From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
George W. Bush ran for president in 2000 as a realist who would eschew nation building overseas, and warned that if the United States was an arrogant nation, others would not respect us. Sept. 11 changed everything. It not only shifted the focus of his foreign policy to a war on terrorism, but also provided an opportunity for some in his administration to advance their longstanding plan to use force to remove Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
President Bush correctly refocused his foreign policy on what Lee Harris calls in Civilization and Its Enemies "the greatest threat facing us . . . the collision of this collective fantasy world of Islam with the horrendous reality of weapons of mass destruction." But the means he chose to implement that strategy have been more controversial. Harris writes that "we are now living in a world where decent and sincere men and women attack the United States for removing Saddam Hussein, the archetype of the ruthless gang leader . . . . They condemn the United States president for declaring a war on terrorism." But Harris glides over the very serious question of whether Saddam had anything to do with Sept. 11, and what connection there is between the war on international terrorism and war in Iraq. Instead, he says, the way to know whether you are standing on the right side of history is to ask, "Do you want to see the rule by gang go the way of slavery and be driven from the face of the earth, or do you believe that rule by gang is a natural right?" This is a highly oversimplified choice.
Harris argues that it is "in the interest of civilization" to keep the legitimacy of Pax Americana intact. This, he says, requires avoiding three perils: The United States cannot become an arrogant empire, but must rather be a first among equals. Intellectuals must abandon the pursuit of abstract utopias and fantasy ideologies. And we must all overcome a collective tendency toward forgetfulness. It's easy to agree with that level of generality. But Harris fails to be convincing in his defense of President Bush against charges of arrogance. "Contrary to [Fareed] Zakaria's analysis, what we are seeing is not the result of the incompetence of the Bush administration but the absolutely inevitable unfolding of an entirely new epoch in human history," Harris writes; only the United States can ultimately decide what is to be done, and "the United States represents the ultimate source of legitimacy in the world."
Harris understands the importance of America's soft power -- our ability to attract others. "America's enormous strength in the world" arises not from military hardware or technology, "but rather from the miraculous civil ecology that has no example to rival it, with the sole exception of Rome." But what Harris does not adequately examine is that our attractiveness as a shining city on the hill can be undercut by policies that others see as illegitimate. Polls show that the recent decline in America's attraction to much of the world is the result of our foreign policy rather than our culture. The way we pursue our policies has affected others' perceptions of our legitimacy. Since legitimacy rests in the eyes of the beholders, it is not sufficient to simply assert the superiority of our civic culture.
Harris believes that war is the wrong metaphor for the current struggle against terrorism. The perpetrators of Sept. 11 were not rational warriors in the tradition of Clausewitz, but fantasists in a symbolic drama in which the United States was a prop. The action was valuable to them in itself, not as a means to a political bargain. Such useful insights, as well as interesting detours into Plato, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel and other philosophers make the book valuable, if not always convincing.
The Iraq war is also a major factor in Kenneth Timmerman's view that France "in many ways has declared itself an enemy" and is "growing away from America." While "France has always loved to play the spoiler's role," he writes in The French Betrayal of America, in this case it went too far. "The enormous difference between those two positions -- legitimate dissent and active subversion of America's right of self-defense -- was not lost on George W. Bush and his top advisers, who renamed the French toast served on Air Force One 'Freedom toast.' " Timmerman does not dwell on the question of the extent to which the Iraq war was self-defense, but he points out that French claims of logic and consistency in their objections "were based on the role of France -- not the United Nations -- in determining world affairs."
Why did President Chirac part ways with President Bush over Iraq? Why, in Timmerman's analysis, did he "cast aside the 225-year-old alliance with America in favor of a tinpot dictator from a mud-and-wattle village on the outskirts of Tikrit whose ability to survive was cast in doubt"? One reason was popular politics: Eighty percent of the French public supported the decision to keep France out of the war. In addition, he was concerned not to anger the more than five million Muslim residents of France. A third reason was oil, not only because of the potential lucrative contracts, but also because of the need to assure an adequate supply. Above all, in Timmerman's view, "opposing America and saving Saddam was going to be Chirac's ticket to history's hall of fame."
Whatever the merits of these arguments, there are also credible alternative hypotheses. Writing in the Nation on Feb. 16, Harvard professor Stanley Hoffmann argued that France had informed the United States that it would contribute forces if there was evidence of Saddam's terminal unwillingness to get rid of weapons of mass destruction. In addition, according to Hoffmann, France did not regard Iraq as a clear and present danger to the United States, and feared the war in Iraq would divert resources from the war on terrorism and attract terrorists to Iraq. As Hoffmann put it, "sometimes it is the sharpest critics who have the most foresight."
Timmerman is particularly strong on the history of French relations with Iraq and the massive corruption involved in arms and oil deals between the two countries over three decades. As a reporter in France for 18 years, he was a well-placed observer. While he footnotes many of his accusations, he also protects his sources in some of the most interesting cases (as any good reporter must), and we are left to judge their veracity on our own.
These books are interesting in opposite ways: Timmerman is strong in detailed reportage, Harris in high-altitude political philosophy. But both authors are supporters of the Iraq war -- and both their arguments fail to convince. As the current cliché goes, what they conclude depends on how they have chosen to connect some widely separated dots.
Reviewed by Joseph S. Nye Jr.
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.
Inside Flap Copy
In the wake of French behavior at the United Nations, where Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin systematically undermined the efforts of Secretary of State Colin Powell to convince the Security Council to authorize force against Iraq, Americans have at best come to suspect our ally of double dealing, and at worst come to view them as the enemy. Almost daily over the past year, new stories have emerged of how the government of French President Jacques Chirac has sought to undermine the U.S. war on terror, publicly sniping at America and inciting other countries to do the same. What's wrong with France? What's behind their recent perfidy? According to bestselling author Kenneth R. Timmerman, the American public doesn't know half the story. After they read The French Betrayal of America, American anger at France will turn to outrage.
Timmerman, who worked as a journalist in France for eighteen years and knows the players on both sides, lifts the veil of Jacques Chirac's scandalous love affair with Saddam Hussein, beginning in 1975, when he took him on a tour of top-secret French nuclear facilities. The French attitude toward the dictator, which seemed to baffle American politicians, was in fact entirely predictable. Put bluntly, it was all about money, oil, and guns. Chirac needed Saddam's oil and Saddam's money, and Saddam needed French weapons and French nuclear technology.
Despite this, the relationship between France and America was not only amicable but at times very mutually beneficial. That was until the most recent war on Iraq, where France turned the tables, engaging in dirty diplomacy and helping to sway other European countries to their side. French war coverage was not merely one-sided: It was viciously inaccurate, skewed, and openly anti-American. Timmerman also presents incredible new evidence of France's duplicity, including the fact that the French stood to gain $100 billion from secret oil contracts they had concluded with Saddam Hussein.
The French Betrayal of America raises questions of whether the nuclear cooperation agreements still in force with the French today should be canceled in light of France's behavior. Our security interests no longer converge, and our economic systems increasingly appear to be at loggerheads. The war in Iraq harshly exposed French treachery and their desire to do business with the worst of international tyrants, putting their economy, their international standing, and their relationship with a 200-year-old friend in severe jeopardy.
Shocking new revelations in The French Betrayal of America
The French president lied to Bush and to the public about the war in Iraq.
President Jacques Chirac had personally told President George W. Bush well ahead of time that France would be at America's side.
France urged Saddam to commit genocide.
Saddam launched his genocidal campaign against the Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq to make their region "safe" for French oil engineers.
France helped build Saddam's long-range missiles and nukes.
Based on exclusive access to new documents, provided by Iraq to the United Nations -- that French defense companies were key partners in helping Saddam Hussein perfect the long-range missiles that killed U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia in 1991 and rained terror onto Israel.
Chirac has blocked cooperation on a high-profile terrorism case.
France's top counter-terrorism judge was ordered to stop cooperating with the United States in the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui despite mounds of documents that would have helped the United States to convict Moussaoui of conspiracy to commit mass murder.
France illegally sold U.S. military secrets to Saddam Hussein.
A prominent French defense company shipped U.S.-designed laser designator pods to Iraq in the 1980s that compromised the most high-tech weapons in the U.S. arsenal.
President Mitterrand, a Socialist, became Ronald Reagan's best ally in Europe.
The French Betrayal of America reveals the extent of French strategic and intelligence cooperation with the United States at the peak of the Cold War, in areas that will surprise readers on both sides of the Atlantic. The French ran a key agent inside the KGB, whose "cosmic" reach -- right up to the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union -- hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union.
President Chirac almost went to jail for corruption.
Chirac was on the verge of getting indicted on corruption charges in 1999 until he cooked up an immunity deal with the head of the French Supreme Court, former Socialist foreign minister Roland Dumas. While the French corruption scandals are well known in France, they have rarely been reported in the United States and will alternately shock and amuse American readers.
The Bush administration is now offering France the secrets of our national missile defense.
The French Betrayal of America reveals the hitherto top secret missile defense cooperation between the United States and France that has taken off at precisely the same time the Chirac government was undermining the United States on Iraq. Meanwhile, United States and French nuclear weapons designers continue to meet to exchange secrets of maintaining our respective nuclear arsenals.
