Frenchies in the GCC

Via Kevin Drum, this sure is interesting -- France is moving to establish a military presence in the Persian Gulf which, as Marc Lynch says, "challenges American exclusivity, and potentially undermines the fundamental architecture of the hegemonic American position in the Gulf."

I'd put that in my "it's a good thing" file. The United States doesn't have any fundamental clashes of interest with France or other Western European countries. But the current nature of our relationship with them is dysfunctional. We try to play a hegemonic role in parts of the world that they take an interest in. Thus, we wind up acting unilaterally. They get upset with our policies and with our hegemony. Then we whine back that we're doing it, in a sense, for their own good and they're free-riding on our costly military posture. Then they retort that we're doing it all for our own reasons.

At the end of the day, everyone's right. It'll be a healthy US-European relationship if the Europeans both do more and, in exchange, wind up getting more say.

Comments

Yes, what the world needs more of right now is Western nations "establishing military presence" in Muslim countries. Because that's been shown to have no negative consequences for our own country, right?

Posted by Freddie | January 18, 2008 8:34 AM

-This might, as you say, be a good thing for trans-Atlantic relations.

-I don't see how this could possibly be a good thing for the Middle East. What they need is less imperialism, not competing imperial powers. I guess one could argue that the US has been so terrible that a counterbalancing imperial base would only help things, but it seems like a very small gain at the price of impeding the actual progress (real military disengagement) that needs to be made.

Posted by DivGuy | January 18, 2008 8:34 AM

Hey, the french gave us vietnam. I'd be happy to return the favor by handing over Iraq.

Posted by gerontion | January 18, 2008 8:41 AM

What everyone else said. This may be better than the status quo, but it's a poor second best to reduced American military presence and no French presence at all.

Posted by william | January 18, 2008 9:56 AM

Hey, the french gave us vietnam.

And look what we did with it! Re-gifted it to the Soviets. No wonder they're crashing our Gulf party.

Posted by brooksfoe | January 18, 2008 10:03 AM

Zbignew Brzezinski explained in 'The Grand Chessboard' that America protects Europe and the Persian Gulf so European countries won't have reasons to militarize, and that America likewise protects Japan and S Korea so Japan won't have reasons to militarize. Our goal is not just military dominance of the Middle East; it's military dominance of the world - well, outer space too.

It'll be a healthy US-European relationship if the Europeans ... wind up getting more say. - Matt

Haha. An American president will pretend to give the Europeans more power only after they've already seized it.

Posted by Gary Sugar | January 18, 2008 10:09 AM

400 to 500 permanent personnel is a military trip wire, a French thumb on the scale in favor of the status quo.

This is a good thing from the American perspective. It decreases our degrees of freedom and complicates any particular solution set, but what it buys us in return is a regional "good cop" with approximately the same strategic outlook that we have.

Posted by JA | January 18, 2008 10:39 AM

"An American president will pretend to give the Europeans more power only after they've already seized it.

Posted by Gary Sugar | January 18, 2008 10:09 AM"

Unless it's Giuliani, then he'll just claim he doesn't recognize those commie European troops, therefore they are invisible and non-existent, just like how he thinks we can decide whether or not Russia and China will be powerful.

Posted by Reality Man | January 18, 2008 10:39 AM

I also read this move as a strategic preemption of China.

Posted by JA | January 18, 2008 10:45 AM

The last thing the Middle East needs is another imperial power, as all the first commenters said. It seems a priori really unlikely that the US and France have no competing interests and no perception of the likelihood of future competing interests that might cause them to jockey for power, given that the two are after all separate countries with variant political traditions and their own distinct self-interested elites and corporations.

Also, France's imperial record contains some pretty ugly stuff well past the end of the formal colonial era and up through today: http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=1189

Posted by Kalkin | January 18, 2008 10:58 AM

I am French and I am certainly not putting this in my "it's a good thing" file. I thought that as a result of recent events in the Gulf, Afghanistan or Pakistan, everybody was aware that the backlash against Western military presence in Muslim countries was something to be avoided. Apparently, "Sarko l'Americain" wants to emulate the US.

Posted by fabrice | January 18, 2008 11:03 AM

Time to bomb Paris, I guess. Give them a couple of weeks to move the women, children, and historic sites out of the city.

Posted by John Emerson | January 18, 2008 11:12 AM

Yes, definitely. It will be a good thing if both the US and Europe get to share the "responsibilities" of Imperialism. Just ask the average Middle East citizen. I think they would wax ecstatic about the possibility of yet another hegemonic foreign presence in their territory. They surely will give the French a warm welcome.

God. This just proves that liberal USAns are just as fucked in the head as the conservatives.

Posted by Pepito | January 18, 2008 11:36 AM

This may be better than the status quo, but it's a poor second best to reduced American military presence and no French presence at all.

No dice. If we are there-- at all-- someone else needs to be there to check our power.

Posted by Dilan Esper | January 18, 2008 12:13 PM

No dice. If we are there-- at all-- someone else needs to be there to check our power.

Well, how about the people who actually live there? Which is what you get with a sufficiently reduced American presence. But TBH I suspect we're broadly in agreement on this one.

Posted by william | January 18, 2008 3:36 PM

... And another frog in the "wtf?" party.

I begin to think Sarko may be the long-term-consequences kind of nutjob.

The Chirac really had to play with his nukes in the Pacific, just after his election. I think this move is on the same level.

Posted by yabonn | January 18, 2008 6:06 PM

Well, how about the people who actually live there? Which is what you get with a sufficiently reduced American presence. But TBH I suspect we're broadly in agreement on this one.

The people who live there is a decent answer, though the way you need to get there is a ceding the Panama Canal style process where there are security guarantees that get built into the process.

In the meantime, though, as long as we are there, someone else needs to be there so that we mind our manners.

Posted by Dilan Esper | January 18, 2008 7:27 PM

I think there's much less to this development than meets the eye. A "base" manned up by 450 people is going to have the capability to maintain itself... and not much more. They'll be able to land a few aircraft, dock small ships, and conduct a little training. The Emirates forces could pretty much do all of that themselves anyway. This is symbolism and nothing more.

Posted by Sean Peters | January 18, 2008 8:50 PM

I would tend to agree with Sean that this is symbolic only. They're even borrowing the troops from this base from another overseas base.

What's France's ability to maintain military installations overseas?

According to this article in "The Economist":

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10534515

"France now has around 5,000 soldiers in three permanent bases in Africa: Senegal, Gabon and Djibouti. It also has 2,600 soldiers on a peacekeeping mission in Côte d'Ivoire, and 1,100 on the ground in Chad soon to be joined by another 2,000 as part of a French-led European Union force. Ties of history keep French soldiers in Africa. But President Nicolas Sarkozy has told the defence review team to 'construct the security and defence of tomorrow according to needs, not habits'."

"It is a member, and participates in many NATO operations: one-third of the 10,000 French soldiers on missions abroad are under a NATO banner; a French general commands the NATO force in Kosovo."

So France has a total of 10,000 troops abroad. That doesn't sound like much compared to the US, which has around 250,000 US troops abroad in over 700 bases (and that's an undercount - the actual count of separate bases is closer to 1,000.) See "America's Empire of Bases" by Chalmers Johnson here:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-08.htm

But it looks like Sarkozy is definitely trying to expand French influence outside of its normal areas of operation.

It's unlikely to produce much results in the short term compared to other events going on in the ME, however. And it could backfire badly on Sarkozy.

Let's imagine that the US attacks Iran, and Sarkozy backs the attack officially and perhaps supports it with French naval or air assets or whatever as part of some "Coalition of the Nitwits". That would leave his 400 troops at the new base at the mercy of IRGC agents in the UAE. Targeting them would likely produce a backlash quickly in the French electorate against Sarkozy.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 18, 2008 10:23 PM

We try to play a hegemonic role in parts of the world that they take an interest in.

I think that statement needs more clarification. For example, France was neck deep in filthy deals with Saddam, which presumably qualified as "French interests" when the US interfered with their dealings. To this day they use military intimidation to control interest in a number of former colonies to maintain control. French owned Total oil has no qualms doing business with Sudan's blood-soaked regime. The French navy ran joint military exercises with China to intimidate democratic elections in Taiwan, just to gain favor with the Chinese. France seems overly willing to sell Western civilization down the river for a few Euros. I don't see similar tendencies on the part of the US. Despite what many on the left tell us, we didn't topple Saddam to take Iraq's oil. All things considered, France is an ally, but a very dodgy one.

Posted by Erudite Hillbilly | January 19, 2008 1:43 PM