http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/gaffney1.asp
Dec. 28, 2004 / 16 Teves 5765
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
False friends
During the recent presidential campaign, Sen. John Kerry assailed President
Bush for alienating key U.S. allies, evidence he maintained of the
incumbent's
lack of foreign policy acumen and an arena in which the challenger insisted
he
could "do better." Implicit in this critique was the belief that such allies
-
notably, the French - were anxious to be our friends, if they were not
mistreated by America's leader.
In fact, it is increasingly clear the French government under President
Jacques Chirac is bent on policies antithetical to U.S. interests. They are
not
simply anti-Bush, they are anti-American and anti-Atlaniticist. The latest
example is Mr. Chirac's determination to have French and other European
weapons
manufacturers arm Communist China as part of what he has called "a necessary
rebalancing of the 'grand triangle' formed by America, Europe and Asia."
This is, of course, hardly the first time that French policy toward the
United States has been defined by balance-of-power considerations. Indeed,
the
decisive assistance of France to the American Revolution did not reflect
affection
for those bent on ending royal misrule - a phenomenon its own king would be
murderously subjected to soon after. Rather, the motivation was to weaken
France's age-old rival, Britain, by helping to cut loose her American
Colonies and
sapping her wealth in a costly war to bring them to heel.
Just a few years later, though, weakening the United States seemed in
France's interest. France engaged in predatory acts against American
shipping and
backed subversion here at home, culminating in the so-called XYZ Affair that
roiled Franco-American relations in this country's earliest days. In the
19th
century, the French helped Southern secessionists and would have recognized
their
independent Confederacy had timely and decisive Union victories not made it
clear which side would prevail.
Nearly a hundred years later, President Charles de Gaulle repaid U.S. help
in
the liberation of France by cultivating close ties with the Soviet Union and
expelling NATO headquarters from Paris. Jacques Chirac was no less troubled
by
notions of alliance solidarity when the French government reportedly assured
Saddam Hussein it would oppose any U.N. authorization of the use of force
against his regime.
Seen against this backdrop, Mr. Chirac's calculation that Europe must
strengthen China militarily at America's expense is not just a one-off
betrayal of an
ally. It is part of a geostrategic tradition that renders France, at best,
an
unreliable partner in international affairs and, at worst, what the French
call a "faux ami," or false friend.
Unfortunately, as this column has noted repeatedly in recent months, France
is striving to impose its strain of anti-Americanism on other European
states
that have traditionally preferred the trans-Atlantic partnership to French
or
Franco-German domination of their Continent's affairs. The principal vehicle
for enforcing the latter over unwilling states - notably, Great Britain and
nations Don Rumsfeld has described as "New Europe" - is the new European
Constitution.
If this draft constitution is ratified by voters in Britain, France and a
half-dozen other countries, the European Union will have authority to
"define and
implement a common foreign and security policy, including the progressive
framing of a common defense policy." The U.S. can forget about "special
relationships" and strong bilateral ties, let alone "coalitions of the
willing," with
states bound by such a compact.
Even before such an authority gets conferred upon unaccountable bureaucrats
in Brussels, Paris is working on a dress rehearsal: its bid to "rebalance"
American power by augmenting that of Communist China. France and the EU's
foreign
policy chief, Javier Solana, are pushing hard for lifting an embargo on arms
sales to Communist China imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre. All
other
things being equal, the French and Germans expect, with help from a
double-dealing British government, to dispense by next spring with
opposition to such a
step from the Netherlands, New European states like Lithuania and the
European Parliament.
The implications of European weapons manufacturers joining Russia in arming
China to the teeth are quite worrisome. Thoughtful observers, like acclaimed
author Mark Helprin, warn of China's rising application of its immense
accumulated wealth to strategic advantage. The latter include: neutralizing
U.S.
dominance in space and information technology (Chinese acquisition of IBM's
personal
computer division is not an accident); moving aggressively to dominate the
world's critical minerals and other resources (especially those relevant to
its
burgeoning energy needs); establishing forward operations in choke-points
and
other sensitive areas around the globe (including, in our own hemisphere, in
Cuba, the Bahamas, the Panama Canal, Brazil and Venezuela); and acquiring
financial leverage by purchasing vast quantities of U.S. debt instruments.
Retaking Taiwan is an immediate target of such power. Dominance of Asia and
the Western Pacific are in prospect. And China aspires to exercise global
superpower status in due course, if not short order.
For years, Washington has paid lip service to - and often actively promoted
-
European unification. If, however, the upshot of unity is to be, as seems
likely, a Continent whose policies are dominated by anti-Atlanticist France
and
Germany and contribute to emerging threats elsewhere, the United States must
make discouraging such developments an explicit part of its foreign policy.
Mr. Chirac's determination to provide weapons that may be used to kill
Americans in the event China decides to attack Taiwan should be a wake-up
call.
False friends are not allies. They should not be entitled to the
preferential
treatment accorded the latter. Mr. Bush is right that democracies
traditionally
don't fight democracies. But when they equip authoritarian regimes to do so,
they must pay a real cost.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in
the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's
free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. heads the Center for Security Policy.
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