Chirac: beyond Gaullism? - French President Jacques Chirac

The annual G-7 economic summits have been justly described as photo opportunities in which anything except economics may be discussed. The Halifax Summit of June 1995 was no exception, the sherpas having gotten their masters to agree on the economic communique even before they arrived at the mountain. But a singular photo-op at Halifax captured something new: the collective leadership of the West crowded about a tall commanding figure reading a message on the Bosnian crisis. That figure was not President Clinton. He stood respectfully behind the man enthusiastically holding center stage -- the new French president, Jacques Chirac.

It was a Gaullist dream come true. A timid Germany, a less-than-timid Britain, a faltering Japan, and a seriously distressed Italy were joined by a weak Russia. Above all, there was Bill Clinton, the American "domestic" president, hobbled by a hostile Congress and an erratic foreign policy. Chirac seized his opportunity, and international leadership spoke with a French accent for the first time since de Gaulle himself departed the scene nearly thirty years before.

The hugely popular newly-elected president of the world's fourth-largest economy, Jacques Chirac was also the leader of the Gaullist party. Six months before, as mayor of Paris, he had been considered a long shot to win France's highest office. Savoring his unexpected triumph, he began even before the summit with a piece of Gaullist haughtiness, defying world opinion by scheduling a round of French nuclear tests. Now, using the Halifax meeting as a launch pad, he promptly disconcerted the Russians, the Americans, and the British by declaring a new policy in Bosnia: get tough or get out. He wanted to avoid a Munich, he said. As for the leadership of the West, he told a reporter, there was no such leadership.

Before June was over, Chirac had also ridden roughshod over prevailing niceties at a European Union summit in Cannes, criticizing the Greek prime minister over the Balkans and the "lax" Dutch drug policy while conducting brisk meetings as host-chairman. He also sought, to create a group of "wise men" to study the risks of currency fluctuation and trade conflict between countries joining the proposed European Monetary Union (EMU) and those remaining outside, both groups containing countries in commercial competition with France. Chirac proposed as chairman for such a group a former French president and current coalition ally, Mr. Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

Meanwhile, the French president was breaking taboos at home. He acknowledged French complicity in the deportation of Jews to the slaughter in World War II, an admission his predecessor had stubbornly resisted. Chirac thus became the first postwar French leader to accept the shameful truth that too many Frenchmen had been not just defeatists but collaborators in their defeat.

All of these dramatic activities brought mixed results. By early October the Croatian offensive against the Serbs and a burst of American diplomatic activity had overshadowed the French role. The EU proved resistant to French plans, too; bruised by Chirac's highhandedness, the smaller member countries led a successful charge to deny him his wise man's group, thereby irritating the host who had irritated them. Chirac himself seemed surprised by the hostile international reaction to his nuclear plans. Last and certainly not least, he was coming under growing criticism at home for a domestic policy that was noticeably less decisive and energetic than either his foreign policy or his preelection promises. In particular, he was being held hostage to his campaign pledge to reduce France's high level of unemployment.

Despite these setbacks, Chirac's boldness in seeking to fill the vacuum of Western leadership created by the inadequacies of the Clinton administration has been impressive. The French challenge -- Le Defi Francais -- came as a surprise on both sides of the Atlantic. France's European allies had grown rather bored with the prickly mix of self-interest and Gaullist gloire represented by Mitterrand, and had come to relegate the French to a subsidiary role. Washington, too, dismissed France as a secondary power and focused its attention on a reunited Germany. Chirac's seizing of the initiative has thus served to remind his allies of France's importance. But the question remains: Is Chirac's attempt at vaulting France once more into international leadership sustainable? Or is he doomed to be simply a flash in the pan, someone who will soon subside into a mildly annoying irrelevance?

Under the Gaullist constitution, the French president exercises virtually unfettered control over foreign policy; the British prime minister, the German chancellor and the American president are mere committee chairmen by comparison. And until Chirac, that power was exercised by de Gaulle's successors on behalf of "Gaullism," a broadly popular set of principles to the French, but principles that most of France's allies, and especially the United States, only vaguely understood and tended to regard as presumptuous.

Chirac and his policies can only be understood in the framework of Gaullism and its four key elements: (1) retention of an independent nuclear arsenal as essential to French independence and global influence; (2) diplomatic domination of an economically more powerful Germany; (3) suspicion of NATO as an instrument of American power and a determination to stay distanced from it; and (4) assertion of the nation, and nationalism, as the true and reliable lodestar of international politics. These elements together sustained de Gaulle's vision of France as the leader of Europe -- a Europe of nations, not supranational institutions -- that would maneuver between the Anglo-Saxon powers and the Russians.

All of these principles have been challenged drastically by the end of the Cold War. In the first six months of a seven-year term, Jacques Chirac has already begun to lead in new directions, modifying policy -- and Gaullist traditions -- in some cases (but not all), and hinting at more change to come. But Chirac faces some daunting dilemmas. If, how, and when he resolves them will affect not only vital French interests but also the security of Europe and the future of the Atlantic Alliance.

The Nuclear Dilemma

As the cold war ended, the small and costly French force de frappe (5 submarines with 80 missiles; 18 IRBMs; and about 225 nuclear-capable aircraft) seemed to appreciate in value. Theoretically, at least, the massive reduction of the superpowers' nuclear arsenals required by START I and START II made the French nuclear deterrent more formidable; it had meant little in the 1970s and 1980s as the United States and the Soviet Union fielded ever larger numbers of warheads. Even more significantly, the French nuclear force might now be joined to the already existing "Eurocorps", consisting of French and German contingents, to create a real European defense community.

These ambitions, however, collided with another reality. The Gulf War exposed serious weaknesses in French conventional forces. Under French law, conscripts cannot be used abroad and the professional French contingent sent to the Gulf was small and under-equipped. Four years after the event, Defense Minister Charles Millon was still reminding the readers of Le Monde (June 30, 1995) of "the difficulties we encountered during the Gulf War", and stressing the need for a new professionalism emphasizing space technology, intelligence, firepower, readiness, and mobility -- all characteristic of the Pentagon's best efforts in Operation Desert Storm. (It was only in july of this year that the French managed to launch their own spy satellite -- not up to U.S. standards, but to the French preferable to relying on the United States.) France's emphasis on self-reliance and its long absence from NATO's integrated military organization (though never as complete as the Gaullists pretended) had hurt the country's military capability. Clearly, more money must be spent if French nuclear and conventional forces are to be improved. But there is no money. The French government's deficit is too high, and the impending European Monetary Union requires it to be lowered considerably. Chirac will therefore be hard put to sustain even the current defense budget of about $37 billion per year (in francs virtually the same as 1993).

These facts about the overall condition of the French military cast new light on the nuclear test controversy. France could have chosen, as Britain has done, to rely for its warhead design on American models; the British are also dependent on U.S. computer simulations to keep their arsenal reliable. But such simulations derive ultimately from testing patterns. In the absence of an agreement with the United States, Chirac chose the old Gaullist route, breaking Mitterrand's three-year-old testing moratorium.

Even before the first test in early September this brisk decision proved to be a huge gaffe. Major trading partners in Asia threatened economic retaliation; French goods were boycotted. The timing of the first test, coming just after the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima, made things worse. Some of France's European allies expressed displeasure. But worst of all, Chirac's policy of ignoring international opinion was not very popular in France itself, where past displays of Gaullist disdain for foreign opinion had usually rallied the public around the government position.

Chirac's nuclear tests also had an effect in Washington. The Pentagon had recommended a curtailed series of low-level American tests, and Clinton characteristically could not decide what to do. As protests enveloped the French in early August, he suddenly announced his support for a complete test ban. That leaves France alone among the Western nuclear powers to argue the case for a testing program -- at least through the current planned series -- on no better ground than to retain its scientific independence of the Americans.

France also faces a decision on its regular forces: national service versus a professional army. Bosnia and Rwanda have taught the French government that its "rapid reaction" force is too small and ill-equipped to provide the flexibility to deal effectively with such crises. The Foreign Legion only fields 8,500, and the entire Rapid Reaction Force 42,500. French forces are scattered about the globe -- excluding the Eurocorps in Germany, the French have roughly 40,000 deployed abroad. The French navy with two medium-sized carriers and a total of forty-two principal surface combatants cannot be described as overendowed. It seems inevitable that a major investment in a professional force must come at the expense of the "big battalion" conscript army, which still constitutes the heart of the French military establishment, and of the French ideal of national service.

Chirac and his advisors have sought a two-pronged solution to these problems. Both prongs involve greater cooperation with other European states. In September Chirac and Prime Minister Alain Juppe emphasized the potential role of the French nuclear force as a component of European deterrence, suggesting that France, Britain, and Germany sit together to discuss the matter. This idea could be discounted as merely an attempt to undercut opposition to nuclear testing. On October 28-30, Chirac and British Prime Minister Major did meet for such a discussion and declared their readiness to use nuclear weapons in each other's defense, a pledge Paris had reserved previously only for Germany. And as early as January 13, 1995, Juppe had outlined a concept of dissuasion concertee -- concerted deterrence. Chirac is clearly giving an impetus here to a potentially radical idea: The future of the force de frappe may depend upon it becoming such a dissuasion concertee; that, in turn, will depend on the acceptability of such a concept to other European governments, including that of Germany.

A second initiative concerns the French and European arms industry. As Defense Minister Million has put it, "France cannot be ignored, but in many areas it cannot act alone." This acknowledgment, of course, is not new. What is new is that, contrary to earlier French assertions of a common European defense objective, the French now speak of a form of cooperation to a renewal of the Atlantic Alliance. As early as 1992, Chirac himself advocated in Politique Internationale that Europe and the United States should collaborate on anti-missile defenses and stronger measures to contain proliferation of chemical and biological weapons. Today Paris also advocates a two-tier military system for the West: NATO when the Americans choose to become involved; European forces, based on the Eurocorps but able to still draw on the units committed to NATO, that would enable the Europeans to act on their own in lesser contingencies.

It is well known that Chirac has been more sympathetic to America and things American than any of his predecessors. He often speaks fondly of his American summer as a Harvard student, a soda jerk at a Howard Johnson's, and a fork lift operator at a beer factory. And he astonished both American observers and his own countrymen by giving a lengthy interview on American television in English during his October trip to New York to attend the festivities marking the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations. But Chirac's interest in a strengthened Franco-American connection is neither whimsical nor sentimental. It is guided by strategic logic.

It is still not clear yet whether any of this is workable, but it surely presages a closer relationship between France and the alliance than anything de Gaulle would have tolerated. Behind the classic Gaullism of the nuclear tests, then, seem to lurk several post-Gaullist initiatives intended to bring about greater French military cooperation with its neighbors, and with the United States.

Whose Europe?

It is all well and good for French leaders to assert, as Prime Minister Juppe did on May 23 to the National Assembly, that "France can and must assert its vocation as a world power [applause]", but French foreign policy is rooted in Western Europe. The Franco-German partnership that produced the European Common Market and now the European Union is the foundation of French security. General de Gaulle, while consciously loosening the bonds with the United States, tightened them with Germany, and his successors have done the same. The European Union has thus grown up as an economic directorate driven primarily by Germany, but with a political superstructure dominated by France.

This careful formula, with its ritual summit meetings and emotional overtures of reconciled enemies, was shaken to its core by German unification. Paris was as surprised as any other Western capital by East Germany's rapid decline and the sudden dismantling of the Berlin Wall on November 10, 1989. Surprise gave way to consternation when it became clear that the two Germanys were becoming one. Thanks to Lady Thatcher's memoirs (among other sources), we know now that after Mitterrand's surprise visit to Moscow in early December 1989 he shared her fears about the speed and scope of German unification. In all of this there was an echo of the historic Franco-Russian and Anglo-French alliances that were intended to constrain Germany before World War I.

At a joint press conference with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl on November 3, only a week before the Berlin Wall fell, Mitterrand had declared, "Reunification poses so many problems that I shall make up my mind as the events occur." Despite his expressions of concern to Thatcher and Gorbachev, when Mitterrand "made up" his mind he decided not to oppose a unification that in any case he could not prevent. Instead he pressed Kohl for compensatory assurances that Germany would support a further "deepening" of the European Community. But even in this he proved variable, as he floated a proposal for an all-european political structure that seemed to suggest the dissolution of NATO and the Warsaw Pact alliances, without addressing the critical issue of whether East Germany would survive. Such a proposal might have been attractive to a Soviet leader with more time at his disposal, but Gorbachev was not in that position. Faced with the choice of using Soviet troops to uphold East Germany by force or selling the wasting asset at the highest price, he decided to sell. Using the two-plus-four mechanism provided by the Americans to negotiate the terms, he eventually dealt directly with Kohl in July of 1990. For some fifteen billion deutschmarks, a new treaty of friendship, and various military arrangements that still allowed full German membership in NATO, Gorbachev sold Stalin's forward position in Europe that had been bought forty-five years earlier by the blood of the Red Army. His subsequent bid to create a "special relationship" with the new Germany created unease in NATO but turned out to be so much wind when the Soviet Union itself disappeared in 1991.

The French had proved quite marginal to these astounding events. Mitterrand had flirted and flitted with several different ideas, never quite settling on any one for very long. Bonn got the impression that France quietly agreed with Britain that unification was not desirable except that Mitterrand took greater pains than Thatcher to disguise it. But neither affected the outcome. The French were now partners to a much larger, unified Germany, and they had not proved helpful in the birthing process.

A long introspection then ensued in Paris. Could France continue to "lead" the Germans politically? Would the European Union now become, as some British Conservatives loudly claimed, a vehicle for German domination of Europe? The Maastricht Treaty, heavily promoted by Mitterrand as the key act to secure a united Western Europe with Germany finally "integrated" into it, soon took on a different cast. European Monetary Union now meant an iron linkage of the French economy to that of Germany. As the cost of German unification led to a tight money policy by the Bundesbank, the French economy suffered under higher interest rates. Paris devalued the franc but held the linkage. The country was then caught in a halfway house as its other main competitors, particularly Britain, floated free of the European Monetary System to avoid the German-generated constraints. These "competitive devaluations" -- the so-called multi-speed European monetary system-were to be the main target of Chirac's abortive "wise men's group" at the Cannes summit of June 1995.

At the Valencia Summit, near September's end, however, the EU finance ministers reaffirmed that Germany, not France, would determine the course on the EMU. By adopting strict criteria as specified by the Maastricht Treaty, Italy was clearly excluded from among the early participants. And while Chirac has proclaimed the French commitment to join the EMU by the 1997 target date to be a "point of honor" this will require serious cuts in public spending to meet the targets. Prime Minister Juppe's initial budget notably failed to tackle the problem of public employee salaries and benefits. His finance minister, Alain Madelin, resigned in August over this issue, saying later to the Washington Post, "There are two Frances -- one the merchant France that is subject to the laws of competition and of excellence, and a Sleeping Beauty France that is administered and lives in a cocoon."

In October, alarmed by failing polls and rising financial uncertainty, Chirac spoke out for more serious deficit reduction, even austerity. Then Juppe suddenly reorganized his government in early November to take better aim at "debts and deficits." Results, of course, remain to be seen.

Chirac has thus inherited some nasty choices. France must be bound to Germany economically, but will Germany continue to be as bound to France politically? Kohl's action in pushing his allies to recognize Slovenia and Croatia in 1991 was a bad augury, but the resulting disaster has discouraged further German initiatives. Late in his presidency, Mitterrand dispensed with Gaullist strictures about Anglo-Saxon powers and began to turn to the British as an essential element for maintaining a proper balance in the European Union. Ironically, too, John Major's Britain is a bit of a Gaullist case itself, picking and choosing those parts of the EU that it likes while remaining uncommitted about the rest.

Ultimately, Chirac knows that a U.K.-French combination has neither successful precedent nor a real prospect of "outweighing" an assertive Germany. For now Kohl and his generation are preoccupied with unification and reluctant to assert German diplomatic leadership, leaving Paris some room for initiative. But the future shape of the EU requires a hard strategic decision on Chirac's part. He fears a German-led Europe; he cannot have a French-led Europe for much longer; and a "European Europe" requires more players.

Russia, NATO, and the Americans

Adding more "players" to Europe in order to safeguard French security brings to the fore the most serious conceptual problem facing Chirac. De Gaulle wished to make France the leader of a third "bloc" that could operate successfully between the Americans and the Russians. The French leader's tactics were intended to loosen the hold of both superpowers, leaving a European "center" gravitating toward French leadership.

The demise of the Soviet Union and the rebirth of a united Germany have dealt a fatal blow to this conception. Chirac inherited thirty years of French policy headed in the wrong direction, a legacy that consistently irritated the Americans and weakened NATO. The danger now is not excessive American influence over Europe but the potential for German dominance.

As Mitterrand indicated in 1989-90, the old French impulse to combine with Russia in order to contain Germany is far from dead. But are the post-soviet Russians capable of playing such a game? The answer seems to be: Not yet. France, like other observers of Russia, sees a country still sorting out a new identity, its politics and society contorted in the act of change. The Moscow of today cannot be regarded as a strong interlocutor on pan-european security problems.

Already two years ago Pierre Lellouche, then counselor to Chirac as mayor of Paris, had reached a Cartesian conclusion. Writing in Foreign Affairs (Spring 1993), Lellouche deduced that, by process of elimination, a France in search of security could find it best in a new partnership with Washington. The trouble was that both countries faced "an arduous redefinition" offering "potential for friction." Lellouche argued that the big challenges -- instability in both the former Soviet Union and the Islamic world -- needed American leadership. He summed up his arguments thus:

Once again Europe is characterized by a

pivotal and strong Germany, a backward and

unstable Russia, and a large number of small

weak states. And again, France and Great

Britain are incapable by themselves of balancing

German power or checking Russian instability,

let alone restructuring the entire European

order around a Franco-British axis.... It is

crucial for Europe's future to do everything

possible to consolidate the continent's only

poles of stability: the EC and the alliance with

the United States.

Lellouche therefore argued for an "urgent" political negotiation between France and America that would take advantage of their converging interests.

Lellouche's call fell on deaf ears in both Paris and Washington. Mitterrand was not inclined to take advice, and his practiced aloofness now concealed seriously deteriorating health. His last two years as president resembled a secular deathbed confession, with the press serving as priest and the French public as the final judge. Mitterrand's disclosures of dalliances personal (an illegitimate daughter) and political (service to Vichy) distracted attention from a paralyzed foreign policy.

As for Washington, neither President Clinton nor his foreign policy team were inclined or equipped to think in strategic terms. Clinton wished to be as much a domestic president as Bush had been a foreign policy president. To the extent that it has taken place-which is not very much -- the "arduous redefinition" of America's post-Cold War foreign policy has been driven more by events than concepts, by crises rather than initiatives.

To judge from the comments of both Chirac and his foreign minister following their initial encounters with American leaders last summer in Washington and Halifax, they found the United States weak and divided. The administration sounded internationalist, but the president reminded the French that the American Congress had a say. When Chirac argued to Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich that the United States should help to fund the Rapid Reaction Force for Bosnia, he found himself subjected to moral objections on the embargo and complaints that Clinton had failed to consult congressional leaders on the scheme. All of this could only have reinforced the Gaullist sneer that the Americans were unreliable after all, and the fear that the United States would simply diminish its presence in Europe until, through that very process, it became clear that Washington no longer had vital commitments. For Chirac and for France this would be a disaster.

The French president has clearly impressed even a distracted Clinton administration as a "comer." It is rumored that soon he will be given that rarest of accolades, a state visit -- something recently denied the president of the People's Republic of China. A new alliance between the United States and France is urgent for Paris. In its absence the Germans will continue to be the key American ally in Europe and increasingly dominant within the continent. For the moment, however, Chirac lacks a strategic partner in Washington.

The Nation-State and Nationalism

The fourth and final aspect of the Gaullist legacy that has been shaken by events is the emphasis on nationalism as the foundation of the state system. Today, nationalism in Europe looks more like the potential destroyer of the European order than its foundation. Other countries have joined the French in denouncing the barbarities in the Bosnian war. Mounting anti-semitism and racial hatred elsewhere in Europe, held in check during the Cold War, are further evidence that nationalism rather than supranationalism remains the dominant ideology of the "new" Europe. Despite its commitment to the noble vision of the European Union and its espousal of "the universal right of man", France itself is not immune to virulent strains of nationalism.

A tide of immigration, especially from Algeria, has stirred in some Frenchmen the very fanaticism they deride in others. Jean Marie Le Pen enjoys 15 to 20 percent of the vote and has made gains not only in regions heavily affected by immigration but in ones fearing its future impact. Every aspect of French life, from education to business to politics, has been influenced by the dread that France will come -- or already has come -- to harbor a large minority who will never be "French" -- and this at a time when unemployment is at 12 percent. (More than five million Muslims now live in France, and more than a million of them are from Algeria.(1)) So it is that, nearly four decades after the French withdrew from North Africa, the Algerian problem still confounds French life. Immigration policy is now bound up with French fears about Islamic fundamentalism sweeping North Africa, and terrorism disrupting their own lives. Paris has struggled, so far in vain, to stabilize the situation in Algeria, vacillating between policies of supporting Algerian military repression and encouraging an all-party compromise.

The struggle to sustain a benevolent French nationalism has in turn begun to influence France's otherwise scandal-ridden and moribund African policy. Described in Liberation (July 19, 1995) by an unnamed presidential aide as a "splendid mess," the use of French development funds (and occasionally troops) to sustain a corrupt and unstable set of tyrants in Africa shook the Mitterrand government to its roots. Mitterrand's idea of a proper ruler in Africa seems to have been a French-educated, neo-socialist "reformer"; he disdained the King of Morocco and others of a supposedly ancien regime. Scandal and the immigration problem have led Chirac to a different approach. When he visited Africa this past summer, he made a point of going to Morocco first, the better to boost the safe Islam of King Hassan against the extremists in Algeria.

The French have also begun to connect the diseased nationalism of the Balkans and the African-Algerian troubles into a kind of world view. Europe (and France) are threatened -- so say Juppe and Millon -- by the collapse of states both in the north and in the south, the one a consequence of the Soviet demise, the other a result of the fundamentalist assault. The French therefore argue that neither the European Union nor NATO can afford to focus exclusively on Central or Eastern Europe; there must also be a "Southern Policy" to strengthen that flank. This, of course, reopens a constant theme in the evolution of the EU itself and indeed within some of its members, especially Italy: Is the EU to be dominated by a northern Europe or a southern one? France, given its location and historic ties across the Mediterranean -- and also its discomfort with a reunited Germany -- is now arguing for a larger southern dimension. And while de Gaulle's African empire was related in part to domestic needs (the Algerian French repatriates), Chirac's "southern strategy" reflects an even more acute sense of domestic vulnerability.

Thus for the French, the "redefinition" brought on by the end of the Cold War encompasses the very identity of French nationalism. Chirac faces the formidable task of containing an incipient hysteria that finds expression in racialist definitions of the nation and claims that Arab immigrants and Muslim fanatics are bringing about a true struggle of "civilizations" within France itself -- a battle that may soon be waged not in the salons but in the streets of Marseilles, Nice, and Paris.

The Bosnian Theater

Upon taking office Chirac attempted to deal with France's accumulated foreign policy problems in rapid order. His decision on nuclear tests, his summit performances in both Halifax and Cannes, and his trip to Africa were maneuvers intended to relieve immediate pressure points while hinting at greater changes to come. Among those points none was more pressing than Bosnia, where the intersection of French, European, NATO, American, and Russian interests, compounded by eruptions of berserk Balkan nationalism, had put French soldiers and prestige at great risk.

Chirac wasted no time in changing the vulnerable French position on Bosnia, which had become a classic example of pretensions mercilessly exposed by events. In 1991, Mitterrand had eagerly seized the opportunity to mediate -- or so he thought -- between Serbia and Croatia, following the violent breakup of Yugoslavia. Bush and Baker, fresh from success in the Gulf War, were preoccupied with the danger of an equally violent breakup of the Soviet Union and readily abdicated leadership on the Balkans to the Europeans. While the French could have little effect on the Soviet fate, they hoped to demonstrate a decisive "European" leadership in dealing with Yugoslavia, and in doing so to supplant American dominance.

As so often before, however, the Balkans proved to be a brutal teacher. The French invocation of the historic Franco-Serb alliance counted for little in Belgrade, where Milosevic wanted only confirmation of Serb rights to seize parts of Croatia and Bosnia. For its part, Croatia looked to Germany rather than to France. The French were therefore reduced to attempting to work their will through the tangled web of the United Nations.

By the time Chirac became president, the policy in Bosnia seemed an unmitigated disaster. French troops were humiliated, the Serbs advanced unopposed, and the Americans, unwilling to commit ground force themselves, derided the Europeans for a failure to "stand tough." Chirac decided that drastic action was required and an opportunity was soon provided for it. Outraged at the seizure of French hostages after NATO's belated air raids in defense of Sarajevo in July, Chirac accused his own military chief of staff and commanders in the field of cowardice and stupidity. He then demanded that NATO retake Srebrenica or Zepa, and propelled the creation of the British, French, and Dutch Rapid Reaction Force, a true military unit ready for combat.

Above all, Chirac threatened that he would pull out his UN contingent unless the Serbs were resisted, knowing that such an action would force an American-led "rescue" -- including a commitment of American ground troops -- that Clinton was desperate to avoid. Simultaneously the French intelligence services put it about that the Americans were secretly arming and training the Muslims, thus stoking the war even as they railed against it; while French and British diplomats mused about the questionable virtues of an Islamic republic in Europe.

Chirac did not get all he wanted as a result of this, but he did come away from the London conference on July 21 with a good deal of it. The Americans committed themselves to a massive air campaign, with the attendant casualty risks, and the UN civilian command that had hitherto frustrated all attempts at decisive action was neutered. Military decisions were left in the hands of three officers: an American admiral, a British general -- and, superior in rank to both, as the overall UN commander for the sector, a French general. Thus, NATO could be -- and eventually was -- flung into battle for the first time in its history by a French officer, ultimately taking his orders from a France still not part of Nato's integrated military command. This was a delicious irony.

Chirac went farther. After two French soldiers were slain on the Mount Igman supply road into Sarajevo, it was rumored that a French jet conducted a bombing raid that demolished the house of a close associate of Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. This was denied. But what could not be denied was the sudden arrival of French Foreign Legionnaires and heavy mortar, which promptly destroyed three Serb gun batteries around Mount Igman. This and the warning issued by French, British, and American officers personally to General Ratko Mladic were both done without reference to the UN.

Never shy to take credit, Chirac told the Financial Times on September 6, "It was probably I who brought about a consensus for a strong military response." It was a justified claim. More than anyone or anything else, Chirac had forced Clinton to choose between getting tough or getting out, and Clinton had chosen to get tougher at a lot more risk.

The Need for a New Rhythm

"Old age", wrote de Gaulle, "is a shipwreck." Jacques Chirac inherited a French foreign policy originated by de Gaulle that was well into old age and sinking fast. It no longer offered answers on defense policy, was attuned to a geopolitical world that disappeared in 1991, and was prone to overreach as it did in the Balkans. Nor did it offer solutions to increasingly difficult French internal problems, whether unemployment or immigration. Chirac thus arrived at his high post to find an exhausted legacy.

In a few short months Chirac became the "shooting star" of international diplomacy, an achievement aided by a forceful personality not given to subtleties, and a conspicuous leadership vacuum on the international scene just waiting to be filled. But whether Chirac flames out or establishes a new constellation depends upon whether he can find a constructive balance in his approach. Disdain for public opinion is part of the Gaullist modus operandi, but as the 1968 upheavals illustrated, it can be risky when taken too far. Chirac rules over a France caught profoundly between an old and new world, and suffering from serious social and economic problems. A senior presidential advisor told the Washington Post on September 29, "In France we have the unfortunate tendency of taking social matters to the breaking point, so that in the end, real changes in the system only occur after some kind of violent upheaval."

In a sense, Chirac's flamboyance is its own kind of violent upheaval, at least in foreign policy. Behind the nuclear tests there is the idea of concerted deterrence, with its implication of more than one finger -- even a German finger! -- on the French nuclear trigger. This, along with changes in French conventional forces, could be real innovations and are being billed as such by the French. At the Halifax Summit and over Bosnia there were French initiatives that stimulated American leadership. Paris continues to sound the alarm for NATO over the southern flank. All of these moves represent change but not necessarily one with a lasting general impact. All of them chip away at Gaullist icons at least a little, but Chirac's obvious desire for a strategic dialogue that draws Washington and Paris close together breaks with the most important part of the legacy.

After years of obstruction, the French are ready to strengthen the American-led alliance system in Europe because they need it: In the Europe of a unified Germany neither the British nor the Russian options is sufficient in French eyes to establish a proper balance. Ironically, the end of the Cold War may lead to NATO's expansion westward, if not also eastward. France, of course, will take its place in the line on its own peculiar terms. But Chirac's break from Gaullism could lead to a long overdue and welcome reinforcement of the West.

Important as a French turn toward Washington may be, it is not enough to deal with France's most pressing problems. Quite in contrast to his foreign policy, Chirac and his prime minister, Juppe, have been most timid on the essential issues at home, and here is the rub. At the very outset of the Fifth Republic, de Gaulle was able to orchestrate his foreign and domestic policies together so that they reinforced each other and blended into one very distinctive melody that seemed to strengthen the status quo. (Consider, for example, how the European common agricultural policy was used to stabilize French agrarian society.) Today, however, there is no rhythm between foreign and domestic problems, only dissonance. Despite the common agricultural policy, the European Union no longer reinforces the status quo, but stimulates painful change. Chirac must lower taxes, regulations, deficits, and unemployment or seriously injure France's competitive position, its relationship to Germany, and its European leadership. His government's initial attempt to tackle this was not serious. Juppe's new team of ministers do not have long to show progress.

One can read Chirac's first six months of flamboyant foreign policy as an attempt to disguise this dissonance. It could be the ancient trick of compensating for domestic failure with the showy images of triumph -- or at least dramatic engagement -- abroad. If so, then it has already failed. The French public is rating its dissatisfaction with the cautious approach to domestic reform and the obvious targets of such reforms are already in near-open rebellion. The best and most sustainable option open to Chirac is to use foreign policy to drive change in France, not to shield France from it-to use, for example, the 1997 European Monetary Union targets as a pressure point for the reform of France's unsustainable taxation and government spending.

Chirac has not yet come to grips with this choice. One way or another, he must force French domestic change in order to reintegrate the country's internal and external objectives or suffer the loss of French power across the board. His real test thus still lies ahead. Whatever his fate, he has already proclaimed the standard by which he will be judged. Politics," he said during the campaign, "is not the art of the possible; it is the art of making possible what is necessary." Chirac seems to know a great deal about what is necessary, but he has yet to prove that he knows how to make it possible.

(1) The precise numbers of Muslims, Maghrebians, and Algerians living in France are uncertain. There are three categories of such persons: citizens, legal residents, and illegal residents. Estimates vary considerably.

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