THE surprise visit to Iraq by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner provides the most striking evidence to date of the sea change in French foreign policy that has occurred with the election of President Nicolas Sarkozy. It is the first time that a French foreign minister has been to Baghdad since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 — of which the France of former President Jacques Chirac was a vociferous opponent. In place of his government’s hostile approach to post-Saddam Iraq there is now an engagement that is positively friendly. Several Iraqi leaders have been to Paris since Sarkozy’s inauguration as the French government has moved to try and mediate peace in the country.
The transition from sullen onlooker, almost reveling in American difficulties in Iraq, to a willingness to get involved and help the country resolve its conflicts is not a change that will please everyone. They are wrong. It is true that America’s was an invasion that had nothing to do with democracy or weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that it was — and still is — an attempt to bring back colonialism to the Middle East, using a string of lies to justify it. Nevertheless, there is no moral high ground to be gained in sitting back and saying the Americans got themselves into this mess and they can get themselves out of it. That is to turn one’s back on the violence and bloodshed that ordinary Iraqis have to live with day after day and which has forced millions of them to flee the country for the sake of survival.
Sarkozy and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner have shown in their attempts to mediate peace in Darfur, Somalia, Lebanon and now Iraq that political morality is not about clinging to past diplomatic battles or ethical victories but getting involved in the here and now and doing something that could actually improve people’s lives. That is real political responsibility in action.
Of course, the sea change in France’s policy is not just in Iraq. With Sarkozy and Kouchner has come a Franco-American rapprochement the level of which has not been seen even since the pro-American Francois Mitterrand was president. But the fact that Paris is more in tune with Washington than it has been for years and that Sarkozy, who spent his summer vacation in the US where he met informally with President Bush, has said that America can rely on his friendship need not mean that France is falling in line behind the Bush administration or about to jump to its tune. Sarkozy is no poodle. It is simply that he sees no point in challenging the US for the sake of it. That goes a long way to explain why, even if he believes the Iraq invasion a mistake, he thinks that France reacted “arrogantly” at the time.
We can be sure that, come a particular issue, France and the US will find themselves again firmly on the opposite sides of the fence. But for now there is a convergence, certainly on the Middle East. Whether it is effective, or welcome, is another matter.
