The target of U.S. scorn, France's Jacques Chirac tells TIME's
James Graff and Bruce Crumley of his objection to war and his love of American
junk food
Sunday, Feb. 16, 2003
On the question of Iraq,
America's oldest ally has turned into one of its principal adversaries, as Paris
and Washington disagree about whether United Nations inspectors should be given
more time to do their job. The French President doesn't feel isolated. In fact,
he told TIME in an exclusive interview in the Elysee Palace, he's ready to offer
some "friendly advice" to President Bush on how the American Chief Executive
might honorably back away from the brink of war. Excerpts:
Do last week's U.N. inspectors' reports mark a turning point in the debate
over Iraq?
In the preceding two days, I received phone calls from several
heads of state, both members and nonmembers of the Security Council, and I came
to the conclusion that a majority of world leaders share our determination to
search for a peaceful solution to disarming Iraq.
If there is a war, what do you see as the consequences for the Middle
East?
The consequences of war would be considerable in human terms. In
political terms, it would destabilize the entire region. It's very difficult to
explain that one is going to spend colossal sums of money to wage war when there
may be another solution yet is unable to provide adequate aid to the developing
world.
Why do you think fallout from a war would be so much graver than Tony
Blair and George Bush seem to?
I simply don't analyze the situation as they
do. Among the negative fallout would be inevitably a strong reaction from Arab
and Islamic public opinion. It may not be justified, and it may be, but it's a
fact. A war of this kind cannot help giving a big lift to terrorism. It would
create a large number of little bin Ladens. Muslims and Christians have a lot to
say to one another, but war isn't going to facilitate that dialogue. I'm against
the clash of civilizations; that plays into the hands of extremists. There is a
problem—the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an
uncontrollable country, Iraq. The international community is right to be
disturbed by this situation, and it's right in having decided Iraq should be
disarmed. The inspections began, and naturally it is a long and difficult job.
We have to give the inspectors time to do it. And probably—and this is France's
view—we have to reinforce their capacities, especially those of aerial
surveillance. For the moment, nothing allows us to say inspections don't work.
Isn't France ducking its military responsibilities to its oldest ally?
France is not a pacifist country. We currently have more troops in the Balkans
than the Americans. France is obviously not anti-American. It's a true friend of
the United States and always has been. It is not France's role to support
dictatorial regimes in Iraq or anywhere else. Nor do we have any differences
over the goal of eliminating Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. For
that matter, if Saddam Hussein would only vanish, it would without a doubt be
the biggest favor he could do for his people and for the world. But we think
this goal can be reached without starting a war.
But you seem willing to put the onus on inspectors to find arms rather
than on Saddam to declare what he's got. Are there nuclear arms in Iraq?
I
don't think so. Are there other weapons of mass destruction? That's probable. We
have to find and destroy them. In its current situation, does Iraq—controlled
and inspected as it is—pose a clear and present danger to the region? I don't
believe so. Given that, I prefer to continue along the path laid out by the
Security Council. Then we'll see.
What evidence would justify war?
It's up to the inspectors to decide.
We gave them our confidence. They were given a mission, and we trust them. If we
have to give them greater means, we'll do so. It's up to them to come before the
Security Council and say, "We won. It's over. There are no more weapons of mass
destruction," or "It's impossible for us to fulfill our mission. We're coming up
against Iraqi ill will and impediments." At that point, the Security Council
would have to discuss this report and decide what to do. In that case, France
would naturally exclude no option.
But without Iraqi cooperation, even 300 inspectors can't do the job.
That's correct, no doubt. But it's up to the inspectors to say so. I'm betting
that we can get Iraq to cooperate more. If I'm wrong, there will still be time
to draw other conclusions. When a regime like Saddam's finds itself caught
between certain death and abandoning its arms, I think it will make the right
choice. But I can't be certain.
If the Americans were to bring a resolution for war before the U.N., would
France use its veto?
In my view, there's no reason for a new resolution. We
are in the framework of (U.N. Security Council Resolution) 1441, and let's go on
with it. I don't see what any new resolution would add.
Some charge you are motivated by anti-Americanism.
I've known the U.S.
for a long time. I visit often, I've studied there, worked as a forklift
operator for Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis and as a soda jerk at Howard Johnson's.
I've hitchhiked across the whole United States; I even worked as a journalist
and wrote a story for the New Orleans Times-Picayune on the front page. I
know the U.S. perhaps better than most French people, and I really like the
United States. I've made many excellent friends there, I feel good there. I love
junk food, and I always come home with a few extra pounds. I've always worked
and supported transatlantic solidarity. When I hear people say that I'm
anti-American, I'm sad—not angry, but really sad.
Do you think America's role as the sole superpower is a problem?
Any
community with only one dominant power is always a dangerous one and provokes
reactions. That's why I favor a multipolar world, in which Europe obviously has
its place. Anyway, the world will not be unipolar. Over the next 50 years, China
will become a global power, and the world won't be the same. So it's time to
start organizing. Transatlantic solidarity will remain the basis of the world
order, in which Europe has its role to play.
Haven't tensions over Iraq poisoned transatlantic relationships?
I
repeat: Iraq must be disarmed, and for that it must cooperate more than it does
now. If we disarm Iraq, the goal set by the Americans will have been fulfilled.
And if we do that, there can be no doubt that it will bex due in large part to
the presence of American forces on the spot. If there hadn't been U.S. soldiers
present, Saddam might not have agreed to play the game. If we go through with
the inspections, the Americans will have won, since it would essentially be
thanks to the pressure they exercised that Iraq was disarmed.
Don't you think it would be extremely difficult politically for President
Bush to pull back from war?
I'm not so sure about that. He would have two
advantages if he brought his soldiers back. I'm talking about a situation,
obviously, where the inspectors say now there's nothing left, and that will take
a certain number of weeks. If Iraq doesn't cooperate and the inspectors say this
isn't working, it could be war. If Iraq is stripped of its weapons of mass
destruction and that's been verified by the inspectors, then Mr. Bush can say
two things: first, "Thanks to my intervention, Iraq has been disarmed," and
second, "I achieved all that without spilling any blood." In the life of a
statesman, that counts—no blood spilled.
Yet Washington may well go to war despite your plan.
That will be
their responsibility. But if they were to ask me for my friendly advice, I would
counsel against it.
(From the Feb. 24, 2003 issue of
TIME )
Jacques Chirac says non to U.S. plans for a war to disarm
Iraq. Does the French President really want to give peace a chance, or just
recapture the glory that was France?
Jacques Chirac isn't looking for a ladder to climb down from his opposition
to a military intervention in Iraq. In fact, he's offering George W. Bush a
ladder to climb down from the brink of conflict. "If they were to ask me for my
friendly advice, I would counsel against [war]," the French President said
during an interview with TIME Saturday at his office in the Elysée Palace. If
the reinforced inspection regime Chirac has proposed is taken up, and if —
against experience and widespread expectation — it proves effective in disarming
Saddam Hussein, Bush could claim a double victory: "Mr. Bush can say two things.
First, 'Thanks to my intervention, the goal was obtained; it was our 150,000
soldiers who assured that Iraq has been disarmed,' and second, 'I achieved that
without spilling any blood.' In the life of a statesman, that counts — no blood
spilled."
Chirac's unsolicited counsel may smack of French pride, or just plain
grandstanding, but he speaks with real weight. Chirac deliberately reappointed
his gilded office at the Elysée Palace with the desk and furnishings first
installed by his political mentor, General Charles de Gaulle, the embodiment of
French grandeur. Like de Gaulle, Chirac is determined to put France back on the
map in international affairs. And outside in the streets of Paris, as in dozens
of other cities throughout the world, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators
loudly affirmed their agreement with the French leader's contention that "The
first consequence of war is death." A poll in last week's New York Times
suggests that even a majority of Americans think the inspectors should be given
more time.
Chirac is taking the lead against an imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq, but at
formidable cost. What once might have seemed a cordial difference of approach,
neatly finessed last fall in Security Council Resolution 1441, has become a
nasty diplomatic rift that is already poisoning French-American relations and
threatening to destroy the U.N., NATO and the credibility of the European Union.
By leading an alliance against the war with Germany and, for now at least,
Russia, Chirac is giving President Bush fits. "The transatlantic mood has been
rubbed so raw that now we have electrodes attached to each other's private bits,
and people on both sides are throwing big electric switches every day," says a
senior American diplomat in Europe.
Why is the 70-year-old Chirac, whose career until now has been marked more by
political glad-handing than steadfast principles, giving America such a jolt? Is
it mere vanity, a desire to reclaim for France some of its lost glory? Is it all
about oil, a motive many impute to President Bush but which could equally apply
to France's lucrative Iraqi ties? Or does Chirac really have a better plan for
dealing with Saddam? There's no doubt that Chirac's opposition is sustained by a
deeply held conviction that the consequences of a war to dislodge Saddam Hussein
would be far worse than any potential benefit. "Chirac thinks he understands the
Middle East very well," says one Western diplomat in Paris, "and truly believes
that military action will have a destabilizing effect on the region." Chirac may
turn out to be the last bulwark of sanity or a tiresome whiner, but either way
he's the indispensable man right now in the opposition to an attack on Iraq.
Friday's report to the Security Council from chief U.N. arms inspector Hans
Blix and director of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei
could have been a key opportunity for France to get back in line. But it did no
such thing. Instead, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin made an impassioned
plea to give inspections more time: "No one can say today that the path of war
would be shorter than the path of inspections. No one can claim either that it
might lead to a safer, more just and more stable world. For war is always the
penalty of failure." After de Villepin finished, the chamber erupted into
spontaneous applause, a rarity at the U.N.
Blix's report, in fact, offered a mixture of mild censure and faint praise
for Iraq; de Villepin's ears were clearly tuned to the latter. "In no case have
we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew in advance that the
inspectors were coming," Blix said, sidestepping Washington's central contention
that the whole affair is a charade. Many of Chirac's powerful allies were
equally disposed to accentuate the positive.
Chirac bristles at suggestions that he's motivated by instinctive
anti-Americanism. "When I hear people say that I'm anti-American, I'm sad — not
angry, but really sad," Chirac told TIME. "Often insults say more about the
person saying them than the target." He actually knows the States quite well,
having spent time in the early 1950s working as a forklift operator for
Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, as a soda jerk at a Howard Johnson's restaurant in
Boston's Harvard Square and attending summer school at the Harvard Business
School. "I've hitchhiked across the whole United States," Chirac says. "I even
worked as a journalist and wrote a story on the front page of the New Orleans
Times-Picayune. I know the U.S. perhaps better than most French people, and I
really like the United States. I feel good there. I love junk food and always
come home with a few extra pounds. I've always worked toward and supported
transatlantic solidarity, and that unity is a major element in global
equilibrium. That was true yesterday and it will be true tomorrow."
Part of Chirac's fondness for the U.S. has to do with his youthful experience
of Americans during World War II. "Like most of his generation, the most vivid
memories he has are those of the liberation of France, the arrival of American
troops, and the later reconstruction of France and Europe under the Marshall
Plan," says Denis Tillinac, a personal friend of the President's and author of a
memoir about him. "He has a great fondness and respect for the energy,
innovation and courage of America to believe in itself and take risks."
Still, Chirac sees the risk of falling too far inside America's gravitational
pull. "Any community with only one dominant power is always a dangerous one," he
says. "That's why I favor a multipolar world, in which Europe obviously has its
place." Not everyone accepts that explanation. "The sinister part is a wish to
be the leader of the anti-American world," says an aide to British Prime
Minister Tony Blair. "[Chirac] is trying to see the world in bipolar rather than
unilateral terms, which is absolutely at odds with Blair's vision of Europe and
America working together." Ennio Di Nolfo, an international relations expert at
the University of Florence, concurs. "Chirac's position is manipulative and
Machiavellian," he says. "France is taking the opportunity of a clash with the
U.S. over the war to seek preeminence in Europe."
That view has become scripture in Washington. "It is French policy to
diminish our influence in Europe and in the world, and to shape the European
Union as a counterweight to the United States," says Richard Perle, chairman of
the influential Defense Policy Board and a superhawk close to Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld. The current crisis will fuel the resolve of many U.S. leaders
to bypass the U.N. on important matters, including attacking Iraq with a
"coalition of the willing" instead of the Security Council's blessing. It would
be ironic if France, by flexing its muscles in the U.N., helped weaken the venue
in which some of its last real power resides.
It doesn't take a partisan eye to see a desire to check American power
motivating France's recent maneuvering at NATO. Last week, the corridors of the
alliance's headquarters in Brussels resembled the waiting room of a hospital
emergency ward, as packs of officials and journalists heard that the 19 member
states failed to resolve one of the most serious disputes of its 54-year
history. France, Germany and Belgium balked at their treaty commitments to
deliver antiaircraft missiles and surveillance aircraft to defend Turkey against
a possible assault by Iraq. The trio argued that their agreement would amount to
sanctioning a war by the back door. Now that U.N. arms inspectors Blix and
ElBaradei have made their reports, a compromise could be reached as early as
this week. But the credibility of the alliance is in tatters.
Blocking NATO is a well-known propensity for France, which exited its
military commission in 1965. But many feel Chirac has also played a key role in
scuppering hopes of forging a common foreign and security policy for the E.U., a
goal he has lobbied hard for in the past. As Chirac gleefully leads the
Continent where public opinion wants it to go, he has paradoxically alienated
the leaders of many other European allies — especially Tony Blair, who was left
staring wanly from the sidelines last week. Chirac's vain presumption that
France and Germany could speak for all of Europe against the war — and the
answering volley of support for America from 18 other European nations — leaves
the E.U. looking silly and feckless. "The Europeans have been telling us for a
decade that they're on the verge of getting their foreign policy act together,"
says Robert Kagan, neoconservative author of Of Paradise and Power, a new book
on U.S.-European relations. "The Iraq case shines a bright light on the disunity
of Europe." "Constructing Europe is not an easy thing," Chirac admits. "There
are a lot of obstacles on the way, and we have to get over them one by one and
move forward." But France's claim to leadership in that effort no longer enjoys
the support it once had.
Many see Chirac as an unlikely crusader for peace and justice. His 18-year
stint as mayor of Paris was marred by allegations — which, because of
presidential immunity, he has never had to face in court — that he presided over
a lucrative kickback scheme to fund his then political party, the Rally for the
Republic. The allegations inspired the popular satirical television show Les
Guignols de l'Info to assign him the moniker Superliar. And he's never been a
pacifist. As President in 1995, he defied international protests and worldwide
demonstrations to test French nuclear weapons in the South Pacific.
To his supporters, though, none of this adds up to a lack of principle, and
certainly doesn't disqualify him from taking a passionate stance on Iraq. "There
should be no mistake that Chirac's biggest concern in opposing war is that it
will have truly dire consequences in the Middle East," says writer Tillinac.
"This is a stand Chirac is taking because he feels he must." His Middle East
experience can't be dismissed, either. Like previous presidents of France,
Chirac has traveled extensively in the region. On a visit to the Old City of
Jerusalem in 1996, television cameras captured him rebuking Israeli security
guards for their gruff treatment of Palestinian bystanders, an episode that
increased his credibility at the time among France's estimated 5 million
Muslims.
Like Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Chirac had personal dealings with Saddam
before the Iraqi dictator became a pariah, which some speculate may make the
idea of attacking him less of an abstraction. "Chirac has no illusions about the
danger Saddam poses," says conservative legislator and long-time Chirac
supporter Pierre Lellouche. "He just doesn't see the same sense of urgency as
the Americans do." But Chirac does feel a sense of urgency if an attack takes
place. "A war of this kind cannot help but give a big lift to terrorism," he
says. "It would create a large number of little bin Ladens." The aide to Tony
Blair acknowledges that Chirac's pessimistic view of the fallout is one genuine
motor of policy. But he also says that Chirac expressed similarly dire views
before the conflicts in Kosovo and Afghanistan — and his fears were proved
unwarranted.
Oil seems the least likely motivation for Chirac, though the effect of war on
France's already struggling economy must certainly be an unwelcome prospect.
According to one Western diplomat, "If what France really cared about was
getting the spoils in a post-Saddam Iraq, they'd be taking a very different
tack," cozying up to America rather than defying it. A spokeswoman for
TotalFinaElf, the French firm that until last year spent a decade negotiating
still unconcluded oil contracts with Saddam's regime, says that all they want is
"a level playing field so that all players can put forth their bids in
accordance with international norms."
In the end, it all comes down to one question: Can Chirac's plan for an
open-ended commitment to more rigorous inspections work? The French President
still has a lot of convincing to do, given that U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell made an uncontested case before the Security Council two weeks ago that
Saddam is still refusing to come clean. And last week, Powell passionately
reminded the Security Council that the thrust of Resolution 1441 is for Saddam
to proactively report weapons programs and eliminate them, not to evade
inspectors until he's caught. "We don't need more inspectors with flashlights,"
Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said last week. "We need
Saddam to turn the lights on."
Chirac's alternative is clearly intended to keep Saddam in the glare of
international attention. The plan calls for increasing the number of inspectors
from 110 to as many as 360, and broadening their expertise to include customs
and accounting. France proposes that aerial surveillance be intensified with
overflights of French Mirage IV aircraft, and that a permanent in-country
coordinator be put in place. Chancellor Schröder leaked to the newsweekly Der
Spiegel a version of a "Franco-German" plan that included the now disavowed
notion that thousands of U.N. peacekeepers would protect the inspectors. It
wasn't until later that he shared the plan with his Foreign Minister, Joschka
Fischer.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw lambasted the Chirac plan, arguing that
it would do nothing to tackle the problem of persistent noncompliance. "As it
happens, we did examine these ideas in preparations for what became 1441," he
told an audience of foreign policy experts at the International Institute for
Strategic Studies in London. "There was wide appreciation that they were simply
not feasible in the absence of complete Iraqi cooperation and not necessary with
complete Iraqi cooperation. The fact that those proposals are now being aired
represents the clearest admission yet that Iraq is not cooperating. Nothing in
Saddam's performance can give any confidence that any of these proposals would
in any way change his behavior. Instead they are a recipe for procrastination
and delay."
Even if the Chirac plan is less than perfect, is it still better than a
full-blown war? As the applause at the Security Council indicated, many believe
it could be. But the biggest players, the Americans, are not disposed to wait
much longer to see just how hard France and its sympathizers are able to push
it. Washington is eager to get beyond diplomatic dancing, and might move as
quickly as this week to introduce a resolution for armed intervention in Iraq.
The weather will heat up soon in Iraq, troops are deployed that cannot be
kept on alert indefinitely, and the further Powell's presentation of evidence
fades into memory the less compelling it becomes. "We're willing to work this
through with the French," says a senior State Department official, "but we're
not willing to slow it down to the point of inaction." The U.S. plan is to steam
ahead on the assumption that Paris will cave. If the French do veto a second
resolution, so be it — Washington is comfortable with "a coalition of the
willing." But the Americans believe the French will get onboard before it's time
to rebuild Iraq and divvy up the oil contracts.
No one is willing to dismiss the possibility that Chirac could veer back into
line and endorse a second resolution authorizing force. But for now the French
President is not backing off. "In my view there's no reason for a new
resolution," he says. "We are in the framework of 1441 and let's go on with it."
If Washington pushes ahead with another resolution — if for nothing else, to
protect their staunchest foreign ally, Tony Blair — it would put Chirac's
vaunted steadfastness to the test. The French President can't expect the Bush
Administration to make it easy for him. But he's taking a long-range view. "One
image chases the last one in our media-dominated world," he says. "Once there
are no real reasons for contention, it disperses rapidly. So I'm not worried
about the relations between our two nations."
If he's right, the current spat may end with nothing more than resigned
exasperation at the vagaries of French diplomacy. But if America rolls ahead —
against French opposition and without a second U.N. resolution — basic
assumptions about the transatlantic alliance could be overturned. Chirac, ever
the politician, is leaving his options open: "If Iraq doesn't cooperate and the
inspectors say this isn't working, it could be war." So the man who wants to
give peace a chance may yet give war a chance instead.
(From the Feb. 24, 2003
issue of
TIME Europe )
