May 19, 2008 • Vol. 13, No. 34
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Why would France need a base in the Gulf? Is it to foster stability? Protect an ally? Project power into the fight in Afghanistan? On the surface yes, but according to Aviation Week, the answer may really be none of the above:
France is carving out a permanent base in the United Arab Emirates that will let it boost its support of peacekeeping and security activities in the face of increased unrest -- namely Iran -- in the Persian Gulf.
A welcome spinoff of the agreement, for the French, could be a slate of hefty arms purchases, although these are not part of the accord. Industry executives say the Emirates are looking for helicopters, three or four strategic tankers and air defense and other missile systems valued at 2-3 billion euros ($3 billion - $4.5 billion).
This seems to be a common theme with the French: deployments are used as a means of securing lucrative defense contracts. The most recent example of this I can recall off the top of my head came last spring when the French sent a number of Rafale fighters to Afghanistan after they had been upgraded with a new strike package. The Pentagon has been pleading with NATO allies to commit additional resources to the fight there for years, and finally the French obliged. But, of course, there was an ulterior motive. As Aviation Week reported then:
The focus of the development activity was integrating the 611-lb. GBU-12 (Paveway II) and 720-lb. GBU-22 (Paveway III) laser-guided bombs on the aircraft. The latter has larger control surface and offers more range and maneuverability, but French military officials expect to use both.
So the French wanted to show that their new strike fighter was combat-ready--which would be great for the sales pitch. Now they want a base in the Gulf, and with an estimated presence of just 400 French troops at the base, it seems pretty clear that the there is no security mission here--just a sales mission. The U.S. military does a lot of this kind of thing too, but sometimes it seems like the French military serves no purpose beyond facilitating the export of French weapons.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has earned respect and appreciation from conservatives in the United States through his advocacy of a free-market approach to solving France's economic problems. In a further contrast with his predecessor, he seems to actively seek improved relations with the United States. And if reports are true, he's about to make a move that will earn him many more American fans:
President Nicolas Sarkozy and the former model Carla Bruni will marry in February, just over two months after they met, according to the French press.
Their whirlwind romance continued at the weekend, with a private visit to Jordan, at the invitation of King Abdullah. The President, 52, posed for photographs in the ruined city of Petra, with Mme Bruni's four-year-old son Aurelié perched on his shoulders.
The Elysée Palace refused to comment yesterday on a report in the Journal du Dimanche that the couple would marry on 8 or 9 February. Mme Bruni's mother, Marisa Borini, told the Italian press last week that President Sarkozy had asked her for her daughter's hand. "I told him: 'Mr President, I have no reason to refuse you'," Mme Borini said.
There are often 'parallels' in western politics. Analysts look especially to the United Kingdom for political trends that may be emerging in the United States--like when the U.S. and U.K. replaced conservatives Reagan and Thatcher with more moderate conservatives Bush and Major. To the extent that there may be any similarities between U.S. and French politics, this might be a hopeful sign for the underdog candidacy of Fred Thompson. After all, Ms. Bruni is more a trophy wife than Jeri Thompson will ever be.
This isn't good:
France renewed its call for lifting the EU arms embargo against China on Tuesday, saying the punitive measure has long become obsolete and unable to reflect the current relationship between the European bloc and China....
In response to a question on French President Nicolas Sarkozy's demand for the removal during his recent visit to China, a Foreign Ministry official said that the embargo is out of date and does not conform to the EU's policy to build a full strategic partnership with China.
France stands for continued consultations among EU countries and will strive for the lifting of the arms embargo in light of a decision by the EU summit meeting in 2004, the official said....
The French Foreign Ministry official said the lifting of the embargo will be a "political message," which does not mean that France seeks a drastic increase in its arms export to China.
Chirac had angled for years to get out from under the EU-ban on arms exports to China. Not only was there money to be made in selling advanced military equipment, but lifting the ban almost guarantees the French increased access to China's rapidly expanding civil aviation market. Of course, the conditions that led to the ban--imposed after the Tienanmen Square massacre--have not changed in the least. The Chinese people have little more political freedom today than they did nearly 20 years ago, if any. What they have is economic freedom. And that economic freedom has apparently made China an irresistible market for European defense companies starved by declining national defense budgets throughout the EU.
If the Europeans are to lift this embargo without any concession or reform on the part of Beijing in return, it will put the lie to Sarkozy's oft repeated claim that his foreign policy would be a "moral foreign policy." There is no moral case for selling weapons to China, and neither does Europe have a strategic interest in lifting the ban. The motivation is purely economic--and decidedly amoral.
 Bulgarian medics convicted of infecting Libyan children with
HIV arrive at Sofia airport on Tuesday. (Nikolay Doychinovn/Reuters TV) During his recent presidential campaign, Nicolas Sarkozy promised to be the candidate of change, someone who was committed to breaking up France’s sclerotic political system and over-regulated economy. In foreign policy, too, Sarkozy vowed to make France "a shining city upon a hill," a beacon of hope and a staunch defender of freedom, democracy, and human rights around the world. In this context, it seemed to be both smart politics and good morals when the media savvy Sarkozy (who never seems to miss an opportunity to make a splash) appointed Socialist politician Bernard Kouchner, the internationally respected co-founder of French humanitarian NGO "Doctors Without Borders," as his new foreign minister in May. However, barely two months into his five-year term, it appears that President Sarkozy is personally committed to a foreign policy agenda primarily driven by narrowly-defined French national interests, thus leaving his more idealistic foreign minister in the dust.
On Wednesday last week, Sarkozy visited with Libyan homme fort (even the French employ this euphemistic code-word for dictator) Col. Moammar Gadhafi and signed various, wide-ranging bilateral cooperation agreements in critical areas such as defense, health, the fight against terrorism, and civilian nuclear power. In fact, Sarkozy’s plane landed in Tripoli less than 24 hours after his wife Cecilia had left the Libyan capital together with six Bulgarian medical workers who were released from a Libyan prison in what turned out to be major photo-op for France’s telegenic first lady.
Under the terms of the Franco-Libyan nuclear deal, Sarkozy has agreed to provide Col. Gadhafi with an atomic reactor to be used for powering a desalination plant. In return, Libya will provide France’s nuclear power giant Areva with much-needed uranium. It comes very handy that Col. Gadhafi has about 1,600 tons of uranium left over from his country’s clandestine nuclear weapons program abandoned in 2004. Sarkozy’s nuclear deal with Col. Gadhafi--for many years a key sponsor of international terrorism--was criticized both in France and abroad. France’s anti-nuclear coalition, "Sortir du Nucleaire," accused Sarkozy of handing over nuclear technology to Libya in exchange for the nurses. "Civilian and military nuclear are inseparable," the French NGO said in a statement. "Delivering ‘civilian’ nuclear energy to Libya would amount to helping the country, sooner or later, to acquire nuclear weapons."
Continue reading "Germany Attacks France’s Nuclear Deal With Libya" »
 Thomas Enders (left) and Louis Gallois. (DPA) As we predicted back in May, the power struggle between Paris and Berlin over the restructuring at aerospace and defense company EADS has become a first crucial test of the Franco-German relationship in the wake of Nicolas Sarkozy’s election. In essence, the fight over control at EADS is about securing jobs, preserving key technological capabilities, and national prestige.
On Monday last week, following months of political wrangling, Sarkozy and Merkel met at the headquarters of Airbus (Boeing’s arch rival is 100 percent controlled by EADS) in Toulouse to announce a grand bargain designed to calm the waters, streamline EADS’s cumbersome management structure, and allow the company to go back to business. Starting October 1, Frenchman Louis Gallois, now the Co-CEO of EADS as well as the CEO of Airbus, will become the sole chief executive of EADS. His current German counterpart, Tom Enders, will take over as CEO of Airbus, by far the biggest and most important EADS division. At the same time, Ruediger Grube, a top German executive at key EADS shareholder DaimlerChrysler, will take over as the sole EADS supervisory board chairman (a position that is now shared with a Frenchman).
Merkel coolly described the Franco-German compromise--which needs to be approved at an EADS shareholders meeting later this year--as "balanced, fair and economically sensible." The first reaction of other German political leaders, newspaper commentators, and industry analysts was to hail the deal as a welcome step towards strengthening the position of Germany in EADS. As one commentator put it, Tom Enders and Ruediger Grube can now “squeeze” EADS CEO Gallois, who will be sandwiched between the two German executives. In France, the EADS deal was also seen as welcome news, particularly because Louis Gallois will take over as the sole CEO of EADS. Just a week earlier, alarm bells had gone off in Paris amid growing speculation that DaimlerChrysler had managed to secure the EADS CEO post for Tom Enders. Such an outcome would have been the worst case scenario for Sarkozy, whose government directly controls 15 percent of EADS and which is still eager to sideline Tom Enders because of the German manager’s outspoken opposition to any political interference by Paris in the management affairs of EADS.
In principle, the fact that both the French and the German side welcomed the Toulouse deal could be seen as proof that a fair and balanced EADS compromise has finally been found. However, as so often is the case, the devil is in the details. Late last week, the Financial Times Deutschland reported that Louis Gallois will be able to nominate the four new independent members of the EADS supervisory board "in cooperation with" chairman Ruediger Grube. So far, this important element of the Toulouse deal had not been made public. Initially, the addition of outside directors was seen as another step towards making EADS a more "normal" company. However, in a "normal" company, the German chairman Ruediger Grube alone would have the privilege of nominating his fellow board members.
German EADS insiders have, in off-the-record interviews, expressed concern that it is future Airbus CEO Tom Enders, rather than Louis Gallois, who will be weakened by the new management structure. First off, Enders was demoted from being the Co-CEO of EADS to the position of CEO of the company’s Airbus subsidiary. Second, as head of Airbus, Enders (who speaks no French) will have to move to Toulouse, where he will have to deal with Fabrice Brégier, the current Airbus COO and a close confidant of Louis Gallois, and restive trade unions. Finally, Enders joins Airbus at a time when the European plane maker is in need of a serious turnaround, but he has virtually no experience in commercial aviation.
Continue reading "Franco-German Clash Over EADS Comes To An End--For Now" »
The big political news coming out of Europe this week was the election of Nicolas Sarkozy in France. In Washington, the imminent arrival of Sarkozy--already hailed as the “most pro-American president in recent French history” (admittedly, the competition for this accolade is not that stiff)--is seen as welcome news. In his acceptance speech, Sarkozy assured his “American friends” that “France will always be on their side when they need her." At the same time, however, Sarkozy made only brief references to his “European partners,” and he failed to mention Germany--traditionally France’s closest EU ally. In fact, he spent more time making the case for a Mediterranean Union “linking Europe and Africa” than he did talking about the European Union.
 Merkel and Sarkozy, REGIERUNGonline / Kühler So what are the implications of Sarkozy’s election for future relations between Paris and Berlin, the so-called “couple franco-allemand?" In general, German newspaper commentators have welcomed Sarkozy’s win and see it as an opportunity for renewed Franco-German cooperation, especially with regard to the stalled EU constitutional treaty. As the Financial Times Deutschland put it:
The more sedate German chancellor Angela Merkel and the bundle of energy that is Sarkozy appear at first glance to come from two different planets. However, they have certain elements in common. Both have fundamentally favorable attitudes towards the United States. Both favor pragmatism over principles and grand visions in the way they do politics. That surely cannot hurt the European project--many EU citizens are tired of big words anyway.
Sarkozy wants to water down the EU constitution to the necessary institutional reforms and then pass it without a referendum. For Europe it could be the much longed-for kiss that wakes it from the slumber that it has been in since the failed referenda.
Sarkozy and Merkel are also united in their strong opposition to Turkey’s attempt to join the European Union. This is a stunning reversal of political fortunes for Ankara, which, back home, is plagued by massive political tensions between Islamist and secular forces. Just 18 months ago, then-German chancellor Schroeder and outgoing French president Chirac were the most powerful advocates of Turkish EU membership.
Continue reading "Sarkozy and Merkel: Europe's New Couple?" »
The key moment in Wednesday’s French presidential debate came when conservative frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy promised that all handicapped children in France could be integrated into regular schools. Segolene Royal, the Socialist hoping to become France’s first female president, went ballistic. It was "scandalous," she yelled, and "the height of political immorality" for Sarkozy to dare advance such a proposition "with a tear in his eye." Overcome with anger, she added it was precisely the conservative government he has served in for the last five years that eliminated teaching positions she had created to implement such a policy.
It was as if she were determined to prove that, yes, women are hysterical. And he, meanwhile, seemed just as determined to proved that men are supremely rational. While she bristled and argued fiercely, Sarkozy showed an imperial calm. To mitigate his law-and-order image, he made a calculated effort to demonstrate compassion for the destitute and les misérables at every conceivable turn. Her hysteria lasted for three precious minutes that Sarkozy chivalrously offered to her at the end of the debate. Or was that just another cold calculation on his part?
Sarkozy remained impassive--almost apathetic--throughout. Maybe he needed a sleeping pill in the early hours of the morning and it hadn’t yet worn off. But he was awake enough to hold his own in the skirmishes that punctuated the traditional two-hour right-left debate--a high-stakes affair with the final round of voting scheduled for Sunday.
He argued that the 35-hour maximum work week is counterproductive and vowed to “put France back to work.” Royal called the 35-hour law “great social progress.” She said she would submit the defeated European constitutional treaty to a new referendum; he said he would not. She thinks the French people should vote in a referendum on whether they want Turkey to join the E.U. Sarkozy said that wouldn’t be necessary: unanimity is required for a new member state to enter the European Union, and under a Sarkozy presidency France would block Turkey’s entrance. Ségolène was more hawkish on Iran, opposing Iran’s access to any type of nuclear technology, even peaceful. Sarkozy, on his side, supported the idea of applying international sanctions to Iran to prevent its gaining nuclear weapons capability.
The two-hour broadcast on Wednesday was the last confrontation before the May 6 runoff. Even if the majority of pundits started by saying there was no clear winner, viewers seem to have made their mind up quite firmly: an Opinionway poll for Le Figaro, conducted by phone just after the broadcast, showed that 53 percent considered Sarkozy more convincing than Royal, 31 percent the reverse. The online bookmakers were even more lopsided: they now make Sarkozy a 6 to 1 favorite to be France’s next president.
With the first round of the French presidential voting coming up this weekend, Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal keeps dropping in the polls and leftist nerves are fraying. Royal's husband François Hollande, the leader of the Socialist party, has declared in a radio interview with Europe 1 that he's not sure she'll make it to the second round of voting on May 6 (only the top two contenders advance). Hollande says there's “a risk of another April 21st on this April 22--referring to the shock of April 21, 2002, when far right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen outpolled Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin in the first round of the presidential voting, paving the way for Jacques Chirac's overwhelming landslide victory in round two. The specter of Jospin’s debacle has haunted the French left ever since.
Adding to the sense of impending doom: the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur and The Financial Times have both reported the rumor of a secret survey conducted by France's domestic intelligence agency, the RG (or Renseignements généraux), predicting that conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy would confront Jean-Marie Le Pen in the run-off vote, in a replay of the 2002 voting. This rumor was promptly denied by the RG, which is not supposed to meddle in elections. Suspicious minds note that the RG is part of the Interior Ministry, which until two weeks ago was run by Sarkozy himself.
According to an official CSA poll, 42 percent of French voters are still undecided--a figure not exactly comforting to the left, since it may represent an unwillingness to tell survey takers of one's intention to vote for Sarkozy or, worse, Le Pen.
 Ségolène Royal. Photograph: Martin Bernetti/AFP
The French presidential elections, already taking place against the backdrop of last year's rioting in the suburbs of Paris, now have a further drama at their heart: the pitched battle yesterday at the Gare du Nord--a combined railway station and subway station in the heart of Paris. It all started with a routine ticket check of a 32-year-old illegal immigrant from the Congo. According to the interior ministry, the man has had "22 previous encounters with the police, many of them violent." He apparently reacted violently upon being asked to show his ticket and was being taken to a holding room within the station when almost 200 "youths" arrived to fight with the police. The station, an easy trip by metro from the suburbs where the rioting began 18 months ago, became a battlefield from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.
All the candidates have now weighed in on yesterday's events. The Socialists of course used the occasion to denounce conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy’s record as Minister of the Interior--France's top law enforcement position--these last five years. Julien Dray, a spokesman for Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal, said the riots "illustrate the climate of tension, the violence, the gulf that now exists between the police and the population."
Sarkozy reiterated his well known, no-nonsense approach towards delinquency, declaring: "To arrest someone because he is not paying [his subway fare]--for years, no one cared about this, but it is the job of [the police] to do this." He jabbed back at the Socialists: "If Ségolène Royal and the left want to side with people who don't pay for their train ticket, that's their choice."
At best half-hearted supporters of the police, the Socialists now run the risk of being mistrusted by their voters, as in 2002, when Lionel Jospin got eliminated in the first round of the presidential election by ultra-right law-and-order candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen.
 A man tries to break a shop window during riots at Paris' Gare du Nord station on 27 March.
(AFP/Jacques Demarthon)
Bayrou Surges
A recent IFOP survey shows that 61 percent of French voters trust neither the left nor the right. This generalized mistrust surely benefits the centrist presidential candidate François Bayrou, the so-called "new man in the middle," but it would be a mistake to explain it as a rebuke of the traditional political parties. Rather, support for Bayrou can best be understood as evidence of the French fascination with the revolutionary left. In fact, Bayrou calls his movement "revolutionary centrism” and chose orange as the color of his campaign, a clear reference to Ukraine's Orange Revolution. His official website is www.revolutionorange.org.
Further evidence of this fascination with the ultra-left: three of the sixteen candidates who have qualified to run for president are Trotskyites. Those candidates include José Bové, an anti-globalization sheep farmer, Olivier Besancenot, a 32-year-old Parisian mailman, and Arlette Laguiller of the Workers' Struggle party, who regularly denounces "capitalist exploitation" and the "decadence" of French society.
Sarkozy's Frankenstein
Just one month ago, as a coup de théatre, Sarkozy wrote a letter to the satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo offering his support for the publication, which was on trial for inciting Muslim hatred by reprinting the famous Danish cartoons. The only problem: Sarkozy founded the aggrieved party that brought the lawsuit, the French Council of Muslim Cult, a CAIR-like association. With that organization, he created a powerful platform for extremism in an attempt to bolster his support among Muslims. Fortunately for France, the constitutional principle of freedom of speech was upheld when, last week, Charlie Hebdo was acquitted of all charges. Still, Sarkozy has been weakened by the whole affair.
Continue reading "Bayrou Surges, Sarko Struggles" »
Francois Bayrou, who is polling third in the French presidential election, called for a French boycott of the Beijing Olympics if the Chinese fail to rein in the killing by their Sudanese allies in Darfur. China accounts for the bulk of foreign investment in Sudan and supplies the regime with military hardware, all to ensure Chinese access to Sudan's significant oil reserves. The AP reports that Bayrou made the call at "a pro-Darfur rally" (who isn't pro-Darfur?) late Tuesday:
"If this drama does not stop, France would do itself credit by not coming to the Olympic Games," Bayrou told the rally, his office said Wednesday.
"There is nothing easier than stopping this tragedy, this genocide," said Bayrou, who visited Darfur on a private trip in 2005. "This is a political issue because China decided to bring its protection to the Khartoum regime."
I applaud Bayrou for taking such a bold stand--there's a million reasons to boycott the Beijing games, and Darfur is as good as any of them. But it's hard to take this stuff seriously coming from the French, who have been working for years to lift the post-Tiananmen, E.U.-wide arms embargo on China. In fact, the French defense minister was in Beijing this week calling for an end to the embargo, "The ban is nothing but a political and psychological thing," she said. See, it's not that the French actually want to sell weapons to the Chinese--they object to the ban on principle.
Would a Bayrou or Sarkozy administration be any different? We can hope.
Le Pen is back!
 Jean-Marie Le Pen, France's ultra-right perennial presidential candidate, managed to obtain the required 500 signatures from local elected officials before March 14, the deadline for presidential hopefuls. He shocked everyone last time around, coming in second on April 21, 2002, sidelining socialist Lionel Jospin, and guaranteeing a massive victory for Jacques Chirac in the second round. This unhappy (for the socialists) memory explains his difficulty in qualifying for the ballot this year. The names of local officials signing candidates' petitions are now public, and neither Socialist nor UMP officials were eager to give him their blessing.
On March 8, with Le Pen still 67 signatures short, Nicolas Sarkozy declared on the public television channel France 3 that he would “fight to allow Le Pen and Besancenot [a Communist leader] to defend their opinions” by running for president. This magnanimous call was approved by 72 percent of the French public. Nevertheless, Sarkozy was the target of a subtle critique from Chirac in his farewell speech on Sunday March 11: "Never compromise with extremism," he urged the French people. On March 13, Le Monde charged that Sarkozy supports Le Pen’s participation in the election because he has his sights set on Le Pen’s votes in the second round.
Gay marriage definitely banned in France
In another defeat for the French left, on Tuesday, France’s highest court annulled the union of two men. The marriage was consecrated on June 5, 2004, in Bègles, Gironde, by Mayor Noël Mamère. The mustachioed politician from the French Green party declared he was not surprised at all by the judges’ decision but regretted that “the high court had missed an occasion to make law fit society.” The newlyweds and their attorney, Caroline Mécari, are going to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights. But, as the high court said: "Under French law, marriage is a union between a man and a woman,” so it is unlikely Stephane Charpin and Bertrand Charpentier will be allowed to remarry.
The disappointed coupleA Ministry of Immigration and National Identity?
On Thursday March 8, Nicolas Sarkozy proposed the creation of a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity during an appearance on the public television channel France 2. The idea produced a huge wave of protest from the French intelligentsia. The leading left-wing daily in France, Libération, compared this to the Vichy regime’s anti-Jewish laws during World War II, in an article entitled “a Ministry of the Race?”
Among politicians, reactions were prompt and unanimously sharp: François Bayrou, the UDF presidential hopeful, said that “a boundary had been crossed,” Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal called the proposal “rather ignoble” and François Hollande, her husband and chairman of the French Socialist party, added that it was “an outright flirtation with National Front doctrine.” Arnaud Montebourg, the Socialist party spokesman accused Sarkozy of "malice" in "creating a confusion between French identity and immigration.”
The MRAP, an anti-racist association, estimated that such a Ministry would “threaten national cohesion.” According to MRAP spokesman Mouloud Anouit, it constitutes a “real provocation" and sends a "xenophobic" signal. But isn’t French national cohesion more threatened when traditional political parties are out of touch with voters on matters of widespread social concern?
Indeed, in this very case, 55 percent of French people support Sarkozy’s idea for the creation of a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity, with higher ratings among the lower socioeconomic classes. Montebourg, the Socialist spokesman, prefers to imagine that the workers, 56 percent of whom favor Sarkozy’s proposal, are suffering from false consciousness and are “unfortunately not able to understand the essence of this project.” This contempt towards the workers’ opinions may be the reason for the deep unpopularity of the Socialist party among its traditional constituents.
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