Il n'y a pas de commentaires associés a cet article. Vous pouvez réagir.
602
15 octobre 2003 — Un très fort courant de pessimisme, à Paris même (le “déclin de la France”), renforce “objectivement” le courant général, quasi-officiel celui-là, d’attaque contre la France à Washington. Par ailleurs, le comportement diplomatique et l’activité opérationnelle de la France, aujourd’hui, constituent une performance remarquable dans le cadre général politico-militaire existant, c’est-à-dire relativement à ce qui peut être fait. Le commentaire le plus souvent entendu sur la France est donc, en général, notablement décalé par rapport aux réalités, et, si on doit en juger, plutôt malveillant.
Nous pensons qu’il est utile de reproduire deux avis qui divergent de cette ligne conformiste, c’est-à-dire des avis favorables à la politique française. Nous avons jugé bienvenu de ne pas citer de Français (il est d’ailleurs si difficile d’en trouver, comme on le sait). Il est remarquable que ces deux textes soient d’origine canadienne (d’ailleurs francophone et anglophone). Il est également remarquable que les deux auteurs du texte publié dans l’International Herald Tribune soient également les auteurs d’un livre sur la France dont le titre complet est : Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French. Le sous-titre (Why We Love France but Not the French) est si révélateur de la situation présente, et en général caractéristique des sentiments que des Français et des non-Français attachés à la spécificité française peuvent éprouver.
• Le premier texte a été publié le 14 octobre par l’International Herald Tribune. Il s’attache essentiellement à défendre l’attitude de la France vis-à-vis de la question de la souveraineté, d’une façon qui met effectivement en valeur l’importance de ce principe pour la politique française et, d’une façon plus générale, pour la conception française des relations internationales avec une tradition très forte qui est une constante de l’histoire de ce pays.
• Le second texte a été publié le 7 octobre par YellowTimes.com. Il s’attache aux aspects opérationnels de l’action de la France aujourd’hui, particulièrement en Afrique. Il met en évidence l’efficacité et le succès des actions françaises, tout cela avec discrétion et avec une grande économie des moyens.
By Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow, International Herald Tribune, October 14, 2003
MONTREAL — The latest United Nations meeting on Iraq has sparked another wave of France-bashing in the United States. The better-informed argue that the French are acting out of self-interest. The less-informed accuse the French of trying to thwart U.S. plans in Iraq. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Yet one thing is certain: France's stance on Iraq is more the product of its own experience and history than rivalry with the United States.
In the events leading up to the war in Iraq, the French disagreement with the United States was over the means being taken to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction, not the end in itself. In the present controversy over rebuilding Iraq, it is again the means that France is questioning. Americans may wonder why the means are so important to the French.
The answer is in history. Occupation is a sore spot for the French.
When President Jacques Chirac of France argues that Iraqi sovereignty should be re-established as quickly as possible, his position is at least partly the product of France's own experience as an occupied country during World War II. After its humiliating defeat by Germany in May and June 1940, France was occupied for four years before the Allies landed in Normandy in June 1944.
When the Allies liberated France from German occupation, their intention was not to give France back to the French. Instead, they planned to install an Allied Military Government of Occupied Territory, or Amgot. This scheme for postwar transition would give Allies control over currency, transport, the appointment of civil servants and war tribunals in formerly occupied countries. They assumed that the French would accept Amgot, given the shape the country was in. When the liberators landed, the paper money had already been printed.
But while Belgium and the Netherlands were put under Amgot, France never accepted it. General Charles de Gaulle, who led the Resistance, suspected that even though they were allies, the United States and Britain would use Amgot to force their values and customs on France. He also knew that after being occupied for four years, the French would never accept anything resembling another occupation, even if in the name of aid and reconstruction.
So eight days after D-Day, De Gaulle returned to France as head of a self-declared provisional government against the will of the Allies and began appointing his own government officials in liberated areas. He demanded that the Allies answer to civilian power in liberated areas. By mid-August, the Allies realized they wouldn't be able to apply the Amgot with French cooperation, so they dropped it.
France was the only German-occupied country of Western Europe that cleared up the mess of the war on its own. It might not seem like a comparable situation to what Iraq is facing, but it's worth recalling that after the war the French economy had shrunk 80 percent, the country was on the brink of civil war and had no democratic institutions. And still, France showed the United States the limits of American postwar hegemony, and French capacity to meet the challenge.
There's no doubt that De Gaulle's stance in 1944 was motivated by pride. And national pride certainly continues to shape France's stance on Iraq. But it would be narcissistic of Americans to think that pride is directly exclusively at them. Chirac can certainly read the same hurt pride in the Iraqi people that the French experienced. No wonder he persists in arguing for the re-establishment of Iraqi sovereignty, even if Iraq doesn't have a constitution or elected representatives.
In France's experience of liberation, the exercise of sovereignty came first, then reconstruction, a new constitution and elections. De Gaulle took charge of postwar France without an elected mandate. He was an authoritarian leader, but he got results. Using autocratic means, De Gaulle averted the threat of civil war and kept the Communist resistance at bay. Two years after the war ended, France had a new constitution and held elections, though it took the French 15 more years to stabilize their democratic institutions.
Since the Iraqi crisis began, many Americans have criticized the French for not showing gratitude to the United States for having liberated them from German occupation. This is nonsense. France is full of memorials commemorating the sacrifices of Allied soldiers during the Liberation.
The French are suspicious of any country they see pushing the ''gratitude'' button to further their own interests. To this day, the French resent the fact that the U.S. government, in 1948, attached conditions to the Marshall Plan aid, such as allowing American movies to circulate in France.
Given France's history, it should come as no surprise that the French are pushing to re-establish Iraqi sovereignty. What's surprising is that Americans think it's all about them.
The writers are Montreal-based journalists and authors of ''Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong.''
[Notre recommandation est que ce texte doit être lu avec la mention classique à l'esprit, — “Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.”.]
By Paul Harris,YellowTimes.org, 07 October, 2003
In the recent past, we all recall the dispute that involved Germany and France standing up at the United Nations and saying that an invasion of Iraq could not be justified. They were vilified by the United States for such impertinence to the point that Americans even renamed French fries into ''freedom fries.'' In a long history of childish pouts from America, that had to rank near the top of the list of juvenile snits. In a Janus-like display of duplicity, U.S. president George Bush simultaneously accused the U.N. of irrelevance yet desperately sought their sanction for his foolish Iraq expedition and was particularly piqued when two major Security Council members rejected his pleas.
The criticism of France was particularly churlish with insults of all manner thrown at them about their cowardice, their arrogance, even their personal sanitation. To their credit, they maintained some measure of calm and stood their ground. They said ''no'' to an unwarranted, speculative, potentially explosive invasion of Iraq. Well, frankly, so did most of the rest of the world. On the other hand, France is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council so their negative position carried some measure of weight.
Without examining the wisdom, or not, of France's stand with regard to Iraq, it is worth noting that, at the very least, the accusations of cowardice were and are unwarranted.
One of the longest festering wounds on Earth has been the centuries of turmoil across Africa, particularly in the equatorial region. All the countries along that imaginary line were at one time colonies of some European nation. While the colonialists remained in control, there were occasional, usually short-lived, uprisings amongst the Africans. That all changed when the Europeans gradually relinquished their hold on Africa; nation after nation plunged into chaos.
Over the years, the U.N. has failed in most of its efforts in Africa. However, in recent months, two particularly virulent trouble spots have been pacified, not by the combined efforts of the U.N., but rather by the intervention of France. Although France is reluctant to get involved anywhere without U.N. approval, in the same way they insisted on that approval for the American war against Iraq, the fact remains that they are willing. In the recent cases of Côte d'Ivoire and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), France stepped up to the plate and quietly went about defusing two horrid conflicts.
It is never easy to achieve peace in Africa and the turmoil left behind by the departing Europeans has made much of the central part of the continent unstable. What France did was to create an atmosphere with sufficient stability to allow humanitarian aid to reach needy people and, more important, to introduce enough breathing room for warring factions to step back and consider seriously the beginning of political negotiations for peace.
In Côte d'Ivoire, civil war erupted a little over a year ago and France sent troops to protect its own citizens. The French quickly expanded this to police a cease-fire and were instrumental in launching political discussions which produced a peace agreement. Although the area remains shaky, this was no small accomplishment. In DRC, France responded quickly to U.N. requests for European troops to help end a series of brutal inter-tribal massacres. Their presence was enough to create that breathing space needed to let the parties consider how to stop the fighting. As of today, DRC is well on the way to re-establishing itself as a nation and its transitional government is moving with great aplomb toward democratic elections in 2005. Although the Congolese initially were skeptical of the presence of French troops, they will now admit to immense gratitude.
Frankly, the presence of French troops in these areas worked far better than most would have predicted, particularly in DRC, which was just emerging from almost five years of bloody civil war leaving more than 4 million people dead. What it also demonstrated, for anyone willing to remove their chauvinistic blinkers, is that French forces are skilled, capable, well-trained and experienced, and accustomed to extra-national activities. They have shown their ability to deploy rapidly and with sufficient equipment and force to do the job.
And therein lies a conundrum: they would probably be used very effectively to help stabilize Iraq. Unfortunately, there remains a vast political chasm between Paris and Washington. France insisted, prior to the invasion of Iraq, that it was a mistake without U.N. sanctions; now they insist that political control in Iraq needs to be returned to the Iraqis. It is expected that this latter will be their price for supporting a Security Council resolution designed to help the U.S. attract international forces and money to Iraq.
France has a long and distinguished peacekeeping record around the world. Like Canada, they have seen this as their contribution to world peace, except, unlike Canada, they have not received the praise they deserve. Presently, they are serving in those roles alongside Canadian and American troops in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. They have demonstrated their commitment to stability around the world and it is perhaps time that other nations began to accept their advice with good graces and open minds.
[Paul Harris is self-employed as a consultant providing businesses with the tools and expertise to reintegrate their sick or injured employees into the workplace. Canadian businesses can reach him at paul@working-solutions.ca. He has traveled extensively in what is usually known as ''the Third World'' and has an abiding interest in history, social justice, morality and, well, just about everything. Paul is also a freelance writer and can be reached at paul@escritoire.ca. He lives in Canada.]
[Notre recommandation est que ce texte doit être lu avec la mention classique à l'esprit, — “Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.”.]
-
