June 29, 2004

French Dressing Down

London Calling blogger (and HobbsOnline London correspondent) George Miller explains how French President Jacques Chirac just provided the world with an object lesson in "How to insult your friends and influence nobody".

Yesterday, the French President, Jacques Chirac, told President Bush to get his nose out of European business. Bush had told Turkish leaders that the United States is supportive of Turkey’s application to join the European Union.

... Chirac's reaction to Bush's statement is revealing of the French assumption that the Continent is its private sphere of influence. Someone really ought to tell the free nations of Europe that this is how the French see them. On second thought, there's no need for anyone to tell them. The French President is doing a very good job of telling them himself.

Chirac has become a master of insulting the free nations of Europe. But this outburst, like the one last year in which he told those European nations who supported the Allied invasion of Iraq to "shut up," reveals France's growing weakness in the enlarged Europe.