PARIS LETTER:A clear schism between politics and diplomacy is evidenced by an open letter to 'Le Monde'. It condemns France for being ineffective on the international stage, writes RUADHAN Mac CORMAIC
WHAT WOULD Talleyrand have made of it? The masterful diplomat of the 18th and 19th centuries, who did so much to establish the enduring legends of French diplomacy, once remarked that the art of statesmanship lay in foreseeing the inevitable and hastening its occurrence.
After more than a month of revolt in the Arab world, Paris stands accused not only of having failed to grasp the meaning of the popular uprisings, but of having tried to hold them back.
In a country that prides itself on the strength of its diplomatic network – the world’s most extensive, after that of the United States – the charge would be galling under any circumstances. That it should arise in a part of the world where France has long enjoyed privileged ties and rich intelligence channels has made it all the more wounding.
On Tunisia, French ministers remained virtually silent as the death toll rose in the final weeks of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s autocratic regime, only criticising the disproportionate use of force when a French-Tunisian man was killed two days before Ben Ali fled the country.
Around the same time, foreign minister Michèle Alliot-Marie offered the know-how of France’s security forces to its former protectorate. And it didn’t end there: the foreign minister has been resisting pressure to resign over revelations that, as the protests raged in late December, she travelled across Tunisia on a private jet belonging to a local businessman with alleged links to the regime.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has acknowledged French errors over Tunisia, but the episode has exposed a wider disarray in French diplomacy. In an open letter published in Le Monde this week, a group of serving and retired diplomats delivered a scathing attack on Sarkozy’s foreign policy, blaming an “amateurish” and “impulsive” approach for France having lost its voice on the global stage.
The letter confirms what has been an open secret for some time: that the Quai d’Orsay, home to the foreign ministry, is demoralised and resentful at having been sidelined by the Élysée Palace, where a small group of advisers – notably chief-of-staff Claude Guéant and diplomatic adviser Jean-David Lévitte – wield huge influence over foreign policy.
Sarkozy has little time for diplomats – he is said to dislike their formality and ponderousness – and prefers to deal directly with politicians. His first foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, often cut an isolated figure, while Alliot-Marie was appointed last November as (ironically) a steady, safe pair of hands who rarely called attention to herself.
Over the past 25 years, the Quai d’Orsay has lost 15 per cent of its staff. This year, its operating budget will be cut by another 5 per cent and 700 more posts will be lost.
Each side plainly blames the other for the recent mess. After Ben Ali’s fall, Sarkozy pointedly replaced the French ambassador to Tunis with a young protégé, Boris Boillon (protesters have already taken to the streets of Tunis to demand that Boillon be replaced after throwing a petulant tantrum during his first press briefing). But in their letter, the diplomats lay the blame squarely at the door of the Élysée. “The policy pursued towards Tunisia or Egypt was set by the presidency without taking on board our embassies’ analysis. It was [the presidency] that chose Ben Ali and Mubarak as ‘southern pillars’ of the Mediterranean,” they wrote.
A “French WikiLeaks” would make clear that French diplomats, like their American counterparts, had drafted critical assessments of the north African regimes, the diplomats claimed.
The accusation that it did not see the Arab revolts coming is the least serious of the charges against the French government. Other western powers – not to mention a great many Tunisians and Egyptians – were also taken by surprise. François Mitterrand didn’t predict the fall of the Berlin Wall and, as Lévitte remarked this week, diplomats “are not psychics with crystal balls”. What damaged Paris was its maladroit response to fast-changing events, and the perception that close personal ties between the French elite and authoritarian Arab regimes clouded Parisian judgment.
France’s north African debacle has made such noise because it comes at a time when the country needs its diplomatic heft and policy coherence more than ever. While many of the pillars of French power remain in place – including the world’s fifth-largest economy, a seat on the UN security council and a nuclear deterrent – the ramparts of old supremacies are being slowly chipped away by the rise of states such as China, India, Brazil.
One of the most cutting lines in the Le Monde letter was that, contrary to lofty declarations, “Europe is powerless, Africa is drifting away from us, China is bringing us to heel and Washington is ignoring us.”
Coherence is the watchword. France is finding it harder to have its voice heard in a crowded room. The least it could do is know what it wants to say.