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So perhaps Americans today should not be surprised that another French socialist, the current president Hollande, has also embraced an assertive foreign policy. While Reagan had initially adopted a common stereotype of French socialists as timorous and unreliable in international politics, he soon realized that France under Mitterand would be a bold and valued American ally in the conflict with the Soviet Union. Shortly after becoming president, Ronald Reagan was famously surprised to discover that the socialist French President Francois Mitterand was also a fierce anticommunist.
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Nor is this just a 21 st century phenomenon. It is not just Hollande who is a hawkish internationalist his conservative predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy was as well. As a former senior British national security official (and otherwise critic of the Bush administration) recently commented to me, Chirac was probably the most anti-American French leader since the days of Vichy. The tragi-comic nadir of U.S.-France relations during those years came when the Congressional cafeteria renamed “French Fries” as “Freedom Fries.” But diplo-culinary spats notwithstanding, Chirac was an aberration. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius derided the provisional agreement with Iran as a "fool’s game" because it reportedly conceded too much to Tehran, particularly allowing construction to continue of the Arak plutonium reprocessing plant, and permitting Iran to keep its current stocks of enriched uranium and even continue some enrichment efforts up to 3.5 percent.Īmerican surprise at France’s posture towards Iran is probably colored by lingering memories of former president Jacques Chirac’s vocal opposition to the Bush administration’s Middle East policies. Bush administration’s feud with Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin over Iraq under Saddam Hussein? Yes, but this is also what happened over the weekend to the Obama administration’s effort to cut a deal in Geneva with Iran over its nuclear program, until blocked by Francois Hollande’s French government.
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As a former senior British national security official (and otherwise critic of the Bush administration) recently commented to me, Chirac was probably the most anti-American French leader since the days of Vichy.Īn American president tries to pursue an ambitious gambit to deal with a Middle Eastern country’s suspected WMD program, only to be stymied in a multilateral forum by French intransigence.
![freedom fries freedom fries](https://americasmartcafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/free-fries1.jpg)
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius derided the provisional agreement with Iran as a "fool's game" because it reportedly conceded too much to Tehran, particularly allowing construction to continue of the Arak plutonium reprocessing plant, and permitting Iran to keep its current stocks of enriched uranium and even continue some enrichment efforts up to 3.5 percent.Īmerican surprise at France's posture towards Iran is probably colored by lingering memories of former president Jacques Chirac's vocal opposition to the Bush administration's Middle East policies. Bush administration's feud with Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin over Iraq under Saddam Hussein? Yes, but this is also what happened over the weekend to the Obama administration's effort to cut a deal in Geneva with Iran over its nuclear program, until blocked by Francois Hollande's French government. An American president tries to pursue an ambitious gambit to deal with a Middle Eastern country's suspected WMD program, only to be stymied in a multilateral forum by French intransigence.