France and the Emerging Levantine Axis
It can be seen most clearly in the rapid isolation of Syria as a result of the UN resolutions 1559 and 1636, co-sponsored by France and the United States.
Traditionally, France has positioned itself is a sympathetic rapporteur for Arab/Iranian nationalism in the West and in international venues, with a policy that was tilted away from Israel and toward the Palestinians.
Despite the close ties between Chirac and Hariri, one might have expected the US/Israeli campaign against Syria to recapitulate the one that occurred during the run-up toward the Iraq war.
In 2002, the United States was determined to slake its thirst for the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Instead of adopting the Desert Storm narrative of George H.W. Bush — including the Arab world in the coalition by making nice noises about the Palestinians — the second Bush administration decided to insist — instead of implore — in creating its coalition.
The US ostentatiously ostracized the Saddam Hussein regime, made no secret of its determination to affect violent regime change in Iraq, and went to the UN on the shakiest of diplomatic and evidentiary grounds to insist that the world side with the US or against it.
The world was also told that US action and Israel’s behavior would not be held hostage to any assumed need to conciliate the Arab states to the invasion on the issue of Palestinian aspirations.
As it transpired, most of the world made the wise choice, opting out. Leaving aside the gaping credibility problems of the US case — and the perilous unknown represented by the idea of invading and occupying a country on grounds that were not even preventive, let alone pre-emptive — it seems most nations were unwilling to underwrite a unilateralist campaign for American hegemony in the Middle East with their own blood, treasure, and prestige.
France, of course, infuriated the US government by opposing the invasion and apparently using the crisis to make political hay in the Middle East.
It would seem to be that history should be ready to repeat itself in the case of Syria.
The US approach — harsh, inflammatory rhetoric, condemnation, marginalization and isolation, the use of the UN process to push Syria into a pariah status that would enable sanctions, legitimize regime change subversion, and could ultimately justify military action “to enforce UN resolutions” - is taken from the Iraq playbook.
But Syria is no Iraq.
Any assertion that Syria is a pariah state that threatens the security of the US is risible. The one area in which Syria could contribute to Middle East stability — positively as well as negatively — has been removed by its withdrawal from Lebanon.
Syria appears to be run by a hapless, reformist shnook. It has attempted to reach some sort of modus vivendi with the United States — by agreeably interrogating and torturing our prisoners and, perhaps, by awkwardly attempting to use the flow of jihadniks across the border with Iraq as a bargaining chip. (Syria’s overtures have been rejected by the US, which clearly smells the pungent odor of a regime change opportunity.)
In other words, Assad is no Saddam. And the US emphasis on regime change — and the degraded form of Middle East democracy it brings with it, corruption + fundamentalism + factionalism + sectarian violence — has been so discredited by the disaster in Iraq, one might expect that the French would step up once again to oppose the US and resist attempts to create an existential crisis for Syria by aggressively advancing the Mehlis investigation.
But it hasn’t happened. Russia and China do seem to be reprising their traditional roles — resisting US use of the UN process to assail independent-minded regimes in the Middle East that might otherwise lean toward Moscow and Beijing.
But the French cosponsored the October 31 resolution, which adopted Washington’s favored war on terror rhetoric and apparently pushes Syria to the point that Assad must either terminate his regime by gutting its leadership and prestige by complying with the commission, or resist and provide the US with sufficient casus belli and moral high ground to stigmatize Syria as an outlaw state and destabilize it as America sees fit through sanctions and military action.
France has gone out of its way to deny that Syria has any wiggle room on the issue of Mehlis and the onerous UN process, which appears to make a serious dent in Syrian sovereignty.
Of course, Chirac was extremely close to Hariri, personally, diplomatically, and perhaps financially. But two dozen innocent people (albeit not including in their number a charismatic billionaire politician) are routinely blown to smithereens by both US and insurgent forces in Iraq, and France doesn’t think of turning the region upside down as a result.
And it would seem, by the old calculus, the France would have something to gain by acting as mediator in the crisis, giving Syria some breathing space while a face-saving compromise was worked out, instead of pushing Bashar Assad into a corner.
The US-French collaboration might be an example of the superior Powellized subtlety of the Condi Rice diplomatic team. But it seems more likely the US is responding to — instead of creating — a new orientation in French foreign policy.
Certainly, French politics have lurched to the right in recent months, in domestic as well as foreign affairs.
Most strikingly, France and Israel and, more importantly, Chirac and Sharon, have set aside their personal animosity for the sake of a rapprochement. I would think that these events have been paralleled by a tilt toward US and Israeli priorities for isolation and destabilization of Syria.
The Why certainly has to do with Lebanon. But I believe there is a larger story here, one that explains why France believes that its interests in the Middle East are no longer served by supporting the status quo in Syria.
In recent years, Arab nationalism has lost its most effective practitioners: Hafez Assad, Saddam Hussein, and Yasir Arafat. The US and Israel, in effect, declared war on any state that opposed not only Israel’s right to exist but its prerogative to manage the Palestinian problem as an internal affair, and by sheer bloody intransigence seem close to achieving victory.
The post-Arafat Palestinian authority has abandoned confrontation in favor of accommodation, removing the logical and moral keystone from a regional Arab nationalist foreign policy that relied on unity, European support, and a favorable hearing from the UN to provide the legal and political basis for internationalizing the Palestine issue.
France could have responded to these events with a purely tactical foreign policy, simply seeking to strengthen its influence with states opposed to US policy as something good in itself.
But I think Chirac has decided to embrace a different philosophical vision for France in the Middle East, one that takes into account the defeat of the intifada, the final disintegration of Arab unity, and the failures of the Bashar Assad regime.
Doubtless, France is disappointed with the political and economic drift of Syria. A state seriously out of step with the military and economic realities of the Middle East and unable to reinvent itself through vigorous leadership and judicious reform, it is terribly vulnerable and a weak reed for France to lean on.
And Syria might be worth abandoning if an alternate scenario presented itself to France.
Here’s what I think it is:
France has decided to align itself with the cosmopolitan Middle East: sophisticated, open, vibrant free-market societies, like the society France imagines itself to be.
These include first and foremost Lebanon. France has made the strategic choice to disregard Syrian aspirations in favor of Lebanese ones, to maintain France’s position as a respected and legitimate champion of Lebanese interests.
The second society is Israel. With chances of Palestine becoming anything more than a degraded, miserable satrapy of Israel — and effective regional champions of militant Palestinian nationalism limited to the unnerving theocratic leadership of Iran — increasingly remote, Paris might have decided, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em and pursue conciliation with Tel Aviv and its open economy.
To further this agenda, I believe that France decided to make common cause with the United States — if the US would acknowledge France as the dominant Western power and agenda-setter in Lebanon. Accommodation with Israel — and acquiescence to the joint desire of the Bush and Sharon administrations to do away with Bashar Assad — is certainly the quid pro quo that Washington would demand in return for respecting France’s aspirations in Lebanon.
It would appear that the Syrians didn’t get the message either, or chose to ignore it, relying on France’s traditional forbearance vis a vis Arab nationalist states in general, as demonstrated in 2002, and favored treatment of Syria in particular.
But perhaps the assassination of Rafik Hariri was two things: a final straw and a useful pretext. The Syrians discovered too late to their dismay that blowing up one of Chriac’s personal friends would not be brushed under the rug by France as collateral damage in the endless, Sisyphean struggle to achieve stability and economic progress in the Middle East.
Instead, France decided that a regime that had fumbled its reform opportunities and compounded the failure with such a gross political error –all in an environment of extreme flux and danger — could not serve as an effective vehicle for French interests even if it was somehow able to survive.
Therefore, France took the bold step of abandoning Syria, allying with the US, and identifying its Middle East agenda primarily with the values and outlook of its Lebanese entrepot.
Looking into the crystal ball further, I would say France is betting that a pluralistic, open, and free-market society can replace Ba’athist rule in Syria, perhaps with attention and assistance from France directly and through Lebanon with the help of the Hariri billions, and France will be able to exploit its favored position in Lebanon to midwife a cosmopolitan, coastal, and relatively non-aligned (or Euro-centric) Levantine axis of Lebanon, Syria, and, to a certain extent, Israel and Palestine.
The risks are considerable. France is abandoning an existing Syrian regime that is, if weak, at least pro-French. In return it is betting on a future that might be foreclosed by a new Syrian regime beholden to US guns and money and firmly in Washington’s camp, or fatally compromised by America and Israel reneging on their promise to respect Lebanon as France’s sphere of influence.
Perhaps — though I don’t think the UK’s calamitous experience with the US on Iraq and the Road Map have been conducive to Gallic gullibility — France believes that by siding with Washington it can fill the poodle role more instinctively and gracefully than the pathetic Blair, thereby moderating Bush’s Syria policy, and forestalling violent regime change.
I suspect, in the end, Chirac believes he and France are smarter than George W. Bush and the U.S. and Paris will gain prestige and influence through nimble, clear-sighted policies in the coastal Middle East while Washington blunders from crisis to crisis in the big, screwed up petro-states of Iran, Iraq, and — eventually — Saudi Arabia.
One final note: I wonder if France’s turn away from what I would characterize as continental, big state Arab socialism and nationalism in favor of a vision of prosperous, urbanized, corporatized, and Westernized upper-class Middle East including Israel contributed in any way to the alienation felt by the downtrodden Arab underclass in France — and helped fuel the riots there.
It would certainly be ironic if France, which is now being excoriated by the US right wing for appeasement and unwillingness to acknowledge worldwide jihad on its doorstep, was instead experiencing in part blowback from its embrace of US-style regime-change foreign policy in the Middle East.
Copyright Peter Lee 2005-11-9
Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.
