Vive L'Indie - Why is

Vive L'Indie - Why is France still a diplomatic power? Because they were a significant nation on the winning side of World War Two, of course, back at the very end of their significance as a world power.

Today, they're an anachronism - an embarassing one.

Many pundits have asked - why is France a permanent member of the UN Security Council, but not India?

Thomas Friedman has an excellent article on the subject today:

Throughout the cold war, France sought to differentiate itself by playing between the Soviet and American blocs. France could get away with this entertaining little game for two reasons: first, it knew that Uncle Sam, in the end, would always protect it from the Soviet bear. So France could tweak America's beak, do business with Iraq and enjoy America's military protection. And second, the cold war world was, we now realize, a much more stable place. Although it was divided between two nuclear superpowers, both were status quo powers in their own way. They represented different orders, but they both represented order.

That is now gone. Today's world is also divided, but it is increasingly divided between the "World of Order" — anchored by America, the E.U., Russia, India, China and Japan, and joined by scores of smaller nations — and the "World of Disorder." The World of Disorder is dominated by rogue regimes like Iraq's and North Korea's and the various global terrorist networks that feed off the troubled string of states stretching from the Middle East to Indonesia.

And I love the closing graph:

If France were serious about its own position, it would join the U.S. in setting a deadline for Iraq to comply, and backing it up with a second U.N. resolution authorizing force if Iraq does not. And France would send its prime minister to Iraq to tell that directly to Saddam. Oh, France's prime minister was on the road last week. He was out drumming up business for French companies in the world's biggest emerging computer society. He was in India.

There's a thesis going around - Chirac and Schröder are opposing us in Iraq because they have something dreadful to hide.

Posted by Mitch at February 9, 2003 10:51 AM