March 19, 2003

Le fiasco, c'est moi The

Le fiasco, c'est moi

The sands continue to shift in the aftermath of Germany's ill-conceived alliance with "Operetta-style Gaullism."

In Berlin, a reporter talking to a German official heard that the Schroeder government initially believed Iraq was a one-issue crisis, narrowly confinable to disagreement on the military undertaking and the painful although surmountable problem (in the middle term) of Germany's nonparticipation.

But reacting in fear of isolation, the official suggested, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's willingness to subordinate Germany to a French view of confrontation with the United States on many wider fronts has brought the government to a position it now finds an awkward fit with Germany's long-term interests, and to a place outside the realm of the two men's anticipation when they ran for re-election on a pacifist platform last September.

In very less specific terms, this notion of things having gone too far appeared to suffuse remarks on Monday by Fischer that American policy was absolutely nonimperial in nature, that the United States was the irreplacable element of global and regional security, that there was no alternative to good trans-Atlantic relationships and that he well understood how the new East European membership of the European Union could have a "very different view" of their security than this or that EU founding member.


And as for ze Flench:
These concerns have made for the first real breach in the French media's amen chorus that has punctuated their president's breakaway run since January from the last half-century's Western notions of international order.

For the first time, French publications, reporting on the disarray of political analysts, are now asking: Who are we against, Saddam or Bush? Or: Where was the sense in Chirac's promising a veto of a new UN resolution when such a gesture was not an absolute necessity? And even: How did France manage to reject British revisions to its draft resolution last week hours before Iraq did?


Germany, as the sidekick, will surely have an easier road over which to come crawling back. The damage France has done itself is far more serious, but I'd still guess that, for better or worse, eventually they'll be allowed conditional re-admittance to the fold in exchange for a few humiliating mea culpas.

(via Iain Murray.)

Posted by Dr. Frank at March 19, 2003 08:55 AM | TrackBack