The manic French reactions to nuclear-weapons-bound Iran have put us in mind of the 1950s science fiction film, The Incredible Shrinking Man (L'Homme Qui Rétrécit, in France a shrinking man is not so incredible).
TALL TO SMALL
Big Talk, Little Effect
* The diminutive Chirac-lette is the nickname for the special-purpose minature mechanical brooms of Paris, an important legacy of former mayor Jack.
THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957)
An Incredible Adventure Into The Unknown
Synopsis: A man passes through a radioactive cloud and gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller...
Well, we suppose that's where the similarities end. With ineluctable diminution.
In the movie, the main character realizes that he will continue to shrink, accepts this, and arrives at a transcendental peace. In France, Jack fumbles round in a cloud of nuclear rhetoric where, by turns -- and sometimes all at once -- hand-wringing, pleading, alarm, cajoling, bullying, temporizing, and waving the French nuclear spanking paddle render him smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. Alas, the more reduced Jack's stature, the more conflicted and ineffective his utterances, and the smaller he becomes...da capo.
FRANCE WARNS IRAN OF 'VERY SERIOUS' CONSEQUENCES
PARIS, Feb 6, 2006 (AFP) - French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said on Monday that Iran faces "very serious" consequences as a result of its refusal to curb its nuclear activities. "If they isolate themselves, it will be VERY SERIOUS for them," the minister said on French radio.
Oh my. The affeared Iranians have taken note of M. le Ministre's veiled mush.
Responding to the International Atomic Energy Agency's decision to report the Islamic republic to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, Iran said Monday that large-scale uranium enrichment work — the focus of fears it is seeking nuclear weapons — will begin in "due course."
The Iranians, no doubt, noted similar language in UNSCR 1441 (Article 13:"...the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES as a result of its continued violations of its obligations") and remarked the French follow-through.
Elsewhere, John Rosenthal has some dark musings on Jack's recent nuclear grandstanding:
February 6, 2006 (TCS Daily) - Some months ago, when Julien Dray, spokesman for the French Socialist Party, was asked what he thought of a certain speech by Jacques Chirac. "Frankly," Dray replied, "I don't even listen any more." In France, this has become a common response; the indifference to Chirac's views in fact spans the political spectrum. ... Nonetheless, when last month – in what French journalist Luc Rosenzweig described as "a frantic effort to make us believe that he still exists" – Chirac gave a much-trumpeted speech on French nuclear deterrence, the world's media took considerable notice. ... In his speech, Chirac made frequent and characteristically pompous allusion to his executive powers in matters of defense: seemingly brandishing the threat of personally putting finger to button should he esteem that the circumstances require. ... Virtually all the English-language coverage of Chirac's speech seized upon just two aspects: a grammatically jumbled set of three sentences seeming to suggest the possibility of a "non-conventional" response to a terrorist attack on French interests and, although Chirac did not mention any potential adversaries by name, what was taken to be an implicit threat to Iran. ...In fact, Chirac only introduced the theme of terrorism into his reflections in order to downplay its importance, thus leading one to wonder whether the otherwise mind-bending suggestion of a nuclear response to a terrorist attack might not have been merely the latest in a series of, as Rosenzweig put it, "presidential slips of the tongue." "The struggle against terrorism is one of our priorities," Chirac said, before adding: "But…just because a new threat appears, it does not make all the other ones disappear." And while Chirac, under the heading of an emerging "regional power," seems indeed to have threatened to pulverize Iran, he also in the very same breath highlighted France's capacity to strike what he called a "major power." Indeed, the continuing potential for conflict with such "major powers" was at least as prominent a theme of Chirac's reflections as terrorism or merely "regional" powers. Chirac allowed that France – "it is true" – is not "at the moment" the object of a "direct" threat from any major power. But he made perfectly clear that, on his assessment, this situation could easily prove ephemeral and was thus no reason to let down one's nuclear guard.
Moreover, Chirac provided all the hints required for his audience to understand the identity of at least one of the "major powers" he had in mind: namely, the United States. Even Chirac's allusion to the threat to peace represented by countries "spreading radical ideas" about a "confrontation of civilizations" will – after years of ideological conditioning associating Samuel Huntington's famous volume of roughly that name with US foreign policy – be more readily understood by Chirac's French public as a reference to George Bush's America than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran. More to the point, consider the following passage:
Of course, it is not a foregone conclusion that the relations between the different "poles of power" will sink into hostility in the near future. It is, moreover, in order to meet this danger that we should work toward an international order founded on the rule of law and collective security, toward a more just and more representative order. And that we should encourage all our important partners to make the choice of cooperation rather than that of confrontation. But we are never completely safe: neither from a revolution in the international system, nor from a strategic surprise. All of history teaches us this.No one conversant with Chirac's neo-Gaullist style of discourse could fail to hear the multiple allusions to the United States in the above. Just who, after all, is this ambiguously "important partner" that France has to encourage – or even "obligate" [engager] – to make the "choice of cooperation rather than confrontation"? The reference to the "poles of power" likewise leaves little room for doubt. "Poles of power" is a programmatic term of neo-Gaullist discourse. According to the latter, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and hence of the "bipolarity" characterizing the Cold War, the United States remained the single "pole of power" in a "unipolar" [sic] world. It is in order to correct this, in the neo-Gaullist vision of things, perilous situation that an independent European military capability has to be developed, thus rendering the EU itself an alternative "pole of power" to the United States. Not coincidentally, Chirac's speech ends with a plea for the development of just such a unified European military capability, at whose service he pledges to put France's nuclear forces. It is not only Chirac's rhetoric – which, while emphasizing the increasing "imbrication" of the interests of the EU countries, carefully avoids mention of the transatlantic relation – that makes clear the practical implications of this project for NATO. France's recent actions in blocking a planned NATO-EU meeting on anti-terrorism efforts does so as well.
Whereas the "old" American media remained resolutely obtuse to the point of Chirac's speech, evidently the French authorities themselves wanted it to be at least partially understood even by the American public. Thus, France's state-controlled AFP news service (for details of the AFP's relation to the French state, see here and here) issued its own English-language report on the speech. The AFP's helpful title: "Chirac's nuclear warning a signal to the US".
Now Jack is one of Pave's favorite objects of fun, and there is precious little we put past him, but threatening the United States with nuclear...what? Chastisement? All this plays to the French pathology for grandeur, but surely Jack knows what every franchouille knows in his secret heart. The disproportion between American and French power make such a threat macabrely laughable. What sort of lop-sided death wish is Jack wishing on France? He can't bring himself to stand up to home-grown thugs. Has he hidden away a spine somewhere to stare down America? Perhaps Jack hopes by astute diplomacy to obtain multipolar weekend privileges to the Chinese arsenal.
And how will he ever get his legitimizing UN authorization to incinerate America over an American UNSC veto? Perhaps the French intend to charm America into abstaining.
Smaller and smaller and smaller.
PFFT (What is this?): French shrinkage 4 | Rayonnement français 0
Chirac’s nuclear statement was interesting, to say the least.
As an interesting note here, what do you think would have been the reaction in the world press if GWB had threatened the use of nuclear weapons? Oh, Lordee!
Does anyone think that the “civil” unrest (the other civil unrest, you know, before the cartoon stuff) had anything to do with the proclamation? I do.
Does anyone think that the failure of the EU3/Iran talks had anything to do with the statement? I do.
Interesting here also is France alignments. ( I wrote about this in post below)…but did not mention Russia/China in that monologue.
China/Russia are ready to veto any kind of UN resolution for “action” against Iran, so we can forget about the UN. So who is one left? One can think of US/UK/Germany/France?
And the four of us better come up with a censuses on a strategy pretty quickly.
Bonjour,
Plutôt que de disserter sur notre force de frappe (depuis que de Gaulle vous a dit m.... , vous auriez dû la digérer) parlez-nous de l' échec total de "la première armée du Monde" contre ce qui n'est ,après tout, qu' un pays du tiers-monde ?
En plus le Monde a vu les nouveaux exploits de vos tortionnaires en Irak.
Vous avez l 'UE (pourtant un caniche pro US) ,l' ONU contre vous etc ,etc ,il faudra bien que vous en tiriez les conséquences: le "soft power" s' écroule et dans le monde entier maintenant USA est devenu pour tous synonyme de barbarie.
Good luck for your country in Irak !
Chirac l'homme qui retrecit! Quel merveilleux put-down!!
Anti-Yankee - good point about Iraq. Funny God is on Bush's side and yet he just gets into a bigger & bigger mess. C'est toute la faute de ses ennemis, bien sur.
