Jacques Rattles His Saber
The war on terror has created a remarkably permissive environment with regard to what presidents can say. No doubt Chirac thought he saw an opportunity here to look as tough as Bush, perhaps to one-up Bush in the international game of posturing and parading that counts as diplomacy these days. Dark as this bluster is – (don’t such leaders start to sound like their enemies when they are willing to dispense with countless civilian lives for what amounts to a violent, symbolic act?) – it also points up its own emptiness. Chirac probably knows there is nobody to launch such a bomb at, at least in a way that serves any identifiable strategic purpose. This is precisely why he can bluster, and use this bluster as a tactic to improve his political image.
7 Comments:
Chirac may be more concerned than AWOT about Iran's nuclear potential. Not altogether without reason ...
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What nuclear potential are we really talking about? At the moment, Iran is thinking of refining some uranium. That's a far cry from a bomb, which is a far cry from being able to deliver said bomb. And even if it managed all that, Iran is well aware that it would get hell ten times over if it were in any plausible or implausible way tied to an attack in France. It's not Iran threatenting France with potential nuclear parity, it's France adopting a menacing pose with its really existing nuclear superiority over all non-nuclear powers.
All of this is beside the point, though, because this was a public relations move on Chirac's part. Since he knows he'll never make the crazy, hugely controversial - and therefore really political - decision of dropping a nuke on Iran or anyone else, he is loudly stating that he would.
If we’re going to have a serious discussion of nuclear weapons in the post-9/11 era rather than cede to the temptation to fry the French yet again, we need to look carefully not at Chirac’s bluster but at the rather more troubling evolution of French nuclear doctrine revealed in his statement (see [French] article here). For the first time in public Chirac disclosed that the French have developed nuclear weapons for use in a “decapitation” strike: “Against a regional power,” he said, “our choice is no longer between inaction and annihilation. The flexibility of our strategic forces would allow us to aim our response directly at its centers of power, its capacity to act.” In other words, the French now advocate precisely the “war-fighting” strategy they opposed when it was championed by the United States during the “Euromissile” crisis of the 1980s. As the “Libération” article notes, this is one more step toward a “banalization” of nuclear weapons, hence disturbing in the extreme.
That said, one has to ask whether the editors regard Chirac’s bluster as any more egregious than Ahmadinejad’s. Would it constitute an undue violation of Iranian sovereignty to suggest that it is not really in Iran’s interest to provoke nervous nuclear powers as it has been doing lately? The editors’ pre-emptive response that Iran is merely “thinking of refining some uranium” begs the question of what Iran hopes to gain by pursuing the course it has embarked on, which can be described, to borrow from the editors’ own critique of Chirac, as “crazy, hugely controversial - and therefore really political.”
If you choose to take up this debate, it would be wise, I think, to refrain from a Bush-style biasing of the intelligence. There is more than a nuance of difference between “thinking of refining some uranium” and taking steps to produce the highly enriched uranium (HEU) whose only use is in weaponry, and the IAEA reports detection of HEU fabrication byproducts in Iran. As for the ability to deliver a bomb if built, Iran is known to have acquired Chinese-modified Exocet missiles, and it has obtained cruise missiles from the Ukraine and China—both conceivably suitable weapons for an attack on Israel, if not France. Whether it could manufacture a bomb small enough for delivery by such vehicles is another question. Yet if one of the purposes of this blog is to denounce the exaggeration of threats for purposes of political manipulation, I think it is essential to maintain some realism about what the actual or potential threats are. Scornful dismissiveness works when preaching to the converted, but a political movement needs to make converts, not alienate them.
We agree, though are not hugely surprised, that there is something troubling about French advocacy of the 'war-fighting' strategy, and appreciate the additional information about the evolution of French nuclear doctrine. I think the assumption of the above comment that this is somehow a pro-US 'frying of the frogs' betrays a hypersensitivity on behalf of the commenter. We are equal opportunity critics - Chirac and Bush, and anyone else for that matter. More to the point, goldie is wrong to imply that somehow Iran and France are on equal footing. To say that Ahmadinejad is provoking nervous nuclear powers completely ignores the real global inequalities of power, especially nuclear power. It is only in the context of a global proliferation scheme that weights things heavily in favor of existing nuclear powers, and entrenches their ability to bully the rest, that Ahmadinejad appears to be 'provocative'. It seems to me it is the nuclear powers that are in a state of continuous provocation, not merely by threatening decapitation strikes, but by insisting that those states that seek mere *parity* with existing nuclear powers are somehow aggressors. Let us not forget who is in the dominant position. Is it really unjustified for weak states, especially those with no hope of equaling the conventional forces of the West, especially the US, to seek nuclear weapons?
You seem to imply that Iran would, once armed with nukes, immediately nuke Israel. This is a radical exaggeration of the Iranian threat. Iran well knows the minute it did anything like mention the thought, Israel along with every Western power would rain nuclear hell down on Iran and obliterate the country. In fact, a similar scenario came up during the first Gulf War, during which, through backdoor channels, John Major and George Bush told Saddam that they would nuke Baghdad if he put even chemical or biological weapons on his Scuds. Saddam filled his warheads with cement for that reason.
To say France is being intimidated or provoked is a profound misreading of the situation, and lets Chirac off the hook.
I agree with the editors that it is wrong to argue, in the name of realism and objectivity, as if France and Iran were engaging as equals here. That abstracts from international politics as we know it. And entering immediately into the debate about degrees of threat presumes, as the editors say, that all the moral authority lies on the side of western powers such as France. Only they can be trusted with nukes. This isn't supported by the historical record.
As for the evolution of France's nuclear doctrine, this seems worth exploring. The militarization of Europe in the post Cold War period has generally been driven by a combination of dynamics internal to leading EU member states (e.g. German reunification), and the transatlantic relationship. Yet it has produced this odd situation: European leaders make speeches about how Europe must become militarily self-sufficient, yet the geopolitical environment hardly presents Europe with any threats that would justify this. Chirac seems to have taken this tendency to its extreme - invoking the use of nuclear weapons precisely at a time when they would seem most redundant.
It may be that part of the thinking was that having unsuccessfully set themselves up as responsible for the 'Iran dossier', European states are now breaking ranks, with France the first to flex its muscles. I would have thought that crucial in this story was also Chirac's position as an isolated figure in France, much criticized for not interventing in public life or shaping policy. Nicolas Sarkozy, rival and presidential contender for 2007, has recently made speechs about how he would strengthen the presidency. This is Chirac's response, which appears quite out of sink with the Iran question or the terrorism question, simply because it is not really connected to it in any real way.
I think the Chirac statement on nukes proves the point that when security alone is held as the highest ideal for political opportunists to use that the real "threat" is seen.
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