THE GAMES LEADERS PLAY

France’s high-toned opposition to a war in Iraq is more than just principle. It’s also a careful calculation of national power

Artículo de Christopher Dickey en "Newsweek" del 1-3-03

March 1 issue — A curious little manifesto called "The Cry of the Gargoyle" appeared last year in French bookshops. Its author, Dominique de Villepin, had for seven years kept a low profile in public life but loomed large in the Elysee Palace: the adviser, confidant, kindred spirit and chief of staff to President Jacques Chirac.

NOW HE WAS to become the foreign minister, and his pamphlet would set the tone for the newly re-elected government. Exhortative and mystical, much of it sounds like the Biblical Book of Lamentations. "Today orphaned, uncertain, easily disenchanted, France still burns with a desire for history," he wrote. The time had come "to block this funeral march" and "leap forward."
Today, there’s no doubt as to what Villepin, 49, is trying to block—the Bush administration’s march on Iraq. As for his leap: with Chirac, he seeks to vault France back onto the global geopolitical stage. Standing up against America, Chirac has looked like the leader, if not of all Europe, then of all Europeans opposed to war. For that reason, it’s not likely that he can, or will, back down, even if presented with an opportunity. Chirac thinks he’s on a roll, even tapping into Africa’s leadership at a summit in Paris last week to bill himself as Mr. Anti-Hegemon.
Whatever the sincerity of their reservations about this war, Chirac and Villepin, like 19th-century swordsmen, have been spoiling for a fight with Washington. France should be an "ardent defender of her rank," Villepin writes in "Gargoyle." Such sentiments are only fueled by the likes of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who turned what might have been a courtly, largely symbolic duel into a grudge match. His talk about France and Germany as "the Old Europe" played on all the phobias and resentments that Chirac and Villepin harbor about being has-been leaders of has-been countries in the face of American hyperpower. Their reaction, says one French government insider, was "humiliation and vexation."
"Chirac has been pissed on a variety of issues for a long time," says an official who sits in on high-level European Union deliberations. Quite apart from Iraq, Chirac has been irked by what he sees as U.S. interference in European affairs—pushing eastward expansion, promoting Turkey’s problematic candidacy, playing NATO against the European Union. Then last month came the so-called letter of eight, signed by present and future members of the Union who proclaimed their support for the United States on Iraq. That was followed by a so-called Vilnius letter from 10 new members of NATO. It may have been signed in Lithuania, but the French saw it as Made in the USA. For Chirac and Villepin, Eastern Europe’s leanings toward Washington are intolerable. Europe comes first, NATO second and America last. Would-be Europeans, if they want to join the club, had better remember that.

Not everyone in Chirac’s government is happy with the way he and his foreign minister seem to egg each other on. Insiders remember how, in 1997, Villepin prodded Chirac to call early elections, in which the president lost control of the government. Nor are they happy to see the more level-headed prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, eclipsed. The fear is that Chirac will once again get "carried away," encouraged by the patrician, dashing Villepin. At the end of the day, Europeans want peace and reason. When that’s what France represents, Chirac will find a following. But if Villepin thinks he’ll restore his country’s Napoleonic or Gaullist grandeur simply by playing the spoiler against Washington, he may land France out in the cold.