good starting place would be to look at the history of France's alliance with Israel, followed by its abandonment of that country for the sake of procuring market share in oil-rich Arab countries, or the real history of arms sales by France, Russia and China to Iraq.) Consider also the recent French reaction (public, official and media) to the scandals involving bribes in the sales of frigates to Taiwan as well as the Executive Life affair in California, settled at a cost of 720 million dollars (from memory?). In the first, there is no public or media curiosity to speak of about which government officials were using bribes to procure these contracts. The sole preoccupation is how much the state (and thus the citizenry) stands to lose in the lawsuit brought by Taiwan (currently the subject of French military intimidation, as mentioned). In the Executive Life matter, it took six months for the opposition even to raise questions about the propriety of the government using the public treasury to negotiate protection from criminal prosecution for Chirac's personal friend and billionaire François Pinault. If you think that France is like everyone else, then you would have no trouble imagining George Bush using U.S. government resources to negotiate protection for Bill Gates in a European criminal proceeding without a word of objection from the public, the Democrats or the media.

The U.S. and most of its allies respect certain bounds of mutually shared collective interest that France will freely overstep in ways that put it closer to the Soviet Union and Pakistan than the U.S. or Great Britain. (Consider that France has in the past sold nuclear technology to two Middle East regimes: Israel and Iraq.) I am not sure that "evil" is the right word, but France is, among Western powers, a virtual rogue state.

Gabriel, wow, amazing piece. bravo

Gabriel, double wow. I needn't have bothered even trying compared to that! :)

More on the French and how they are "like everyone else" From Strategypage.com

March 16, 2004: Rwandan President Kagame accused France of direct responsibility for the 1994 genocide of at least 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus by supplying weapons, logistical support and even senior military planners to the ethnic Hutu regime. Diplomats and witnesses have often accused France of tacit involvement, but Kagame's comments are the most explicit to date.

And so another Guest Blog piece is about to be spawned out of our comments section...

Gabriel,

I believe you err in your constant use of the term "France" rather than "the group of families comprising the then-current senior leadership of the current French government".

The difference is that between the national interests of France and the personal financial interests of this particular group of families.

I am talking about bribes, kickbacks, lucrative corporate appointments for close relatives and similar matters. The currently dominant French political elite use their political power over French foreign policy as a vehicle to enrich themselves through foreign contracts, notably but not exclusively those involving weapon sales and oil.

Tom

I understand the elite you're referring to, but I'm actually talking about a much broader phenomenon pretty much across a lot of social classes and categories (working, professionals, artists, teachers, etc.) and virtually all of the political parties. This concerns a widely held attitude towards the proper function of the state (and citizen) in foreign policy matters. I agree that within that broadly accepted system, you then do have a more narrow elite that controls the system more closely, for example the press establishment.