France and the US: Best of Friends, Worst of Enemies

Likened to an enduring but troubled marriage, spats in the 225-year-old Franco-American alliance are nothing new. But the Bush Administration may now intend a long estrangement.

By Marsha Johnston in Paris

On a trip to Europe in the first week of May, Washington's trade envoy Robert Zoellick dismissed the idea of official trade sanctions against France for its opposition to the war in Iraq. US Attorney General John Ashcroft recently made his first official visit to Paris to prepare for the upcoming G8 summit, which France will host. Ashcroft and French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy agreed on a set of 11 steps to further improve a "nearly daily" collaboration in preventing terrorism.

So, after a period of the worst relations the two countries have seen in almost 40 years, is an outright thaw on the cards between Paris and Washington? Don't bet on it.

Despite several recent diplomatic overtures from France, the Bush Administration has yet to clearly indicate that it has accepted France's opposition to the war with Iraq as a mere difference between allies. Nor has Washington signaled an agreement to move on, although it has done so with other opposing nations, including Germany and Russia, which were vehemently opposed to the war.

Signs of renewed goodwill are appearing everywhere like spring flowers - aside from France that is. In response to a recent request by Henry Champ, a reporter with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, for an assessment of US-Canadian relations after Canada's anti-war stand, Colin Powell said: "our neighbors are sovereign democracies who can determine what their positions should be. Obviously, we are going to press our case and hope you will join us in common cause on a particular issue. But with respect to Canada, with respect to Mexico, with respect to Chile, these are close friends of ours - all three - and we will work our way through with this. We are not plotting in the basement of the State Department or the Pentagon or the White House or anywhere else how to get even with these three friends."

Indeed, at the recent conference in Paris hosted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Chilean Finance Minister Nicolas Eyzaguirre told The Inquisitor that the tensions that had existed leading up to the war have now eased. Chile, we were told, has no problem in its current trade negotiations with the US.

By contrast, just weeks earlier, Powell warned that the Bush Administration should "look at all aspects of [its] relationship" with France in light of French opposition to the Iraqi war. More pointedly, on a recent trip to Moscow, US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice reportedly quipped that the way to deal with the so-called "non-nein-nyet" anti-war group of three was to "punish France, ignore Germany and forgive Russia."

This unequal treatment is easily explained, according to Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Center on the United States (CFE) at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) in Paris. "It is because France took a visible position, trying to summon support for refusing the resolution," says Parmentier. "Because France was successful - there were not nine votes (required for the Security Council to authorize war) - the Americans were peeved. The Germans hid behind the French, and the Russians kept reasonably silent, so they were opposed but did not militate. That's the official [Washington] position."

Inevitably, geopolitics, military power and spheres of influence also come into play. In other words, some allies are more important not to upset than others. "Russia is an indispensable partner in the nuclear field and useful in central Asia," Parmentier remarks. "And the Germans have established an influential network over the years between the US Congress and foreign policy community and the Bundestag (German parliament). There are 11 institutes working on German-American affairs in Washington that were set up after World War II. France's network is aging and not as influential," he concludes.

Parmentier's view is that if France had not threatened to use the veto it enjoys as one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, then other opponents would not have become emboldened to speak out against the idea of disarming Iraq by force.

US officials have implied that France cynically sabotaged the US-led coalition out of selfish commercial interests. Interviewed on the US's Fox News network as to whether the US had underestimated the depth of the commercial relations between Jacques Chirac and Saddam Hussein and the governments of France and Iraq, Colin Powell said: "I don't think we underestimated it. We knew that there were various commercial relationships and France had business relationships with Iraq over the years."

It is true that since 1995 under the United Nations' Oil for Food program, France has led some other countries, including Australia, Russia, China and India, in supplying Iraq with industrial equipment, automobile parts, agricultural products and food. But France's trade with Iraq was actually only around half of the US's during recent years - a fact ignored by both the Bush administration and much of the US media.

In 2001, bilateral trade between France and Iraq totaled just $1.8 billion, down from the previous year due to a 31% drop in petroleum exports and a 65% increase in France's exports to Iraq. As a result, France's trade deficit with Iraq was $372 million, according to the French Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry.

These numbers shrink into insignificance, however, when compared to trade between the United States and Iraq. In fact, the US was by far Iraq's biggest client, buying $5.82 billion in imports, mostly oil, in 2001 and running a trade deficit of $5.77 billion, according to the US Census Bureau. US imports from Iraq fell to $3.59 billion in 2002, resulting in a trade deficit of $3.56 billion. But that was still twice the level of France's trade with Iraq.

In this light it's difficult to justify US anger on the basis of France seeking trade advantage with Iraq. Rather political differences, and the feeling of friction between the two countries and cultures, are still there. Washington is suspicious of France and Paris doesn't trust Bush's policy motives. In fact, Parmentier contends that the differences go back to 1944, at the time of the D-Day landings in Normandy, when he says the US prepared to set up a system whereby Allied military officials would take charge of France. As historians have noted, however, General de Gaulle's own officials beat them to the punch by setting up their own commissions, and later full government, throughout occupied France.