I am neither a fan nor a foe of the French <\/b>though their political maneuvers over the past few weeks have done nothing to endear that nation to me; however, it is incumbent upon any person who seeks to comment on politics and current events to step back and take a long, dispassionate look at what is happening.<\/p>\n
I believe the case can be made that the major sin of the French government is that it recognized the shape of the new reality before the US and the United Kingdom were ready to have it do so. Many in the United States have been very vocal in the opinion that both the United Nations and NATO are old alliances that make no sense given the current situation. The governments of the US and the UK likely share this view to some degree; however, it seems that they have been willing to attempt to bend the old institutions to serve the needs of new situations, and to see them eventually break under the strain if that was what was required. Take that attitude, translate it in to French, and suddenly the machinations of those people in Paris and Berlin do not seem quite so irrational.<\/p>\n
NATO and the United Nations were born of a bipolar world where two super entities stood in ideological opposition, but with similar goals. The great contest that was the Cold War made NATO, the Warsaw Pact and the UN both necessary and viable. NATO and the Warsaw Pact served to roughly define the boundaries of the conflicting ideologies and the UN served as a vital release valve that allowed both sides to cooperate when absolutely required under the umbrella of a pseudo-supranational body. The United Nations offered a forum whereby grievances could be aired, strategies proposed, and treaties struck while always giving each major power block the ability to halt anything diametrically opposed to their own self interest.<\/p>\n
It worked because world politics were so structured as to make it work. Eventually though, catastrophe struck: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapsed under the weight of a massively mismanaged economy. In the maelstrom that followed the Warsaw Pact dissolved (an event that I suspect placed those nations well ahead of the curve of the NATO members) and lacking any other world-girdling socialist system to step in to the power vacuum, the United States was left as the world’s sole superpower.<\/p>\n
Suddenly there was no bipolar world, but the detritus of that world still remained in the form of the old western alliance and the United Nations. Both NATO and the United Nations had lost their old callings and the only thing left to them was to reign in American power. Unfortunately for those bodies, they are utterly inadequate to the task.<\/p>\n
The European Union (led by France) sought to position itself as a rival power to the US and her closest allies. In a post modernist world they felt they could build the economic and political power required to check what they considered to be a vibrant yet culturally inferior America. They thought they had time. They were wrong: the ruins of the Caliphate, fueled by petrodollars and Cold War legacies of weapons and training, were stirring to the call of reactionary elements which viewed the west as an evil to eradicated.<\/p>\n
After September 11, 2001, the US knew what she needed to do and the post modern EU was forced to go along. This left a terrible aftertaste in the mouths of the EU leaders as they had allowed this “cowboy” nation to run roughshod over them on its way to fight a war. When attention turned to Iraq the French in particular apparently understood that the only way the UN and NATO could be used to reign in the US\/UK alliance was to sacrifice those bodies upon the altar of European power and position themselves to possess a solid grasp on power in whatever new body or bodies eventually emerge.<\/p>\n
Taken in that light, it seems to me that France’s actions possess a certain element of rationality.<\/p>\n
The truly interesting part has yet to unfold. Assuming that the US and the UK move forward without the UN and NATO there will follow several years (at least two, anyhow) of agonizing death-throes for those two organizations. The EU (or what remains of it once the NATO split is complete) could be forced to build a military of its own, or else come to terms with the idea of relying upon the Russians for their muscle. Keep in mind that many Eastern European nations will likely be unwilling in the extreme to become a part of an organization that relies on Russian troops to maintain order. While Russian troops are vastly inferior to modern western (read that US and UK) armies, they are not so inconsiderable in relation to what the EU is likely to have on hand when the dust settles. Part of the price will likely be the curtailment of the grand socialism that Europe enjoyed as a protectorate of the United States.<\/p>\n