IN OTHER WORDS: Chirac’s gaffes
President Jacques Chirac of France is not the first statesman to lose his touch at the end of a long reign, but his recently suspended plan to send foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy to Iran later this month qualifies as an extreme example of that common syndrome. In the past, even when Chirac pursued policies that displeased allies or domestic rivals, those policies rarely lacked for logical consistency. Indeed, interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, in an address accepting the presidential nomination of Chirac’s conservative Gaullist party, made a point of saluting the foresight of Chirac’s stand against the Bush administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.
It was not his own diplomats who dissuaded Chirac from sending his foreign minister to Iran to seek a deal over Lebanon, but rather the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The Saudis and Egyptians also support the Siniora government. But those Sunni Arab states are no less anxious to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power and project its influence across the Arab world. Chirac’s model in statesmanship, Charles de Gaulle, never lost his ability to tell allies from antagonists or to distinguish the primary interests of France from the ephemeral. It is a good thing that Chirac will soon be quitting the stage.