 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Jacques Chirac believes there is: the French way. The view in Paris is that the French way has triumphed in the United Nations' Security Council and the threat of war against Saddam Hussein has receded.
A recent headline in the Parisian newspaper Le Monde read "Chirac forces George Bush to retreat". Chirac's Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin describes the Security Council resolution 1441, under which weapons inspectors are expected to return to Iraq, as a triumph for the French way. De Villepin, an amateur poet, waxes lyrical about France's success to deny Washington "an automatic mechanism" to use force against Saddam. Even if Saddam violates the new resolution, de Villepin says, the Americans will still have to return to the Security Council and ask what is to be done. How will the French way work? All starts with a bit of semantic jugglery to delight the deconstructionists. The phrase "change of regime" is interpreted to mean "change in the regime." The Baathist clique, headed by Saddam, is treated like a theatrical troupe that could play both Macbeth and Hamlet. All that is needed is to change the script and the costumes. The French way is based on what is known in Paris as "France's Arab policy" (La politique Arabe de la France). Devised by the late General De Gaulle in the early 1960s , this is based on three assumptions. The first is that it is natural for Arabs to be ruled by a "strongman." The second is that the Arab "strongman" has no particular principles apart from a keen desire to stay alive and in power. The third is that, if handled intelligently, the Arab "strongman" could be useful to the West. The "strongman" could take decisions that no democratic government, subject to the pressure of elections, would be able to take. For example, President Anwar Sadat decided to reverse Egypt's alliances in 1971, thus altering the balance of power in the Middle East. Other examples include Jaafar al-Nimeiri of the Sudan, Muhammad Siad Barre of Somalia, and Ibrahim al-Hamdi of Yemen, military dictators who switched from the Soviet camp to alliance with the West. Yet another example is Yasser Arafat, the arch-chameleon of Arab politics, whose frequent changes of position have exasperated more than one interested party. Another example of a "strongman" playing a positive part was the late Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad. He gave his word to President Richard Nixon in 1974 to keep the Syrian ceasefire line with Israel quiet. His pledge has been honored until today. Saddam Hussein could be regarded as another example. In 1975 he tore up the pact that he had signed with the Soviet Union in 1972 to make a secret deal with the Shah of Iran, and to bring in the French on a massive scale. In 1980 Saddam invaded Iran in the name of protecting Western interests in the region against Khomeinism. — Amir Taheri is the author of The Cauldron: The Middle East Behind the Headlines and he's reachable through www.benadorassociates.com. |
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
s
there a way to solve the Iraqi problem without war? 
