Usa Forum - France's Foreign Lesion

Janet Estrich

12/3/2004 3:15:00 PM

What a wake-up call. French soldiers being killed and wounded in Ivory
Coast attacks. Forced into exile, thousands of French citizens have been
rushed back to France. At home, the population is baffled, and they really
don't understand why soldiers are dying in what seems to be acts of war.
They don't understand those unacceptable acts of violence towards the
French community: rape, pillage, murder. It all raises a vital question:
What was the purpose of the French army presence in Ivory Coast in the
first place?

Of course there are the official reasons. France's official explanation for
the deployment of 4,000 French soldiers is of a philanthropic nature:
helping to prevent chaos. The September 2002 coup led France to organize a
military intervention called Unicorn, mobilizing those soldiers (compare
this to the 6,240 blue helmets of the UN, and you get a good idea of the
French involvement) and backed by the UN through resolution 1464. On
January 24, 2003 the Marcousis Agreement was signed by all Ivorian
political forces, stating that Laurent Gbgabo remained president of Ivory
Coast and forming a government of national reconciliation. Afterwards, the
UN Security Council adopted resolution 1479 on, which basically organized a
UN military presence and aimed at organizing democratic elections at the
end of 2005.

But nothing was said of the economic reasons. France is Ivory Coast's
number-one customer and top foreign investor, owning 27 percent of the
capital of companies and representing 68 percent of direct foreign
investments. Moreover more than 17,000 French citizens are residents in the
country. Indeed, economic ties are important. That's why French troops have
been garrisoned in Ivory Coast since its independence; you do not let go of
a jewel.

Peace failed and war broke out. France is in the crossfire, revealing a
true ambiguity. Both sides are heavily criticizing France. Loyalists accuse
it of not stopping rebel attacks from outside (Liberia and Guinea are
politically instable, and it appears that most of the rebels were trained
in Burkina-Faso). Rebels accuse it of having stopped them on their way to
Abidjan and of doing nothing against Ivorian army extortion. So what is
France's real position?

In-depth explanations for its presence are not given. The historical
background and the reality of intervention leads us to consider several
possible choices: preserving France's interests, helping keeping peace
through cease-fire, colonizing again our former colony to enforce
democracy. It is all that, and at the same time none of them.

But, above all, there is one striking fact: the general French policy in
Africa is a mystery. The country is a 'no trespassing zone'. By tradition
in France, foreign affairs are the president's private domain. The foreign
affairs minister only applies his policies. France is the only Western
country where foreign policy is not a debating topic. The sovereignty of
the people does not mean anything even if it has elected the president
directly. The Parliament has no checking powers and is quietly relegated to
domestic matters.

The French Republic acts as an authoritarian regime, not as a democracy,
since President Chirac has a free hand with international matters. This
practice underlines that France still has to introduce an internal
democratic debate to discuss its own foreign policy. This is key to
understanding French foreign policy: it is above all the policy of one man
or group of men, not of a nation. Such diplomacy requires a strong personal
leadership along with the awareness of the nation's interests, two
qualities necessary to put up a straight line of action, but two qualities
often missing.

With the personality of the president so important, the central question is
this: can a domestic affairs flip-flopper be a foreign affairs hard-liner?
Chirac has never been clear. The popular feeling is that there is no
short-, mid- or long-run policy and Chirac's muddleheaded diplomacy in
Ivory Coast is merely the latest example of a catastrophe, ruining life of
thousands French people. And we still do not know why.

Sylvain Charat is director of policy studies in the think tank
Eurolibnetwork in Paris.

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soc.culture.belgium

France's Foreign Lesion

Janet Estrich

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