Opinion Editorials, September 2007
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Nicolas Sarkozy: A New Poodle and a New War?
By Muqtedar Khan
ccun.org, September 23, 2007
After Tony Blair’s retirement as Washington’s poodle and Dan Brown’s stodgy refusal to fill in the vacancy it appears that Nicolas Sarkozy, the new President of France has volunteered for the job. Given the opposition to US foreign policy, particular towards Iraq by former French President Jacques Chirac and former Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, one cannot blame Washington if it might have initially shown some hesitancy towards, Sarkozy’s application.
But Sarkozy is a man capable of vision and initiative. He has seen a glorious future for himself as “the new poodle” and has gone after the job with great enthusiasm. He has embarked on a mission to convince Washington DC that France has not only had a new President, but it also had a new moral conscience. He is sending loud signals that France’s new ethical posture is ready to align and or subordinate France’s foreign policy to the most neoconservative of Washington’s many predilections.
As soon as Sarkozy became President, he sent his foreign minister Bernard Kouchner to Baghdad to express support for US presence there. This was a gesture that surprised both Americans and Europeans. This was his first confidence building measure. He has since upped the ante by banging on the war drums against Iran with abandon. He has described Iran’s nuclear enrichment program as the crisis of our times and insists that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable. If Iran does not give up the bomb then it will be bombed he declared.
Washington is no doubt pleased with this unexpected bonanza. Now they have added leverage inside EU and can pressure it more easily to follow its lead. With France tamed it will become increasingly difficult for China and Russia to stand up to the US demands that the security council levy more sanctions against Iran. More importantly, if the poodle wannabe is willing to echo Washington’s preference with vehemence in EU and other international fora, President Bush’s problematic foreign ventures may gain more legitimacy.
But this is early days. Anti-Americanism runs deep in France and the American contempt for France is not hidden in Washington. Former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld had dismissed France’s international relevance with an offhand comment about “old Europe” and I have heard many senior officials refer to it as a third world country with nuclear weapons. If Sarkozy, who is already being perceived as unpredictable and capricious, finds his overtures towards America affecting his approval ratings, he may suddenly decide change his approach to world politics.
Tony Blair, the original poodle, subordinated Britain’s interests and wisdom to Washington’s ambitions and whims in the fond hope that someday he and Britain would have influence on American foreign policy. But the general consensus in Britain today is that he failed. He was used by Washington. He took Britain to war in Iraq which has neither made Britain safer nor Iraq a model democracy. By the time he resigned, one of Britain’s most talented and charismatic Prime Ministers had become one of its most despised of leaders. There is a lesson here for Sarkozy.
As far as Iran’s nuclear ambition is concerned there are many issues here. First by all accounts, including the CIA’s, it is many years away from nuclear weapons capability and the threat is not as imminent as Sarkozy makes it out to be. Second both former President Jacque Chirac of France and General Abizaid of the U.S. have argued that an Iran with two or three nuclear weapons is not a threat to the U.S. or Israel and can be deterred by the thousands of nuclear weapons stockpiled by the U.S. and hundreds possessed by Israel.
Most security experts argue that a nuclear Iran will not be a real threat. Yes, nuclear weapons may give it immunity from invasion and occupation such as that suffered by Iraq, but it will not give it decisive offensive capabilities. As far as threats to Israel are concerned, we must not forget that it is a state with a more powerful air force than Britain and a secret nuclear arsenal estimated to be next only to the US and Russia. It is also about to receive $30 billion dollars of US armament.
I doubt if France alone is capable of bombing Iran. France has not won a war on its own in over 100 years. The French bravado and the war mongering of its new leaders, is premised on the assumption that while the French will shoot their mouths, the real shooting will be done by the US. The French are actually risking the lives of thousands American soldiers stationed in Iraq and in the line of Iranian retaliatory fire, just to look tough. Fortunately Sarkozy and his foreign minister stand alone in their eagerness for another invasion by the West on a Muslim country. Even in America nobody except Senator Lieberman is eager to bomb Iran.
Finally France’s own nuclear record is quite shameful. It is estimated that France has an estimated stockpile of 350 nuclear weapons. It has conducted over 200 nuclear tests, polluting and poisoning our planet, and has a very dubious history of nuclear proliferation. It is suspected of clandestinely proliferating nuclear weapons technology to Israel. France is also in violation of the nuclear non proliferation treaty’s [NPT] article VI which requires France’s to work in good faith towards complete nuclear disarmament.
Washington has a new poodle for sure; I just hope that we do not have a new war.
M. A. Muqtedar Khan, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Political Science and International Relations University of Delaware Non-Resident Senior Fellow with the Saban Center, Brookings Institution Tel: 302-831-1939 URL: http://www.ijtihad.org
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