January 27, 2008, NYT
The World
A New France in the New Middle East: Forget Glory
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
PARIS
FOR France, the symbolism could not have been more powerful. On a trip to the United Arab Emirates 12 days ago, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced a decision to open a permanent military base there. It will be France’s first such base in a country that had not been its colony, and will make France the only country other than the United States with a permanent military presence in the Persian Gulf.
French officials portray the move as part of a larger effort by Mr. Sarkozy to project France’s influence throughout the Middle East. In the eight months Mr. Sarkozy has been president, he has visited eight countries in the region, announcing plans to build nuclear reactors, sell weapons, resolve crises and deepen cooperation along the way.
“France is back, yes, France is back,” Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in an interview. “We are pursuing a policy that represents something new — activism, realism, involvement, even confidence.”
New, for sure. But maybe not quite grand, at least in the sense of a sweeping vision. Some people here, and in the Middle East, have even begun to wonder in just what direction all this energy and motion will take France.
In France’s days of empire, it was in the Arabic-speaking lands that the country’s dreams were most ambitious. But beyond North Africa and Lebanon, some of its boldest ventures were thwarted. Napoleon landed nearly 40,000 troops in Egypt in 1798, but the occupation ended in 1801. A more lasting presence came in 1830 when the French Army landed in Algeria, beginning an era of primacy over western North Africa. After World War I, France assumed control of Syria and Lebanon. But after World War II came humiliation and defeat — first in the 1956 Suez war, then the long war to hold onto Algeria.
Since then, France has played a key role in the Arab world only episodically.
Now, the American setback in Iraq, the winding down of the Bush presidency, a longing in the region for an alternative to American power, a turn inward by Britain’s new leaders and soaring prices for oil have created opportunities for Mr. Sarkozy.
President Sarkozy is seizing them in a distinctly post-imperial style; he defines the region as a mosaic to be worked on bit by bit, not as one huge prize that, if won, would restore France’s lost glory. So this is not about nostalgia. Nor is it an effort to lump the Muslim world into one great “arc of crisis” from Morocco to Bangladesh due to the never-ending terrorist threat, even though France’s foreign intelligence service tends to do just that.
In fact, Mr. Sarkozy has defined his approach in contrast to such thinking. “There are many Muslim and Arab worlds,” he wrote in “Testimony,” his 2006 campaign book. “The very concept of an ‘Arab policy’ is nonsense.” The goal, he said, is not to “be blinded by a unity that is only virtual.”
His approach is also personal, reflecting his hyperactivism, his passions and his determination to promote French business around the world. One example is his rejection of a conviction enunciated by his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, that the overriding priority in the Middle East had to be resolving the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. Mr. Sarkozy is more preoccupied with Iran, defining Iran’s nuclear activities as the world’s most challenging crisis.
Gone also is France’s automatic distancing of itself from the United States and Israel; when Mr. Sarkozy calls Israel “a friend,” the Israelis seem to believe him. And while Mr. Chirac spoke of the need for a “multipolar world,” with Europe as one pole, Mr. Sarkozy has tempered that notion with talk about France’s place within its “Western family,” an expression welcomed in Washington.
But will such an idiosyncratic approach work? A number of Mr. Sarkozy’s initiatives have already ended in stalemate, if not failure. A visit here by the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, in which he openly criticized his host — and prompted the closure of the bridges over the Seine when he suddenly decided to take a boat ride — was widely seen as humiliating. Mr. Kouchner’s numerous trips to broker an end to the political crisis in Lebanon have been dismissed by even some supporters as a waste of his time.
“There is no vision, no strategy here, only a new style based on the president’s personal intervention and charisma,” said Olivier Roy, a scholar on the Arab and Muslim world and author of the forthcoming “Politics of Chaos in the Middle East” (Columbia University Press). “And this emotional factor has exaggerated the sense that there is a change in France’s foreign policy.”
At home, Mr. Sarkozy has faced criticism for breaking with France’s hallowed secular tradition by talking a lot about God — not only in Rome, but also in Saudi Arabia. He has been criticized as well for failing to make human rights a centerpiece of his recent meetings with Colonel Qaddafi.
And he has stated that his goal is not to democratize the world. Stressing the importance of political diversity during a news conference early in the month, he said: “Why diversity more than democracy? Because when you fight for democracy, certain countries say, ‘Ah! Post-colonial! You want to impose on us the system that is yours!’ ”
If there is one policy line that does stand out, it is Mr. Sarkozy’s pitching of French nuclear energy. France is second only to the United States in building nuclear power plants, and Mr. Sarkozy argues that Muslim and Arab states in principle have the same right to civilian atomic energy as any other part of the world.
This policy paradoxically risks encouraging Iran to continue enriching uranium — in violation of Security Council resolutions — as part of what Iran claims is only a peaceful nuclear energy program. Nevertheless, Mr. Sarkozy has signed a cooperation deal with the United Arab Emirates, the first step in building a $9 billion nuclear reactor there, and he has offered civilian nuclear cooperation to Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Jordan and Morocco. In the wake of criticism that transfers of nuclear technology anywhere could be used on bomb programs, French officials rushed to make clear that it could take 15 years before those reactors are built, and to add that in some of the countries, they probably won’t be built.
All this activity, together with its inconsistencies, has attracted bemused comments from abroad, and signs from Mr. Sarkozy that he can answer them with a hint of humility — or humor. Last month, a French newspaper quoted King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia as having said: “President Sarkozy resembles a dashing and high-spirited thoroughbred, but like all thoroughbreds, he should submit to be reined in to find his balance.”
When Mr. Sarkozy landed in Riyadh two weeks ago, he greeted the king with the words: “The high-spirited horse is happy to see his great friend so wise.”
