MrPresident
Anglo-Saxon Liberal
So, by Thursday you will be what? Luke Skywalker?
What is a good ally of the United States?
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CurtSibling
ENEMY ACE™
- Joined
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Not bad, MrPresident, Not bad! 
Kinniken
Riding with William
No, I want it to able to take actions in its interest which might piss of the US. I certainly do not want it to do so deliberately, but I do not want it shaking it fear at the thought that it might annoy the US for some reason.
First, you seem to be assuming that a mistake by the US in Iraq or Vietnam only has a cost for it. WRONG. Considering that if Iraq falls into civil war this will fuel islamist extremism and increase the risk of attacks all over the world, a US failure there is everyone's concern.
And I don't see why you should react as if for a country to say it does not agree with an analysis of the US is somehow an insult. Nobody is always right, and that include the US administration. And for that matter, if the American government thinks a policy of Chirac is stupid, I have no problem with it saying so and explaining why. After all, they could be right and changing it might benefit France.
No, but I think they should have. The Vietnam war turned out a repeat of the Indochina one, with the US making the same mistakes than France and ending up with a similar result. De Gaulle saw this, the US government did not, and the result was the Vietnam disaster.
And your scornful reaction to the idea that France might have had something to teach the US there, even if only by pointing out their own defeat, was typical of the US attitude at the time. The result was not pretty.
I hope Chirac will turn out to have been wrong on the impossibility of rebuilding Iraq. He has already been proved right (to my great surprise for the first of those) in that the embargo had indeed prevented Iraq from rebuilding its WMD arsenal and that any occupation would be very difficult.
And that Chirac had national and personal interest in his position changes little; after all, the same can be said of Bush.
No, that's not what I am arguing. What I am saying is that Bush should have accepted that he was not automatically right and considered a bit more the arguments of the anti-war. For a start, that might have led him to prepare more seriously for the reconstruction, instead of swallowing whole the neo-con fantasy of Iraqis showering US troops with flowers.
Furthermore, I find what appears to me to be the center of your post rather distasteful. Correct me if I am wrong, but in essence you are saying that:
- The US should only take into account its own interest (defendable)
- What it does is no one else's problem
- No other nation can possibly have valuable advice to give the US
- Every nation should do its best not to piss of the US
And I strongly disagree with that. The US is the world's sole superpower, and its basic values are the same as mine. But that does not mean that other countries are irrelevant and should either obey it without daring to have different ideas on what policies would work best or stand aside and shut up.
samildanach
Necrophile
Originally posted by allhailIndia
There is no such thing as an American ally
No nation has permanent friends or interests, only permanent interests, Lord Palmerston if I am not mistaken.
No nation is indispensable to the US, but the US itself. IT would be wise to understand that and get over any snubs the US may hand.
If any nation feels that the US will be its ally forever and will always agree and fight by it, it is sadly mistaken. The US always has its interests, before it puts its allies interests ahead. The trick for any country, is to convince the US that assisting it would be in the US's interests
E.G. How Britain got the US to provide supplies against Hitler in the Second World War.
How the Pakistanis convinced the US to support the Mujahiddeen in Afghanistan.
I agree with all of this.
Most of this thread seems to be concerned with Frances relationship with the U.S.A. I think why things are particularly rocky at the moment can be explained by the Palmerston quote. Both Britain and America have interests which span the centuries some of which are common. France, however, tends to abandon or change its goals for short term political or economic gain which can be exasperating. For example, take the european expansion issue - French posters here have claimed that France is for expanding the free market to other countries,of course, initially they were pro- expansion of the E.U but then had to be strong armed into expansion by the U.K. and the U.S.A.
As far as the U.S.A and France being allies is concerned one should examine not only what has France did for the U.S.A but what has the U.S.A. done for France? When a British Army was laying seige to Paris did the Americans come to the aid of the nation that had helped them win their liberty? The French people had been fighting for exactly the same things the Americans had but their "allies" chose to do nothing. And which French "ally" did more to undermine and strip France of its Empire than any other? It wasn't Britain or Germany.
allhailIndia
Deity
Unless the US is the only country in the world, it cannot behave as if it exists in a vacuum. It may or may not choose to have allies, but doesn't mean that a well intentioned piece of advice is worthless because it is the biggest superpower in the world and hence, it knows what is best for itself.
Portuguese
Vassalising Spain
Have to ask Zarn for its old saber
And then I'd deal with the clones
Bobo the Ape
Prince
- Joined
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@Kinniken
I agree that Bush certainly could have been more diplomatic. There's no reason to throw the fact that you're the most powerful country in peoples faces when they already know it.
However, there is a difference between "listening" to advice and "following" advice. Just because someone doesn't follow your advice doesn't mean that they didn't listen to it and consider it carefully.
@Samil
What year was this? If it was anytime before say the mid 20th century there was no way the US could have amassed a large land force and sent it over the Atlantic in the face of the Royal Navy.
In 1789? You need to study some US history. America was basically a third world country at the time. Even in the 1810s the US was paying tribute to Tripoli. How could they possibly have mounted any significant expeditionary force to the Continent?
I assume you mean the US. How exactly did it do this to France? How exactly did this do more harm to France's Empire than all the wars with Britain and the two big ones against Germany?
I agree that Bush certainly could have been more diplomatic. There's no reason to throw the fact that you're the most powerful country in peoples faces when they already know it.
However, there is a difference between "listening" to advice and "following" advice. Just because someone doesn't follow your advice doesn't mean that they didn't listen to it and consider it carefully.
@Samil
What year was this? If it was anytime before say the mid 20th century there was no way the US could have amassed a large land force and sent it over the Atlantic in the face of the Royal Navy.
In 1789? You need to study some US history. America was basically a third world country at the time. Even in the 1810s the US was paying tribute to Tripoli. How could they possibly have mounted any significant expeditionary force to the Continent?
I assume you mean the US. How exactly did it do this to France? How exactly did this do more harm to France's Empire than all the wars with Britain and the two big ones against Germany?
MrPresident
Anglo-Saxon Liberal
Fair enough.
Yeah, but you're don't telling the Americans that they're foreign policy is wrong. You're telling them that it is in opposition to your national self-interest. I have no problem with that. I just dislike it being disguised in moral terms.
Poor military prepartion for the reconstruction has nothing to do with neo-cons, that's the fault of the Pentagon. And what makes you think Bush didn't consider the arguments of the anti-war side and simply reject them as wrong, like you have rejected the pro-war side as wrong? Listening to an argument doesn't mean agreeing it.
Yes.
No. Just don't disguise your problem with American foreign policy as anything other than national self-interest.
No. There's a difference between advice and preaching.
From an American foreign policy point of view, yes.
allhailIndia
Deity
@kinniken
I don't much about the other French colonies, but AFAIK, in Vietnam, the US DIDN'T want the French to leave, so that they could oppose Communism together.
I don't much about the other French colonies, but AFAIK, in Vietnam, the US DIDN'T want the French to leave, so that they could oppose Communism together.
Kinniken
Riding with William
You do not understand. The interest I have in mind there is not France's, it's that of the West: weakening Al Qaida as much as possible. And I do not believe Bush is doing a good job at it.
And BTW, considering that like most French I have no love for TotalFinaElf and that the one place where I want to see Chirac is in a jail, Chirac's "bad" reasons for opposing the war does not apply to me.
It had to do with Rumsfeld, one of the leading neo-con, believing his theory that the Iraqis would offer no resistance and Bush letting him getting away with minimal preparations. Though the worst was averted... remember Rumsfeld initial plans to invade with twenty thousand troops?
Fair enough I guess, especially since I did not agree with most of them (difficulty of occupation excepted) myself. But if the Bush administration considered the anti-war agreements, it went out of its way to hide it.
Once again, when it comes to fighting terrorism I do not see what French national interest I could be defending. Success or failure in Iraq will affect the risk of terrorism just about everywhere. I just think that Chirac and the other anti-wars had some good analysis concerning the war that were sadly ignored, and that Bush's belief that no one outside his administration can have the slightest idea of what ought to be done is severely harming the fight against Al Qaida. And for that fight to succeed is in the interest of the US, France and myself as an individual.
Kinniken
Riding with William
I know. In fact, the Indochina war is the only colonial war the US supported.
However, the speeches by de Gaulle to which I am referring were made latter, at a time when France had already been defeated in Vietnam and the US was starting to get bogged down there as well. At that point, that France had lost Indochina was settled; the question was wether the independent Vietnam would be a US satellite or a communist one.
De Gaulle thought, rightly as it turned out, that the US were making the same mistakes that France had made and would end up suffering the same fate.
MrPresident
Anglo-Saxon Liberal
He believes he is.
I won't not expect you to be bothered about French oil contracts, though would I expect the majority of the French people to bothered either. But you don't make French foreign policy, Chirac does.
They probably could have won just as easily with 20,000 troops. It is the post-war situation that they have bungled, but I accept your point.
My guess is that he wanted to appear strong and decisive to win over the support of the American people.
National security.
Then why aren't there any French troops there?
Again, it wasn't ignored. It is kind of hard to ignore a threatened UN security council veto. It was simply disagreed with.
How do you know what Bush believes?
I'll end on a note of agreement.
Voynich
Letter of Napoleon
An ally is a country that in the event of a major war would fight on the side of the United States. This means something that has a military alliance with the US. It is possible that nations which share the US's beliefs and values to an extremely high degree could be considered allies also. Therefore 5 and 10.
Kinniken
Riding with William
I know, and I think he would have been better of listening more to his allies. I do not understand your point.
True. I was just pointing out that I do not need to share Chirac's preoccupations to agree with him on this point, in much the same way that when I argued in favour of the war it was not because I felt it was good for Bush's reelection chances. I am concerned with the idea (that an occupation of Iraq was bound to be ugly), not the reasons behind it.
Unless you believe that nations who did not take part in the war are sheltered from Al Qaida (I don't), I do not see how the consequences, either positive or negative, of the Iraq war on international terrorism affect French national security differently than American one. I continue to think that in the war on terrorism, the national interest of the Western states are extremely close. There is no special French interest for Chirac to defend (there is a personal one though, as said above).
I obviously don't know definitively, but from his actions I can make good guesses. And those lead me to believe that while Bush indeed fought the anti-war arguments at the UN, it was always because they were in his way; he never gave the impression of taking them into account.
Incidentally, much the same can be said of Chirac and the pro-war arguments; but in the end, it's what Bush thinks that matter the most.
Originally posted by MrPresident
I'll end on a note of agreement.
So will I. We may argue on the best way to tackle terrorism, but our goals are definitely the same
MrPresident
Anglo-Saxon Liberal
Drowned Puppy.
MrPresident
Anglo-Saxon Liberal
You want him to change his mind not to listen to his allies. If he's allies agreed with him, would you still be calling for to listen to them more?
I think the Iraq war put America more in the firing line than France, though with your headscarve ban you seem to be trying to correct that.
What exactly does 'taking them into account' mean? Are anti-war people taking into account Bush's views?
Kinniken
Riding with William
There might be a small "priority" effect, but I have no doubts that Al Qaida wants to target France. And the headscarf ban is just an other excuse, on par with the Crusades, the reconstida or US troops in Saudi Arabia. I do not believe for a minute that if Al Qaida has the opportunity to target France it will refrain from doing so because of Chirac's opposition to the war.
At the very most, France's opposition to the war led Al Qaida to concentrate a bit more on Spain, the UK and Poland for now. It changes little to the real question, the strength of Al Qaida worldwide, which affect the west more or less equally.
Consider them and try to see if there is anything to be learned from them. And no, most anti-war people never tried to understand the real and serious argument for the war. But that's hardly an excuse for Bush to do the same. And since he has so much more power than just about everyone on the planet, he can least than anyone afford to make mistake like that.
BTW, the fact that no one is perfect, most certainly including Bush, is one of the reason why I think the US's power is excessive. I simply do not trust anyone with so much power, and the childish behaviour of Bush only reenforce that. Chirac's mistakes are simply less costly to the world.
Androrc
Prince
'Al Qaeda's worldwide strength'? Al Qaeda is a smallish organization... You speak like they could change history. Also, haven't you people ever thought of other muslim terrorist organizations? Why would Al Qaeda be the only one?
Kinniken
Riding with William
That they have a "worldwide strength" only implies that they are active all over the world, not that they are necessarily extremely powerful. I think 9/11 is about as big as they can do.
They have already changed history though. Neither the Afghanistan nor the Iraq war would have happened without 9/11, and those two wars will to a large extent define the west's relations with the Arab world in the medium term.
As for the other terrorist groups, I agree. I said Al Qaida as a convenience, but meant Islamist terrorism in general. It is thought anyway that Al Qaida acts more like a federation of separate organisation than as a structured organisation, so its limits are blurred.
They have already changed history though. Neither the Afghanistan nor the Iraq war would have happened without 9/11, and those two wars will to a large extent define the west's relations with the Arab world in the medium term.
As for the other terrorist groups, I agree. I said Al Qaida as a convenience, but meant Islamist terrorism in general. It is thought anyway that Al Qaida acts more like a federation of separate organisation than as a structured organisation, so its limits are blurred.
CIVPhilzilla
Reagan Republican
I said no such thing. Our country is too freaking cocky and arogant to consider other countries as strong allies. I think it is attrocious that a single man, Bush, was able to sever ties that took a long time to build in the United Nations. I think it is important to allies, but I wouldn't be surprised if the countries we are allied with turn on us in our time of need.
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