There is a magnificent (but extremely lengthy) article by David Pryce-Jones in this months "Commentary" magazine that documents French foreign policy over the last century and a half or so with respect to Zionism and the state of Israel. I recall that Stephen Pollard had a poll last year about an award for the most reliably wrong columnist in which one columnist was not really a person at all but was "French Foreign Policy". FFP didn't win but did come in second behind Yasmin Alibi-brownshirt and I have to agree with Stephen's comment about it:
Personally I am disappointed, since much as the Yazzmonster is a deserving winner, she has - yes, this is true - been known to be right (albeit rarely). As opposed to French Foreign Policy which, while not strictly eligible for the award, has nonetheless never been known to be right.
If evidence for this statement were desired then David Pryce-Jones' artcicle provides it in spades (and hearts diamonds and clubs as well).
He begins with 19th century French policy which could best be described as trying to keep up with the British (and generally failing). On the way a certain amorality and lack of principle can be determined as well as apparently a strong vein of anti-semitism. The institutional anti-semitism of the Quai d'Orsay - the French Foreign Ministry - was well demonstrated during the Dreyfus Affair, where numerous influential people in the Quai d'Orsay refused to believe that Dreyfus was innocent, and in its sheltering Haj Amin al-Husseini, the notorious mufti of Jerusalem, immediately after the second world war. At the same time (more or less) France's behaviour in the nascent UN with regards to the artition of Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel sounds remarkably like Chirac's behaviour in the UN circa 2002/2003
Although France finally voted in favor of partition, beforehand it took whatever diplomatic measures were available to it both in the United Nations and elsewhere to avert or delay the vote. Alexandre Parodi, its delegate to the UN, would later explain that his country had been motivated by the desire to maintain good relations with the Arab world. If so, its final vote in favor of partition was a travesty, or so an anonymous official at the Quai d’Orsay pointed out to the foreign minister, writing that France was now a “banana republic,” unable to hold its own against Britain (which had abstained in the voting).
From then on France's apparent belief that it should support pretty much every Arab tyrant or terrorist that came along has apparently only been modified by fear of Nasser during the Suez crisis. In this context Chirac's toadying up to Saddam Hussein and Yasir Arafat makes perfect sense. Of course this support of Arab desires has not been in any way an altruistic endeavour: France has flogged all sorts of technology to one Arab state after another and has attempted to negotiate sweetheart oil deals for its oil companies.
However while France's desire, since the 19th century, to be a "puissance musulmane" has been, in my opinion, an abject failure, it is merely symptomatic of the underlying disease in French foreign policy.
Anglo-Saxon Envy
The real problem is that the French feel that as heirs to Napoleon, the French revolution and numerous important cultural and scientifc geniuses they should be a major power in world affairs. Unfortunately the world seems to make do just fine without French input, indeed in many cases French input just seems to make things worse - a classic case in point being the "triple intervention" of 110 years ago. This results in what looks to me like a national case of envy that has been going on for a good 200 years. The French envy "les Anglo-saxons" and jealous how first the British Empire and the United States of America have been both the leading world superpower and demosntrably richer and more successful at the same time.
To me it seems that the French leadership persists in aping the outward forms of British or American power without really understanding the philosophical underpinings of them and as a result its copies are pale imitations. Consider the 19th century empires: the French colonies in Indchina and North Africa were generally less profitable than India was for the English and while England certainly did over-reach in Eastern Africa the British conquest of South Africa was clearly as mercantilist as its previous conquest of India and influence in China and (for that matter) its enormous trade with Latin America in the late nineteenth century. France however seems to have been influence by that famous Napoleonic description that 'L'Angleterre est une nation de boutiquiers', and not looked at why a nation should seek to build empires and colonies. Interestingly though an earlier version of this comment appears to be Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations which explains it rather well:
To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation that is governed by shopkeepers
The result is that the British colonies and empire provided comodities and markets for the increasing industrialization of the home nation whereas the French colonies were neither great sources of raw materials nor great consumers of the products of French industrial production (such as it was).
The same error applies to French attempts to run the EU and to its attempts at being a world player in opposition to the USA. Effectively the French seem to have noticed that inflence is obtained by being in charge of international institutions but they miss the fact that the influence is achieved by having the international institution actually DO something and not hold endless conferences. It also helps if the country providing the leader(s) of the international body actually comply for the most part with the motions and agreements of the international body. France, as a nation seems to be believe that it posesses a permenant right to ignore any irksome details of any treaty it has signed while not expecting such behaviour from others. Compare the US and France on any number of international bodies - take for example the IPCC and the Kyoto treaty: the US flat out said it wouldn't sign it whereas the French have signed it but seem highly unlikely to implement the required cuts except by accident.
The Gallic Cargo Cult
The way to look at the French government's behaviour I think is to see it as a sort of cargo cult. They see the benefits that other countries gain by doing certain things and implement the symptoms without really implementing the underlying cause. One of the best examples of this is near where I live - Sophia Antipolis. Sophia is supposed to be the French answer to Silicon Valley and it does superficially resemble it - and the weather may actually be better. But unlike the Valley there is none of the underlying networking to support the imposed infrastructure. Sophia has some universities, lots of office space, some nice restaurants and a number of high tech firms but it has almost no native start-ups because it has no venture capitalists living there.
The VCs don't live there because they don't wish to pay the French taxes and because, weather excepted, the south of France does not make an appealing place to start a business. Indeed once the notional start-ups have got past the various government grants and the like they can't make a business case to remain here so they either remain in a mode where they milk one government grant after another or the leave - what they don't do, on the whole, is grow the way that Silicon Valley ones do. Unless you are addressing a market where it makes sense to be based on the Riviera, very few startups will start here because the second or third person you need to hire is the guy who works the red tape. For companies that are looking for sales in a global market that person is an overhead that makes you uncompetitive with your competitors in Taiwan, the USA or even the UK or Ireland.
So if it is all cargo-cult and missing the point why is France still near the top table as a nation? Firstly France, as a country, is blessed geographicaly speaking and culturally by the enormous number of beautiful old buildings, art galleries etc. in it - tourism is a huge industry in France and it brings in the loot from foreigners in huge amounts. Secondly France benefits from people like me who live here but get our money (eventually) from the duller climes of Northern Europe (and has done for a good century - my great grand-father lived here for a while on his British Army pesnion) and thanks to how France wrote the rules for the EU it gains enormously from everyone else in the EU in the same sort of way. Thirdly France started off from a very good position a couple of centuries ago and it has managed to mostly keep track with the economic growth of its European neighbours - and while WWI did knock the stuffing out of France, it escaped relatively unscathed from WWII. WWI killed all the other European imperial powers except for the British and the French and it wounded both of them. WWII killed both those empires but the British suffered far more in the WWII and their empire was both considerably bigger and historically far more of a marke, thus its loss affected the UK far more than the loss of the French colonies affected France. Fourthly while the world has obnoxious tyrants a country willing to sell said tyrants stuff they want with the kickbacks they require will make a good deal of money simply because more ethical nations don't let their businesses make such deals.
However we have, I think, reached the point where smoke and mirrors can no longer mask the long term trends. Albeit slowly the world is, I believe, steadily moving towards a more free-market democratic mode and the French aren't equipped to compete in this world. You may expect to see France gradually move down the league tables as countries from Brazil to India start to flex the economic muscles they are gaining. Whether France will drag the rest of Europe down with it or whether the fringe nations will escape remains to be seen but - as even a French lady I was talking to on Sunday admitted - unless France can find its Margaret Thatcher it is doomed. Sarko, I regret to say, does not appear to be Margaret Thatcher so expect France's decline to last at least until 2012
Hat Tip: Powerline PS in following up a mention of Lawrence of Arabia in Pryce-Jones' article I came across this excellent online text of his "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" - the Allenby encounter described by Pryce-Jones is the start of chapter 82 PPS EU-Rota makes some good relvant points as he discusses the same FT article I talked about earlier today