Do we need the French veto?
Will France risk all-out conflict with the US by using its veto to block an early war on Iraq? Amr Elchoubaki* comments
The UN Security Council session on 14 February threw into relief Franco-US tensions over Iraq and the impact these may have on the US-led NATO alliance. Washington may well be accustomed to the contrariness of countries such as China and Russia. Now, however, it is encountering resistance from the heart of the Western "axis of good" and, moreover, from a Security Council member that has the right of veto and that has military and economic capabilities that put in the first rank of European nations.
The US, Britain and Spain put forward a draft resolution on Monday evening which places the blame on Iraq for wasting its last chance to implement Security Council Resolution 1441. This implies that if the resolution is passed, it will give legitimacy to a US-led war against Iraq.
France's opposition to the early use of force against Iraq may well cast a shadow over the future of Franco-US relations. It also raises the question of whether France will be able to dispel the spectre of war and press its demand that the UN weapons inspectors be allowed to complete their activities in Iraq with the support of the international community.
This is not the first time that France has dug in its heels in resisting US policy, and neither, in all probability, will it be the last. Such stances on France's part have been familiar since at least the time of the late French President Charles de Gaulle. However, though France has often resisted the US it has never succeeded in putting forward an alternative to American power. The world, and the Arab world in particular, has long been confronted with American plans, and many countries have tried to oppose them, such as the former Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation, China, Germany and France. However, such opposition has rarely been successful.
Throughout the Cold War, France maintained its allegiance to the Western capitalist alliance. Nevertheless, while it has never actively taken part in an anti-American international coalition, within the context of its Western connections France has always been more open to the South and to the socialist bloc than have other Western powers. Moreover, France has historically frequently asserted its independence from US policy. In 1966, for example, it left the NATO military command structure, only returning to it in 1995, and following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, France refused to provide arms to Israel. However, at no point has France sought radically to alter the fabric of Franco-US relations, let alone international relations.
However, this is not to say that France's positions have had no effect. To the contrary, they have frequently helped alleviate the despondency of the Arab peoples at US policies in the Middle East. Nevertheless, France had always fallen short of advocating proposals that would effectively counter US designs, whether with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict or to the present Iraqi crisis.
France's recent stance on a possible war against Iraq does not break with this history of limited protest. While this stance represents a reassertion of France's historical desire for autonomy from the US, it is also a reaffirmation of the French tendency to react rather than to act. In this regard, French objections to the automatic use of force against Iraq are consistent with a whole tradition in French diplomacy in the Middle East. Paris has often sought to restrain a trigger-happy US, or temper Washington's blind pro- Israeli bias, or alleviate the consequences of this bias, but it has never set out a comprehensive and viable political vision of its own for the region that would offset US plans.
Nevertheless, today's French position at the Security Council, should it see fruition, could for the first time form the kernel of a "counter proposal" to US global policy, marking the beginnings of action rather than reaction. Perhaps the fact that the French position is supported by the largest economic power in Europe, Germany, enhances the prospects of success for this counter proposal, as does the fact that France has the support of eight other European nations, which together constitute the major proportion of the EU.
Setting the scene for this unprecedented situation was the opposition by France, Germany and Belgium to Washington's request that NATO support Turkey in the event of Iraqi attack. France and Germany quickly followed through on Washington's first defeat in NATO with a diplomatic drive towards Russia, which also declared its opposition to the automatic use of force against Iraq and its support for giving the weapons inspectors more time to complete their operations. France was thus well prepared when it announced these positions to the Security Council on 14 February and received the backing of Russia and China for them, with the result that three of the five permanent members of the Security Council signaled their opposition to US designs on Iraq.
France then came under enormous pressure from Washington, and the venom unleashed against France in the US press outstripped even that routinely vented on the Arabs. The French were described as "cowards", and, in reference to the American lives sacrificed during the liberation of France from Nazi occupation during World War Two, they were also described as "ungrateful". In response, many French politicians declared that France would continue to take a principled stand against the US.
Will France be able to hold out, however? In addition to the political campaigns against it, the country has also been the target of moral and economic arm-twisting from capitalist circles in Europe. France is causing strife with the US for the sake of Arab countries that do not even know their own best interests, such circles have charged.
In its present view of the Arab world, which disregards both the Arabs' history and their future, the US administration has overlooked the capacity of this region to create its own initiatives, which will inevitably depart from those that the US wants to impose either through the threat or the use of force. In order to create such initiatives, the Arabs will need the support of those who respect the peoples of this region and who are willing to lend their support to them.
With this in mind it is important to take stock of two factors that have acquired considerable importance over the past year. The first is the emergence of a comprehensive European project for partnership with the Arab countries in the southern Mediterranean, a project in which Egypt has recently resolved to take part. For the first time, a solid alternative to US policy exists, being one that emanates from a productive interaction between the nations to the north and those to the south of the Mediterranean, not only in the economic realm, but also in the political sphere. Moreover, this framework lacks the heavy-handedness and intimidation that the US habitually brings to bear in compelling everyone to subscribe to its pre- fabricated formulas or else be branded supporters of terrorism.
The second factor is that since the events of 11 September 2001, the US has been unable to come up with a comprehensive programme for the democratic and economic development of this region. Indeed, the only programmes that the US has ready to hand are those that foster violence and hatred. Here, then, is an opening for a Franco- European programme that can assist the Arab world in building more equitable and democratic political systems.
If France uses its veto in the UN Security Council to block a US- sponsored resolution to go to war against Iraq, it will create a watershed in the history of French foreign policy, which up to now has concentrated on "damage control" of the effects of US policy. A French veto would place a possible US-led war against Iraq, and the results that the US hopes to produce through such a war, outside the framework of international legitimacy, and it would sanction further resistance to the US.
However, were France and Germany to resist the US in this way, then they should also strive to offer an alternative vision, and a new mode of political interaction, not only to the peoples of the Arab world, but also to all the peoples of the Northern and Southern hemispheres. This would be an alternative vision and new horizon in which the advocacy of democracy and human rights did not go hand- in-hand with the spectre of war, death and destruction, as it currently does for the US.
* The writer is an analyst at Al- Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
