Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=November 20, 2002

TYPE=DATELINE

NUMBER=7-36948

TITLE=France: Punching Above its Weight

BYLINE=Steve Baragona

TELEPHONE=(202) 619-0720

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR=Neal Lavon

CONTENT=

DISK: DATELINE THEME [PLAYED IN STUDIO, FADED UNDER DATELINE HOST VOICE OR PROGRAMMING MATERIAL]

INTRO: Experts say the issue of weapons inspections in Iraq may again divide the United States and France in the United Nations Security Council. France and the United States were at loggerheads throughout nearly two months of diplomatic wrangling at the U-N over a resolution demanding Saddam Hussein disarm. France led the opposition to the United States which wanted a strongly-worded resolution with the threat of military force. In this edition of Dateline, Steve Baragona looks at how Iraq has complicated the relationship between the United States and its oldest ally.

TEXT: France resisted wording in the U-N resolution that it believed would provide the United States with an automatic pretext for war with Iraq. Although France voted for the resolution's final draft, the debate over Iraq may be just beginning. Justin Vaisse of the Brookings Institution Center on the United States and France says there will probably be questions about whether to take military action.

TAPE: ACT 1 VAISSE :20

"If Saddam declares, for example, he has, let's say, twelve Scuds, and we know he has fifteen, will we go to war for just three Scuds? Or if we know he has, for example, eighteen chemical weapons or biological weapons laboratories, and he declares only fourteen, will we go to war over just a couple of labs? That's the real question that lies ahead."

TEXT: France has been less eager to go to war with Iraq than the United States. That attitude has angered many American conservatives, like Frank Gaffney, President of the Center for Security Policy, and former assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan.

TAPE: ACT 2, GAFFNEY :08

"What the French are doing is running interference for one of the most despotic tyrants on the planet."

TEXT: Frank Gaffney says France opposes attacking Iraq because it has a long commercial relationship with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

TAPE: ACT 3 GAFFNEY :33

"France has seen its relationship with Saddam as strategically useful and, I think, profitable, insofar as he has been willing to buy many things that the French have been willing to sell him. And at considerable profit, I suspect. I believe the French have been, over the years, selling him armaments of various kinds. It certainly has been the case that the French have been interested in his oil, and in the hard currency that it generates. And I suspect that practically anything Saddam wanted that they had would be on offer."

TEXT: Others note that the United States has also sold Iraq weapons. And certainly the United States has interest in the flow of Middle East oil. But Camille Pecastaing at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies says what France is really interested in, is respect.

TAPE: ACT 4, PECASTAING :10

"The commercial interests are totally secondary. I think they will be accept [sic.] to sacrifice any economic interests if it is for the sake of having the country appear glorious and dominant internationally."

MUSIC: THE MARSEILLAISE, ESTAB FADE UNDER

TEXT: Mr. Gaffney says this quest for glory is an essential, and problematic, part of French national culture.

TAPE: ACT 6, GAFFNEY :17

"It's in the nature of the French, I'm sorry to say, to be prickly. And to be disagreeable with the United States where they believe it advances the glorie d'la France, as they say. The glory of France."

TEXT: Some analysts say that desire to pursue the glory of France is the legacy of former French general and president Charles de Gaulle.

SOUND: DEGAULLE ACT.

TEXT: Charles de Gaulle led the French resistance movement against the Nazis during World War Two, then served as French president in the late 1950s and 1960s. He was considered strong-willed and fiercely nationalistic.

In 1966, President de Gaulle withdrew France from the military structure of the North American Treaty OrganizationNATObecause he didn't want France to be subject to American military command. Analyst Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations says President de Gaulle was saying France was willing to maintain a strong military to defend Europe. . .

TAPE: ACT 7 KUPCHAN :12

"But we don't want to be bossed around by NATO and the U-S. And therefore we won't be in NATO's integrated military structure, which, after all, was by design, commanded by an American."

TEXT: Mr. Kupchan says France's diminished role in the world after World War Two is also a factor in today's friction between the United States and France.

TAPE: ACT 8, KUPCHAN :43

"I think it has deep roots initially in French self-perception and the desire of the French to continue to project their voice on the global stage many decades after France lost its position as a great power and gave up its overseas empire. And it was really President Charles de Gaulle who tried to flex French muscle or 'punch above its weight', if you will."

TEXT: But the Brookings Institution's Justin Vaisse says it's a mistake to blame every strain in the U-S-France relationship on President de Gaulle's legacy and French ambitions.

TAPE: ACT 9 VAISSE :20

"American diplomats are always ready to think that every disagreement is a legacy of de Gaulle and of his willingness to be independent, especially from the U-S. And this legacy has endured. The issue is that we should be allies, but not necessarily aligned, and we should devise our own path."

SOUND: RADIO ANNOUCEMENTS ON END OF WORLD WAR TWO, FADE UNDER FOR:

TEXT: Since the end of World War Two, France has always sought to devise not only its own path, but a path for other independent countries as well, says Camille Pecastaing of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

TAPE: ACT 10, PECASTAING :20

"During the Cold War, there was the Soviet bloc, and the American bloc, and France would be some kind of third way, and would sort of speak for all those who were not part of those two blocs. And it's a continuation of this. France's position it took with the resolution against Iraq was to speak for all the ones who are opposed to the United States but did not dare resist American pressure."

TEXT: But David Calleo of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies says that despite occasional disagreements, France has always recognized itself as an ally of the United States.

TAPE: ACT 10, CALLEO :20

"But they're also, of course, very independent. And in many respects they have been the leaders of Europe in the postwar period, and Europe does have interests which are not contrary to ours, necessarily, but which are certainly distinct. And the French have not been shy about asserting both their own national interest and what they take to be Europe's interests."

TEXT: Mr. Calleo says Europe is taking charge of its own interests in the post-Cold War period by expanding the European Union, adopting a common European currency, and working to establish an E-U military force. He says this could make Europe into a superpower to rival the United States.

The Bush administration's initial lack of enthusiasm for multilateralism worried France, the rest of Europe, and the world, according to the Brookings Institution's Justin Vaisse. He says the president's position against the Kyoto treaty on global climate change, the International Criminal Court, and other multilateral institutions alarmed America's European allies.

TAPE: ACT 11, VAISSE :19

"So not only France, but all also in all of Europe you had this kind of backlash, this reaction that people felt the U-S used to be a power that was sharing its power, that was benefitting to everybody. And now since it was asserting its own national interest, that it was much more of a hegemon, and much less of a leader."

TEXT: Mr. Calleo says France and others felt the United States was out of bounds in pushing for war with Iraq without explicit U-N consent.

TAPE: ACT 12 CALLEO :27

"People feel this is the end of any kind of legal order in the world, and that the United States is asserting a kind of unilateral right to be judge and jury and so on. It runs against the whole current of what people have tried to do in the world for the last 100 years or so, which is to build up some kind of structure of international law, cooperation, some kind of concert of powers through the U-N. Which most people think is the hope of the future."

TEXT: But former U-S assistant defense secretary Frank Gaffney says dealing with Saddam Hussein is what international law should be all about.

TAPE: ACT 13 GAFFNEY :35

"He is, I think, the sort of danger to international peace that if there really were such a thing as international law would be understood to be clearly outside it. And that it would be the obligation of the international community to deal with in effective ways, rather than in the sort of feckless ways that the French have insisted upon. Usually with much bravado about how they are upholding the standard of international law."

TEXT: Regardless of the implications for international law, the Council on Foreign Relations' Charles Kupchan says France's stamp of approval would be helpful if military action in Iraq is necessary.

TAPE: ACT 14 KUPCHAN :15

"Particularly because the French are seen as a country that is trying to resist American power. So having the French on board I think would lend important significant legitimacy to an American attack.

TEXT: And Guillaume Parmentier, author of Reconcilable Differences: U-S-French Relations in the New Era, says France's role as a constructive critic of American policy is a valuable one.

TAPE: ACT 15 PARMENTIER :10

"France has a tendency to say things, and sometimes the Americans don't want to listen. Obviously, this doesn't make us a particularly easy ally, but probably a rather useful one.

TEXT: For Dateline, I'm Steve Baragona in Washington.

MUSIC: FORD MUSTANG, SERGE GAINSBOURG, SNEAK, PLAY TO TIME.