[Marxism] Diana Johnstone on the French elections

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Paris at the Polls

*French Foreign Policy and the Presidential Election: The Absent Middle East*

By /Diana Johnstone/

Paris infrared satellite imagePARIS ? The French 
presidential elections will be followed by 
elections for the National Assembly, whose 
composition will largely determine the extent to 
which the new president can keep her or his 
domestic promises ? within the limits of European 
Union regulations and directives.

Foreign policy, however, is still the privileged 
domain of the President. Theoretically, the one 
field in which the presidential election is truly decisive is foreign policy.

So it is somewhat disconcerting that discussion 
of foreign policy is almost entirely absent from 
the current French presidential election 
campaign, whose first phase ends Sunday, when all 
but two of the twelve candidates will be 
eliminated in the first round of voting.

The three candidates with a chance of being 
elected ? Nicolas Sarkozy, Ségolène Royal, 
Francois Bayrou ? have had practically nothing of 
interest to say about the outside world, and 
notably about the crucial Middle East. This could 
mean that the French are not interested, and so 
that there are no votes to be gained by talking 
about it. Or it can mean that to be elected, it is safer to avoid the subject.

Let's try the second hypothesis. When a marginal 
candidate, such as the anti-globalization 
champion José Bové, holds a meeting in Paris, 
he speaks of the usual left topics: jobs, 
housing, public services, rights of immigrants, 
and his own emblematic crusade against GMO 
plantations. Mild applause. But when he denounces 
the war in Iraq, or defends the rights of the 
Palestinians, the crowd bursts into loud cheers and sustained applause.

But Bové has nothing to lose. One can only guess 
what might await whichever of the three leading 
candidates would dare campaign on the theme of 
keeping France out of U.S. wars in the Middle 
East and supporting the rights of Palestinians. 
It is a theme that many voters would heartily 
approve. The media, however, would raise cries of 
scandal, accusing the intrepid candidate of 
irresponsibility and incompetence ? or worse...

*Ségolène in the Middle East*

A sample of the danger of foreign policy 
initiatives was provided by Ségolène Royal's 
visit to Lebanon last December. Following her 
trademark approach of "listening to everybody", 
the Socialist candidate brushed aside advice from 
Druze leader Walid Joumblatt to "go home right 
away" and insisted on hearing what all sides had 
to say. A meeting was arranged with the foreign 
affairs committee of the Lebanese parliament. 
Among those who attended was an elected 
representative of Hezbollah, Ali Ammar, who, 
speaking in Arabic, spoke of "the great role 
France has to play in Lebanon if it can detach 
itself from the madness of American policy". 
According to the report in the local Francophone 
newspaper, /L'Orient-Le Jour/, Ammar added that 
the Lebanese were "proud of their friendship with 
France and of the fact that Hezbollah's 
resistance [to Israeli occupation ? the origin of 
its existence] was inspired by the French resistance to Nazi occupation".

This was transformed into a "scandal" by confused 
reports that Royal had allowed Ammar to liken 
Israel to Nazism in her presence without 
reacting. In response, she pointed out that 
neither she nor the French ambassador at her side 
had heard any mention of Nazism, and that if they 
had heard such "inadmissible, abominable, odious" 
remarks, they would have "left the room". (It was 
confirmed that the press and the French candidate 
had been listening to different interpreters.)

Even that wasn't enough, and commentators have 
continued to speak of her "foreign policy 
blunder" in Lebanon as evidence that she is unqualified.

For the pro-Israel lobby, the mere fact of 
listening to a representative of Hezbollah is 
unacceptable. Royal's scandalous willingness to 
hear the other side was compared unfavorably to 
the "courage" of the 2002 Socialist candidate, 
Lionel Jospin, who when visiting the Near East as 
prime minister denounced Hezbollah as a "terrorist" organization.

Now, it so happens that, in the real world 
outside the media, that statement by Jospin was 
negatively interpreted by much of the French 
population as a gratuitous concession to Israel 
and its lobby. And in conversations, just about 
everyone concedes that as President, Jospin would 
have followed the United States into the 
catastrophic Iraq quagmire, unlike Chirac.

The fact is that despite the sniping from 
commentators and even members of her own 
Socialist Party, as the first round campaign is 
ending, Ségolène Royal is doing much better in 
the polls than Jospin was doing before his 
humiliating elimination by Jean-Marie Le Pen. She 
has actually run a much more vigorous campaign, 
making quite as much sense, and usually more, 
than her main rivals ? while, unlike the male 
candidates, having to make strategic choices of 
wardrobe. True, the whole spectrum has been moved 
to the right by the European Union straitjacket, 
but she is still relatively to the left, at least 
in words, at least during the campaign.

*But how would she be in foreign policy?*

This would inevitably depend largely on her 
choice of advisors. Foreign policy is not the 
major area of competence of most professional 
politicians, whose primary concern is to work 
their own home turf. An exception is Jean-Pierre 
Chevènement, the independent-minded former 
presidential candidate, who this time decided to 
back Ségolène Royal, hoping to give her some 
useful advice. He, like such veteran realist 
diplomats as Hubert Védrine, might be able to 
preserve some remnants of France's independent 
foreign policy under a Royal presidency. On the 
other hand, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Socialist 
with solid business backing, is angling to be 
prime minister if Ségolène wins ? or even if 
Bayrou wins, for that matter. DSK is every bit as 
pro-Israel and pro-U.S. as Sarkozy, if not more so.

*The case of Pascal Boniface*

U.S. foreign policy has largely fallen into the 
hands of lobbies and privately-financed think 
tanks. In France, the foreign ministry, known by 
its address on the Quai d'Orsay, still plays the 
leading role. The Quai d'Orsay has a tradition of 
realistic appraisal of situations and French 
interests. But a generational change is underway, 
and some observers fear that the next generation 
will be heavily influenced by the media, the 
pro-Israel lobby and the sort of moralism that is 
used by both to justify U.S. foreign policy adventures.

Pascal Boniface is the director of the /Institut 
de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques/ 
(IRIS) in Paris, a think tank linked to the 
Socialist Party. In April 2001, he wrote a note 
for PS general secretary François Hollande 
urging the party to overcome its fear of taking a 
clear position on Palestine. As a professor, he 
was witness to students' growing sympathy for the 
Palestinians and outrage at their treatment. To 
the party's fears of "losing the Jewish vote", 
Boniface replied that making policy according to 
the wishes of a "community" constituency was not 
only unprincipled, but in the long run dangerous. 
The conspicuous influence of the organized Jewish 
community on policy, he warned, could only 
inspire the rise of an opposing lobby based in 
the much larger Muslim community. This threatened 
to divide France along ethnic or religious 
community lines, a prospect deeply dreaded by Socialists.

For having made this observation, Boniface became 
the target of a campaign led by Jewish 
commentators and organizations which came close 
to destroying his career, even though he is a 
stalwart defender of Israel and his views on the 
Middle East conflict are quite moderate. However, 
he is still there, and the upshot of the incident 
may be that, in France as in the United States, 
impatience is growing with the lobby even in 
mainstream circles, and even in the Socialist 
Party, which is traditionally Israel's strongest supporter.

*Human rights*

These days, nobody can defend Israel's actions in 
the occupied territories of Palestine. 
Distraction rather than defense is the pro-Israel 
strategy. Attention is focused on the Iranian 
"threat to Israel's existence" or else on Darfur, 
where many more people are being killed. All 
three leading French candidates have signed onto 
the promise to "do something" about Darfur, 
probably economic sanctions against Sudan. If the 
younger generation is sensitive to the plight of 
the Palestinians, it is also very sensitive to 
human rights in general, and scornful of political realism.

Sarkozy did nothing to improve his chances with 
his obsequious performance in Washington. His 
handshake with George W. Bush is the favorite 
illustration on the "anybody but Sarkozy" web 
sites. If he should become president, the 
right-wing candidate would certainly love to 
fortify an alliance with George W. and the 
neo-conservatives. But in all probability, they 
won't be there much longer. Sarkozy will have 
arrived too late. On the other hand, Ségolène 
Royal paints a glowing picture of a future 
presidential sisterhood with President Hillary 
Clinton. It is not clear whether she has taken 
the full measure of Hillary's dismal foreign policy outlook.


________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism