Re: [A-List] France: Latin America (Support for Argentina)

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Stratfor writes:

Over the past year, France has seen its influence significantly
diminish in the arena of global affairs and within the European
Union. This has greatly upset France, which likes to think of
itself as a leading voice in the world; after all, it has a
permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council and, with Germany, is
a co-founder of the European Union.

MK: No wonder there is a crisis of intelligence in the US if this is the
best that the "retired" spooks can come up with. And to think that people
pay for this stuff. France's "influence" is hardly diminished, unless by
"global affairs" you really mean "Capitol Hill". Indeed, for such an
inconsequential state it attracts a lot of attention, however negative. But
this exercise in wishful thinking/lazy prejudice ignores the increased
effort of Chirac within the EU to push ahead with deeper integration -- the
fact that, largely at France's behest, the "directorate" of the big three
member states has begun to take charge of key areas of the EU agenda, not
least in military matters (see this list's archives on this).

Stratfor continues:

Lately, France's perception of its place in the world has taken a
beating. First the Iraq war, which Paris opposed bitterly in a
joint alliance with Berlin, demonstrated that French foreign
policy did not match the European Union's foreign policy. France
and Germany tried to make their anti-war position the common EU
foreign policy, but seven countries voted instead to back the
United States. In the end, French President Jacques Chirac and
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder wound up looking to all the
world like a pair of curmudgeons who the Bush administration and
many of their EU peers simply ignored.

MK: Yeah, sure. And both quaked when mighty Portugal told them where to get
off. Actually "all the world" was rather more impressed by the refusal of
Chirac and Schröder to go along with the Bush administration's bloodlust, if
15 February 2003 was anything to go by. Perhaps Stratfor could exercise some
effort investigating the extent to which the "coalition of the willing" was
bribed into being.

Stratfor continues:

More recently, Paris has realized that the inclusion in May 2004
of 10 new EU members -- several of which also supported the Bush
administration on the Iraq war and the fight against global
terrorism -- will weaken French influence within the union even
more. The incoming members have made it clear to Paris and Berlin
that they will not let the Franco-German alliance dominate them
on foreign policy or anything else.

MK: This is the hope of the US ruling class writ large. Isolate France and
you have a chance of keeping the EU under control, such that the expensive
mopping up operations required after US military adventures are outsourced
to a compliant dogsbody.

Stratfor writes:

In recent months, Paris has intensified a far-reaching diplomatic
offensive designed to make France a key force in a multipolar
alliance of developing powers like China, Russia, India and South
Africa. This week it was Latin America's turn. French Foreign
Minister Dominique de Villepin made a five-day trip to Chile,
Argentina, Brazil and Mexico from Feb. 2 through 6 to lay the
foundations of a new alliance between Paris and the four
countries in Latin America that France perceives as having any
real importance to its interests.

<snip>

France clearly views Brazil as the Latin American pillar of the
new alliance that would support multilateralism against U.S.
unilateralism. European diplomatic sources in Buenos Aires told
Stratfor on Feb. 5 that the Chirac government views Brazilian
President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva as the most credible and
geopolitically relevant head of state in Latin America today.
Argentina and Chile are perceived as being pulled along in
Brazil's wake. Mexico is viewed as important because of its
membership in the North American Free Trade Agreement and the
free trade agreement it already has with the European Union.

Although de Villepin's trip didn't produce any major political
announcements or economic agreements, France's new foreign policy
foundations in Latin America were laid. They include securing
Latin American support for a major overhaul of the United
Nations, most particularly the U.N. Security Council. Paris might
not be happy about the prospect that new EU members will create a
more vigorously, pugnaciously democratic union, but it does want
an expanded and more democratic U.N. Security Council to prevent
the United States from unilaterally imposing its will.

<snip>

Ultimately, the new relations Paris is pursuing in South America
likely won't translate into a surge in French investments and aid
there. Nor will France change its position on some policy
positions, such as in agriculture, that are dear to South
American hearts. However, the presidents de Villepin met with
were happy to host him. At a time when the Bush administration
isn't paying much attention to the region, de Villepin's tour
probably felt like balm on a sunburn.
...................................................................

MK: The unadulterated smugness and self-satisfaction of this prose is
nauseating. There has been enough accumulated on this list recently to
suggest that the developments dismissed above are in fact gathering some
momentum, and for deeper structural reasons that have also been discussed
here.

The EU's expansion spells the death knell of the Commission, since it is
that institution that would, if allowed to continue as before, ensure
"pugnacious democracy" in its instrinsically undemocratic way by giving
disproportionate weight to the smaller, newer entrants, in much the same way
as the U.S. Senate is organised. That the bigger states are finally pulling
their weight -- very much the substance of the British government's position
during the constitutional convention -- is indeed more "democratic", in that
the "majority" is going to get its way much more than before, and very much
at the expense of the minority, which is certainly pugnacious democracy, if
not very nice for a lot of people. Of course each member state is pursuing
what it perceives to be its own interests in all this, and how Blair, Chirac
and Schröder understand "union of nation-states" will diverge in key areas.
This is not the point. The point is that the Commission is doomed in its
present form and that the financiers of the EU are finally going to be more
brazen about calling the shots, thereby diminishing the political importance
of the smaller states (it cannot be otherwise) whilst deepening the European
centre of gravity and thereby lessening the transatlantic pull. The French
are the leaders in this, because their conception of "French interests" now
encompasses the EU as a whole. In this, they are streets ahead of the rest,
who will nevertheless do their best to catch up. The crisis within the EU
really concerns how to legitimate all of this, since without the Commission
it is harder to pretend that the EU is functioning subject to the impartial
arbitration of an objective administrator. Given that the Commission itself
has become a captive of neoliberal dogma this is potentially good, although
it also holds dangers. The most important way ahead for the smaller
countries would be to use their public services as a bargaining chip, in
which they agree to key elements of the Big Three's agenda in exchange for
the abandonment of the crazy "single market in services" which threatens to
recreate the British railway system (among others) across Europe.

Michael Keaney