‘Sarkozy of Arabia’ Sending Troops to the Gulf
Looks like France is finally sending troops to the Gulf, just not in the way you might have expected. Currently on a tour of the Middle East, President Nicolas Sarkozy has signed a deal with the United Arab Emirates to establish the first French military base in the region – indeed, the only foreign military base in Arabia that does not belong to the US.
At first sight this seems like an odd move, particularly to Americans (and Brits) weaned on sniggering tales of French military disaster and tanks with one forward and five reverse gears, and who still chuckle at the timeless simile that going to war without France is “like going duck hunting without your accordion”. What on earth has possessed the new French President to go committing troops to the Persian Gulf at a time when tensions in the region are rising? Doesn’t he realize that they might actually one day have to, y’know, fight?
As ever in these cases, there is more to this announcement than meets the eye. It needs to be seen in the context of two considerations; France’s economic interests in the region – which are significant – and France’s view of its place in the world, which may appear a comical one to many observers but which the French themselves take deadly seriously.
France has always sold weapons to Gulf states, as have Britain, America and others. But her economic interests in the area go much further. Despite the justifiable scepticism about Iran’s motivation for pursuing its nuclear program, the truth is that the Iranian interest in smashing atoms together is mirrored in many Arab states, too. As well as the agreement to base French troops there, the UAE have also agreed to cooperate on nuclear power, as have Algeria and Libya too. Moreover, both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have also expressed an interest in taking their relationship with France to the nuclear level.
The burgeoning infrastructure of the oil states needs energy to sustain it, too; over a quarter of the Gulf States’ oil production is consumed domestically rather than exported. Every barrel of oil that goes towards lighting the streets of Dubai is $100 that could be flowing into the UAE’s coffers instead. At over two million barrels a day… well, you do the math. Any energy source that frees up production for the export market is to be welcomed, and very few countries have the expertise to build and maintain nuclear plants. France is one of these, and it’s taking full advantage.
However, beyond the allure of the Emir’s cash, as welcome as it is, there’s a wider consideration at work. France still sees itself very much as a global power, and while sending 500 troops to catch some rays in a peaceful Arab state may seem like small beer to American eyes, the symbolism of the move is potent nonetheless.
Britain was bankrupted by World War Two, and an exhausted nation lost its overseas possessions quickly thereafter – with the US as enthusiastic facilitator – in mostly peaceful fashion (at least, that is, peaceful for us). France’s agony during the war was much worse, and the retreat from empire more traumatic – the horrors of Algeria and Indochina foremost among them. But where Britain has for the most part, and with the odd exception, been slightly embarrassed to meddle in its old colonies – the British Commonwealth being seen as a somewhat anachronistic institution that requires constantly to be justified and defended, and even countries like Pakistan and Zimbabwe getting the velvet glove rather more often than the mailed fist – France has often been more proactive, particularly in Africa, where its influence in many Francophone countries remains remarkably strong. In the Gulf, from which Britain retreated soon after the debacle of Suez, France sniffs an opportunity, and the new man is well placed to exploit it.
Sarko’s accession to the presidency was widely seen as a good thing by British and American diplomats; a refreshing change from the posturing of Jacques Chirac, who made no secret of his Gallic disdain for all things Anglophone, and who touted the risible idea of the European Union as a counterweight to US hegemony not just economically but militarily, too. Broadly speaking, that’s still true; Sarkozy is certainly more instinctively Atlanticist than his predecessor. But French pride will never permit them to play too obvious a second fiddle to the top dogs. America may be the big swinging dicks these days, in the Middle East as everywhere else, but that’s never going to stop a Frenchman from poking his in wherever he sees a fragrant opening.
The French military may be the butt of a thousand chortling American jokes (and believe me, we Brits share them), but the truth is that France has a proud military history that compares very favourably with any other nation. A quick look at the map of the Paris Metro, and its evocative station names like Austerlitz and Solferino, should suffice to remind the casual observer of the continuing resonance of French battles of yesteryear. Never forget that France lost over a million and a half soldiers in battle in the two World Wars – more than any other Allied nation except Russia, and three times as many as America. These are proud people, but their pride is justified.
It’s hard to imagine Britain, say, opening a military base in the Middle East any time soon; what, public opinion would grumble, would be the point? But for the French, it’s a small but telling proof of what they have long known; never mind the jibes and the Freedom fries, France never went away; she deserves her place at the top table in world diplomacy, and don’t you forget it.
Am I investing a minor defence deal with too much symbolism? Perhaps. But watch the Bastille Day celebrations in July, and you’ll see; the French do symbolism better than anyone else in the world.
Mr Eugenides is not, despite the pseudonym, Greek, but a native of Glasgow, Scotland. The focus of his blog is mostly on UK politics, the targets normally leftwing politicians and journalists.
Ok, France want to maintain its image of “global player”. But what is worrying, is the fact, that nuclear proliferation in Middle East is going all the way ith a bit of French help…
The French Foreign Legion has never been laughed at.
The pathetic performance of the French army in World War 2 was because of the pacifism french film made popular at the time. I’ve read that the young Jews who rejected the HISTORIC pacifism of their RABBIS in the Warsaw ghetto, without food or arms, held out longer and did more damage than the French Army.
France had an active communist fifth column. We, today, have a fifth column that has almost completely taken over our universities, colleges and middle schools. That’s why homeschooling has enjoyed such popularity. I am no longer a Catholic, but I looked at the syllabus of a small Christian college and that’s where I would go for a classical liberal education if I were choosing a college today.
We have almost won the war against the mainstream media. And Hollywood is also feeling the economic effects of the boycott of their anti-war, anti-american films. The current strike may lead to writers taking the power Hollywood always has denied them.
The last bastion of the left is the university. But what if parents, trustees and alumni were to insist that nonsense like paying John Edwards $50,000 for a speech stop. That divisive black studies, womens studies, chicano studies programs don’t educate, they politicize and would no longer be funded. Government could help by saying that if you won’t allow ROTC on campus, you won’t get government money.
In decades past, the Reader’s Digest published Friedrich Hayek’s THE ROAD TO SERFDOM in Spanish in South America and democracy flourished.
The French know that what they have hasn’t worked. What they need now is to have the many terrific books on laissez-faire economics, democracy and freedom translated into French. And several novels too. Ayn Rand’s WE THE LIVING (about the horrors of life under communism) THE FOUNTAINHEAD (which posits that fascism and communism are not opposites but kissing cousins) and ATLAS SHRUGGED (about which element of society (and it isn’t labor) carries the world on its shoulders. The French are intellectuals and responsive to ideas. They just need new ideas and they will do just fine.
I find your suggestion that oil states would save money by switching to nuclear energy troubling.
The recent presidential election in France resulted in France announcing its return to the world stage as a player.
The French are a proud people, as Mr. Eugenides correctly states. Under Chirac, however, France studiously sat out the last decade, repeating “non” to every meaningful (i.e., non-UNO) Western initiative challenging terror around the world, except, of course, in France.
France was truly irrelevant on the world stage during that time. And, most importantly, every Frenchman knew that.
Letting the Anglosphere get the world credit while doing the heavy international lifting didn’t bother them, as long as the English-speakers did the bleeding.
The French knowledge-base in electricity generation using nuclear, is profound. Middle-Eastern states see their dwindling petroleum supplies in the years ahead; that energy source must be replaced with something. Nuclear could safely be that something.
France has the know-how to provide nuclear science and technology, providing that Middle-Eastern behavior – at home and abroad – becomes rational.
It’s funny that Sandra brings up the French Foreign Legion since most of the ordinary soldiers in the Foreign Legion were…well, foreign. ie not French.
What exactly has France done militarily in the last 195 years, except claim credit for others efforts or lose?
Has France won any war on it’s own since 1812? All they accomplished in WWI was killing millions of French and British troops with mindless repetition of failed strategies, in WWII they were careful to move to the front of the line as soon as the fighting was over.
Even Napoleon had to be imported (from Sardinia), and despite his pretensions, DeGaul was no Napoleon. The last real military leader who was purely French was Joan d’Arc, who was psychotic.
As for nukes, the oil states are becoming more sensitive to real pollution – and unfortunately to AGW talk. They’re obviously perfect candidates for solar if it worked, but will probably need nuclear power plants since solar and wind are still three years away (as they’ve been for at least 30 years).
The trick is getting them to use the types of nuke plants that don’t make weapons-grade junk. There are several of these.
As for the French, I never made jokes about their soldiers. Their political and military leadership is another matter.
“Never forget that France lost over a million and a half soldiers in battle in the two World Wars – more than any other Allied nation except Russia, and three times as many as America.”
I’ve always strongly looked down upon using military casualties as a measure of a nation’s effectiveness in or commitment to warfare.
American military doctrine puts a premium on American lives, a view frequently not shared by others. Even during WW2 we put an emphasis on denying the enemy resources and equipment while overwhelming them with our own. The strategic bombing campaign over Europe, for instance did far more to win the war than the body count of airmen would suggest.
So, you say the French lost a lot of people in war, and I look at that as evidence of incompetence more than anything else.
fwiw, the warsaw ghetto rebellion was backed by the rabbis in the warsaw ghetto.
” A quick look at the map of the Paris Metro, and its evocative station names like Austerlitz and Solferino, should suffice to remind the casual observer of the continuing resonance of French battles of yesteryear”. Actually it reminds me of the old observation that France’s greatest general was a foriegner (Napoleon was from an Italian family living in Corsica) and their greatest soldier was a teenage girl (Joan of Arc). Ha ha! But seriously, they might really have a respectabel military establishment – certainly they would have to compare favourably to the once-fine British Army and Navy which is despised in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.
Do the Gulf states really fuel electrical power plants with oil? Why not natural gas?
Does anyone know why the French like to line their boulevards with so many trees?
Because German soldiers prefer to march in the shade.
Concerning the linked story that the Saudis don’t want Sarkozy shacking up with Bruni on their soil, couldn’t they arrange one of those temporary marriages the Sunni use to accommodate a little nookie with hookers?
Odd how it takes a Frenchman of Hungarian descent to restore
the nation’s influence. Algeria as well as the rest of the “Barbary
Coast” were French colonies for 115
years. It took 17 years for the French to truly conquer Algeria ,in particular; from the 1st expedition in 1830. After such a long period of occupation, specially at the latter end of the Algerian war; it was natural for the French and the
Algerians to get tired of each other.The thinking of one of their leading strategists in counter-insurgency, Col. Galula lies at the heart of both David Petraeus’s army field manual and the implementation of the surge. The aggressive tactics of Massu,Galula, Trinquier, et al even Ausseresse did win the battle for the Casbah. Which was undermined to by the cacophony of
protests by Sartre, Beavoir,et al.
DeGaulle, who sent the expeditions back to Algiers and Hanoi, promised
to back the pied noir and the veterans to keep Algeria French. Once in office, he ceded to the
politically popular demands of negotiating with the FLN; which caused a reaction among the most committed veterans of the Algerian & former Indochina conflict,(Massu, Trinquier, Salan, et al hence the April ’61 putch attempt, and the formation of the OAS, which effectively reversed any support
for an Algerian policy. Interesting with the accession of DeGaulle and
the end of the Algerian war so would
the marked turn in favor of Arabism
in the Quai do’ Say. France could not escape the consequences of the
‘redeployment’ from Algeria, try as it might. The consolidation of pied noir veterans and non veterans, the
arrival of the harkis (those Algerians who had cooperated with the government,) plus their successors pushed north by the FLN’s
consolidations and most recently the
fratricidal FLN/GIA Salafist war.
(Ahmed Ressam, Zacarias Moussaoi,
Jamal Zougam :the Madrid bombing
coordinator are just a few names that come to mind. Among the veterans, a powerful revanchist political movement, headed by associates of rabble rousing Pierre Poujade (the Wallace or Buchanan
of French Politics) like Le Pen and
the National Front arose. The series
of circumstances surrounding the Algerian war’s prosecution and aftermath; don’t have exact
parallels with current or even near
future American policies but there
are some similarities; albeit with
greater stakes. Could the Iraqis or the Afghanis become the harkis at some distant point? Could a political candidate more amenable to the media’s influence end up curtailing our involvement in the War on Terror’s largest theatre of operations, for seemingly understandable reasons? What would such a retreat have on the region, on this country and the society as a whole. One recalls the French experience in Indochina ran almost as long as the British experience in the NorthWest Frontier of India
(Pakistan):1837-1947.
This ofcourse makes the UAE an interesting choice for basing
rights for French forces. The Maktoums and the bin Zayan royal
families which preside over each end of the emirates are clearly fairly pro -western; although one of the Zayan dynasty trafficks in anti-semitic folderall. They do supply the likes of CAIr with a sizable portion of the donations. However, the ziggurat like
structures rising out over
the skyline in Dubai; are evocative
of similar structures over Kuala
Lampur and not to put too fine a point on it; the WTC. This is likely
to draw the attention of AQ like elements. The UAE’s DPW acquistion of the venerable British firm Peninsular & Occidental (one does
remember the puts them in control of practically every major cargo checkpoint in the western world. This was a little speculated about detail in the DPW brouhaha in the States. Most recently CitiGroup received a considerable capital flow from that region. It is not
out of the question, that there would be strike against targets in the UAE and/or subsidiaryfacilities around the world.
This is not idle speculationeither. the UAE supplied at least one of the 9/11 hijackers (Waleh al Shehri)one of their lead money launderers (Paracha Wazir)another figure tied
to KSM (Ammar al Baluchi) and
allegedly one of the emirati princes were fox hunting with Bin Laden in 1999? In addition, one should not hesitate to consider that
the emirates split their loyalties during the Iran/Iraq war. It does put Mssr. Sarkozy’s actions in an interesting context.
Napoleon was from Corsica, not Sardinia.
Sarkozy, is doing what is best for France. Finally, a level-headed Frenchmen.
Marystella: Sarkozy’s doing his best for France, depending on what your definition of France is (and that definition is way open for discussion).