Left- and Right-Wing French Diplomats Spar in Press

The Hatfields

It's like the Hatfields and McCoys -- family feuds, 

strong words and provocations -- only this time, the families are French diplomatic chiefs who skirmish not with weapons but a pair of caustic collective letters published (anonymously) in top-tier news outlets. The French Politics blog reports a tit-for-tat between France's pro- and anti-Sarkozy foreign service members. 

Le Monde printed an editorial Thursday from a group of diplomats critical of the Sarkozy record, who, going by the moniker "the Marly group" after the Paris cafe where they congregate, launched a missive against what they feel is their overshadowing by the French president's do-it-himself approach to foreign affairs. Sarkozy's supporters came to his defense in another editorial published by Le Figaro the following day. The group styled themselves similarly, calling themselves "the Rostand group," after the name of their most-frequented cafe. I won't delve into a long analysis of each piece, but some choice morsels read as follows.

From the Marly group, critical of Sarkozy diplomacy:

"Europe is weak, Africa is escaping us, the Mediterranean is avoiding us, China is overtaking us and Washington is ignoring us! Even worse, the voice of France has disappeared in the world. Our herd mentality in regard to the United States puzzles many of our partners."

["... L'Europe est impuissante, l'Afrique nous échappe, la Méditerranée nous boude, la Chine nous a domptés et Washington nous ignore ! ... Plus grave, la voix de la France a disparu dans le monde. Notre suivisme à l'égard des Etats-Unis déroute beaucoup de nos partenaires."]

Note the worry over Washington's seeming move away from one of its historically important foreign partners, even as the prose projects a latent but palpable antiamericanism... Still more odd is the virtual invitation for a "WikiLeaks à la francaise" to expose the sound methods of French diplomats that the Marly group considers wrongfully dismissed by the current French head of state.

"A French WikiLeaks would allow [the public] to see that French diplomats drafted, like their American colleagues, cables just as critical and without concessions."

["Un WikiLeaks à la française permettrait de vérifier que les diplomates français ont rédigé, comme leurs collègues américains, des textes aussi critiques que sans concessions."]

These mixed attitudes of this random sample of the French left typify the post-WWII posture pioneered by Jean-Paul Sartre and others. They are only aggravated when the element of the United States gets put in the mix -- a tireless trope of the countries politically progressive wing.

Not that the Marlyites act as the sole contributors of weirdness in this ugly exchange. The Rostand Group is guilty of its own inelegant tone.  The Figaro piece vaunts heavy sarcasm, which does little to advance its case among nonpartisan readers in France or elsewhere. They write, on the Marly group's rhetoric:

"Oh, if only [the world] had listened to us! France would have predicted the fall of the Arab dictators. Even better, France wouldn't have mixed with these evil regimes...  If we'd let the French do as they intended, [the climate summit at] Copenhagen would have been a triumph and global temperatures would already be a little lower everywhere. The Middle East would be in peace... France would have anticipated everything; France would have never been wrong."

["Ah, si on les avait écoutés! ... La France aurait prédit la chute des dictateurs arabes. Mieux, elle n'aurait pas frayé avec ces régimes honnis... Si on les avait laissé faire, Copenhague aurait été un triomphe et la température baisserait déjà un peu partout. Le Moyen-Orient serait en paix... On aurait tout prévu, on ne se serait jamais trompé."]

Clearly, "hyperbole" was Rostand's operative word. They go on to question Marly's timing (French presidential election campaigns for 2012 are gearing up) and throw in a whiff of postcolonial reflection: 

" 'Africa is escaping us,' they also say. Must it still belong to us? And must we have today nostalgia for a "Papa's Africa" held in dependence on aid for which we know the cost, where clientelism takes the place of politics?"

 [" 'L'Afrique nous échappe,' disent- ils aussi. Devrait-elle nous appartenir encore? Et faudrait-il aujourd'hui avoir la nostalgie d'une Afrique de papa tenue dans la dépendance d'une aide dont on connaît le bilan, où le clientélisme tenait lieu de politique?"]

This kind of editorial sparring among federal bigwigs just doesn't happen in the US. Or as the WSJ put it in today's weekend journal, "we don't grow them here," but that's in reference to France's sometimes-intellectual rockstar, Bernard-Henri Lévy, and his thoughts on writing, style and why people hate him.

 

"Style, writing, hating... Hating, style, writing..."   Bernard-Henri Levy

As a barely-related final thought: in 2006, Levy retraced the American journey of French aristocrat and political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville, then wrote a book about it. For that, Garrison Keillor nailed him.  

 

Merkel's Gains in Brussels

Here's a cogent wrap-up, from The Economist's "Charlemagne's Notebook" blog, of the EU economic governance summit that ended late last week in Brussels. Among the demands presented, German Chancellor Angela Merkel argued for -- and won qualified concessions -- for a reopening of certain economic contours held in the landmark 2009 Treaty of Lisbon.

Merkel emerged as the clear winner -- and, it seems, one of the most effective national leaders in the Union.  This is certainly true when compared with Herman Van Rompuy, whom the article insinuates as a kind of EU pipsqueak, out of his depth in the EU's play-for-keeps attitude among the Continent's heavies such as Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron. The blogpost's takeaway is as follows:

 “I AM on the whole quite satisfied with the decision.” With these modest words, Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, rounded off a remarkable victory at the end of a bruising European summit that concluded today.

Less than a fortnight ago, members of the European Union were universally opposed to Germany’s demand to reopen the EU’s treaties to strengthen the means of maintaining fiscal discipline among members of the euro zone. But within days of winning over Nicolas Sarkozy to her cause at the Deauville summit on October 18th, she got everyone to sign up to the idea of a “limited treaty change”. By the slow-moving standards of the EU, this happened in an eye-blink. It is a testament to the authority of Mrs Merkel, as well as the power of Germany’s constitutional court in Karlsruhe.

“Everybody was very sensitive to Mrs Merkel’s persuasive arguments,” is how one national diplomat put it. “Bullying,” said another. Whether by persuasion or compulsion, Mrs Merkel secured her main objective: agreement to amend the EU treaty to allow the creation of a “permanent crisis mechanism” to resolve the debt of countries that may be hit by a Greek-style crisis in future.

This means creating a bail-out fund similar to the €750 billion IMF-backed temporary financing facility that was created in May, imposing tough conditions on any country that taps it in future and making bondholders take some of the pain of saving insolvent countries. “The burden must never again be borne simply and only by the taxpayer,” she declared." (...)

This may turn out to be a baby step toward tighter EU integration, at a time when member states can hardly maneuver otherwise -- and would hardly choose to do so in sunnier times. Once the tight belt of the recession loosens, we'll see which European country strains for more room to breathe. 

Pension Reform Mobilizes French of All Ages

The crisis in France is coming to a boil as mass protests against retirement benefit reform throttle the country. The malaise is now spreading to all generations, as shown through the nascent student movement rising up in solidarity with those fighting to preserve their once and future pensions. (See video from Euronews here.)

The genesis of the demonstrating is President Nicolas Sarkozy's move to up the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62, a result of aching public coffers that are weathering recovery from the global economic crisis only with extreme duress. The pension cuts have met ferocious resistance and has generated nearly a full week of open-ended general strikes. 

Multiple reports of car fires and clashes with police have ricocheted throughout Europe as troublemakers mix with demonstrators, some still in high school, to join the anti-reform groundswell. 

Young people expressed both anger over the reform, seen in much of the country as draconian, and fears over recession-time prospects in the transition from their status of student to job seeker.

In a separate but no less serious development, French oil refinery workers have jumped on the bandwagon for the resistance by refusing to work while motorists of all stripes panic over how their fuel is to last. The oil industry lobby estimates that shortages will be felt by mid-week if no major change takes place.    

... Roger Cohen of the International Herald Tribune counters, "this reform is a no-brainer. Come on, France, get real!"

UPDATE: "France, the Unions and Fiscal Reality," 10/19/10. 

Roubini on European Recession : "Hangover"

The economist fabled to have predicted the global financial crisis shoots from the hip on European recovery -- and describes a still-dire bill of economic health for the Old Continent. Nouriel Roubini, professor at New York University, dubs the European condition a "hangover" and one sure to continue galling livers for a good while to come.

The professor employs a host of disparaging idioms in his take on the EU's present status, decrying 1) the policies that "stole demand from the future," 2) the laughable "stress tests" (quote marks his) that only "kicked the can down the road,"  and 3) the lingering "fundamental problems of the eurozone." He singles out sitting EU president and Belgian head of state Yves Leterme as "unable to keep his own country together, let alone unite Europe."

He also dismisses the notion that the EU bail-out created anything beyond transient relief. Though Brussels policy heads managed in May to slap together a rescue fund, risk spreads have returned to their pre-bail-out levels for several European countries. Roubini sniffs that operatives "fudged" this summer's round of financial "stress tests" for European markets, serving to pep up world markets' frail confidence only temporarily -- a move that is already beginning to wear thin.

Even the sunniest eurozone example, Germany, suffers Roubini's ire, and he shrugs off that country's supposed promise as the EU's post-crisis front-runner:

"Even Germany’s temporary success is riddled with caveats. During the 2008-2009 financial crisis, GDP fell much more in Germany – because of its dependence on collapsing global trade – than in the United States. A transitory rebound from such a hard fall is not surprising, and German output remains below pre-crisis levels."

In what may bear nightmarish implications,  the "double dip" recession so feared throughout the world may actually be taking root as we read his words.

"Indeed, the latest data from Germany – declining exports, falling factory orders, anemic industrial-production growth, and a slide in investors’ confidence – suggest that the [double dip] has started."

His forecast on current and future European politics provides little sustenance for optimists. He cites a litany of bummer political events ranging from Angela Merkel's recent shallacking in German regional elections, to unlikely odds that Sarkozy will initiate real (Roubini says "cosmetic") structural reforms in France -- and that is concurrent with sobering competition prospects from the Socialist Party's presidential likely, one Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Similarly unpopular leaders also face grim predictions across the EU's southern belt, from the vulnerable Presidents Silvio Berlusconi (Italy) and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (Spain), to the bete noire of EU fiscal cohesion, George Papandreou (Greece).

If all that wasn't enough, Roubini finishes by going for broke on two scenarios for the eurozone's future. The first, the "best" case scenario (though hardly a good one) says the monetary bloc limps on some years longer. The second -- this is the 800-pound gorilla whose presence EU public officials from across the 27 states refuse to entertain -- predicts that "the eurozone will break up, owing to a combination of sovereign debt restructurings and exits by some weaker economies."

Sarkozy Calls for Expanded G20 Powers, Secretariat

In an annual ambassadors' meeting in Paris yesterday, Sarkozy set the tone for the G20 meeting in Seoul set for November, and for the upcoming French presidency of the G20 starting January 2011. (Full text, in French, here.) 

The French president urged closer exchange rate integration among developed nations, and moving for a G20 secretariat to better coordinate the bloc's goals. He also suggested the group expand its ambitions toward tackling broader issues such as climate change and development.

These objectives stem in part from Sarkozy's earlier decision not to call for a new Bretton Woods, as he had originally sought.

Sarkozy Joins Lellouche's Call for All-EU Emergency Response Team

French President Nicolas Sarkozy joined the call last week to create an all-EU crisis response team to stem the destruction of disasters all over the world. 

The recent series of emergencies, from floods in Pakistan, the forest fires in Russia, to January's earthquake in Haiti -- and now the predicted flooding in the China-North Korea border region -- has attracted increasingly global attention on disasters. The international community is generating widespread discussion on the appropriate role for non-local governments in disaster relief. (...)