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Blair warns Chirac on the future of Europe
This is the FT's own synopsis of an interview it held with Tony Blair. Though long, the full interview is available online and is penetrating and wll worth a read.
Tony Blair has issued a direct challenge to France's Jacques Chirac over the future of the transatlantic relationship by warning that the French president's vision of Europe as a rival to the US is dangerously destabilising. In a wide-ranging interview with the Financial Times, the prime minister foreshadows a continuing Anglo-French struggle about Europe's relationship with Washington. Mr Blair seeks to keep alive the prospect of British entry to the euro but he disavows any personal ambition to become president of the European Union.
The sooner you hold that Euro referendum, Tony, the sooner we can start forgetting about it.
Though his personal relationship with Mr Chirac has improved since the bitter row over France's veto of a second United Nations resolution, Mr Blair is clear that the strategic divide that opened over Iraq has not been bridged. Meanwhile a new MORI poll for the FT reveals that 55 per cent of Britons regard France as the UK's least reliable ally, while 73 per cent view the US as the country's most reliable.
| Har! Confusion to the French! |
The prime minister disassociated himself from those in Washington who have said that France should be "punished" for its opposition to the war with Iraq. He drew the limits of his own alliance with Washington by rejecting military intervention to halt the development of weapons of mass destruction in countries such as North Korea and Syria.
| That's because both problems are still amenable to diplomatic (or other) means of solution. Still lotsa options open... |
He was equally determined, though, that Europe has to face up to divisions in the alliance exposed by the US-led invasion. Spelling out the damage that would be inflicted by Mr Chirac's vision of a "multipolar" world, he said: "I am not really interested in talk about punishing countries, but I think there is an issue that we have to resolve here between America and Europe and within Europe about Europe's attitude towards the transatlantic alliance. I don't want Europe setting itself up in opposition to America . . . I think it will be dangerous and destabilising." France wanted a multipolar world with different centres of power, he said, but "I believe that they will very quickly develop into rival centres of power". The result would be that "you end up reawakening some of the problems that we had in the cold war with countries playing different centres of power off each other". Rather than seek to gloss over the divide it was better "to have it out in the open".
Ahh, France: Defender of the United Nations; Champion of National Disunity.
| Rather than a Cold War model, I think the Frenchies are looking further back through the dustbin of history, to the ententes (cordiale and otherwise) of the late 19th century. Most of these were the result of or in response to French diplomacy — French, recall, used to be the language of diplomacy. France was Britain's bitter colonial rival, while the Spanish, Belgians, and Dutch had their own colonial operations. And they had Austria-Hungary as a non-colonial power in Central Europe, and Russia as protector of the Slavs. Our grandparents and great-grandparents saw how well that turned out in 1914. |
Posted by: Bulldog 2003-04-28 |
