CHIRAC SAYS RELATIONS WITH BUSH ARE GOOD,
BUT FRANCE CANNOT BE 'SUBMISSIVE' TO U.S.

PARIS September 18, 2006 (IHT/AP) - President Jacques Chirac said Monday that he has very good relations with U.S. President George W. Bush, while stressing that France cannot be submissive to the United States.

Asked about his ties with Bush in an interview with Europe-1 radio, Chirac said: "In our relations we can only be equals. It cannot be a relationship of submission."

It seems to us between equality and servility is a very big world. The French have a dread, a fear, that any agreement or comity with the United States should appear as "submission" or inferiority to America. This is a quite open worry. In a recent Le Monde interview, the interviewer asks America-bound Sarko:

L'Europe que vous défendez est-elle inféodée à l'Amérique ?

[Is the Europe that you defend indentured to the US?]

This is neither the question nor the form of the question that one imagines the Gazeta Wyborcza or Rzeczpospolita asking on behalf of Europe. America is unique in French presumptions of equality. We are not aware of the French ever pointedly pronouncing themselves the equal of China, of Russia. Quite the contrary.

The hard truth is that Jack is not the equal of George Bush because France is not the equal of America. France has neither the muscle nor the money nor the influence nor the power nor the political coherence to be America's equal. In her more sober moments France knows this. Then French foreign minister Michel Barnier:

Asked if France, now a medium-sized power, had too many pretensions on the world stage, Barnier replied: "We don't have pretensions. We have ambitions. We have ideas." ... But were France's ambitions not out of all proportion to its power? "That is why we are Europeans," Barnier said. "Our ambitions must be shared. I am a passionate patriot, passionate Frenchman and passionate European."

Showing his sober streak, the minister added: "Americans can count alone, the Chinese can count alone, the Russians can count alone, but we do not count alone. We have to be together. The French know that."

France's inferior rank in the world is the basis for her multipolar scheme, where France is the organizing principle of an international huddle of states that provide sufficient heft for France to get her way.

The more Jack insists France is America's equal, the more puny France appears, the more pronounced the disparity, the more ridiculous is Jack.

PFFT (What is this?): Inferiority complex 4¾ | Inferior France 2 | Rayonnement français 0