Today's Date:

Moderator : Tony Smith, chairman of the French-American Foundation

Tony Smith: I want to start on a very positive note. There were some references yesterday to a re-launching of the French-American relationship. Secretary Rice’s trip to Paris was very well received. President Bush, shortly after his second term started, went to Europe, first to Brussels and then elsewhere in Europe and that was very well received. On the European part, the contentious issue of the repealing of the arms embargo toward China is no longer on the front pages.

Daniel Fried : It is certainly true that President Bush, since his re-election, has made a personal, strong, consistent effort to reach out to Europe. He did so starting with his first press conference after the re-election. The election was Tuesday, Senator Kerry conceded on Wednesday and on Thursday morning President Bush gave a press conference where he talked about the need to work with the European Union on common problems. We have consistently advanced since, that was the major theme of the President’s trip to Europe. So it was a conscious decision, a deliberate policy of reaching out to Europe as a partner. I do take issue with the notion that previously we had a “go it alone” policy. Of course during the President’s first term we did a lot to strengthen the NATO, we worked with European partners, we were not alone in Iraq. For various reasons, some good, some not so good, the US and some European governments, including the French government, disagreed sharply about Iraq. We felt that with the President’s re-election we had a chance to reach out to Europe, including France, and to Europe as a whole, and make sure we wanted a partnership with a strong Europe, a partnership that would be focused on dealing with the challenges we find outside Europe and the Atlantic region. We think the response has been good, that there is a good agenda already underway in US-European cooperation. US-French cooperation has taken the lead in some areas, particularly Lebanon, and we hope that the current difficulties following the French referendum will not get in the way of this outwardly focused US-European partnership.

Jean-David Levitte: Tony, I think we have been through a situation of paradox. The French-American relation has been confronted to the worst crisis in decades, but at the same time we never stopped having an excellent cooperation on key issues. President Chirac was the first head of State to come to America after 9/11, on the 18th and 19th of September, and we have participated in the war against terror from the beginning because we have been confronted with the same tragedy at home in France. We have participated in the war in Afghanistan, with thousands of troops. We had a French general in charge of the NATO operations in Kabul until the end of February. Same story in Africa, in Haiti, elsewhere. But we were totally opposed to the war in Iraq, because we thought this was not necessary and would have dangerous consequences. So we had this crisis, and as we say in French, “l’arbre irakien a caché la forêt” – the Iraqi tree, in a way, was hiding the forest of our cooperation elsewhere.

Dan and myself were present during this happy moment, on the 22nd of February, the dinner between President Bush and President Chirac in Brussels, when the two leaders decided to turn this bitter page and to let the historians decide who was right and who was wrong about the necessity of this war, and to focus in a positive way on what we can achieve together as true friends and allies. Dan mentioned Lebanon, but it is true in other areas, such as the Middle-East peace process, and now Iran, and we have the support of the US in what the three Europeans try to achieve, and we are back on tracks. I’m sure that in the future we will also have other difficult moments, simply because we are a very independent country and people, and we have a tendency to speak our minds. And when we are convinced that something is not right, we say it. But I think next time, it will be less emotional, because for a majority of American people, right or wrong, Saddam Hussein was connected with Bin Laden, Iraq was connected with 9/11, and so the question was, “How come the French, who were with us right from the beginning in Yorktown, this time were not with us at a time when we were attacked?” And we know now that there were no link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, but at the time, and still lingering in the minds of the American people, there is this connection. And it explains a lot about the exceptional character of this confrontation.

But all this is past. I do agree with Dan, our relation is back on track.

Moderator:

Jean-David Levitte: First, I look at other polls which have a different view of the situation. If you take the Pew Centre, or other USA Today polls, and so on, you will see that usually France has a very high mark in public opinion, around 80% of positive public opinion. At the lowest point, we went down to 34% of positive opinions, after the war in Iraq. Thank God, according to the same polls, we went up fast, and we are now around 55-56% of positive opinions – well below where we were, but well above the lowest point. So it shows there is a lot for me to do. That is why I am travelling extensively to spread the word that our relation is back on track, and that we are doing a pretty good job in a certain number of areas where we are confronted with the same challenges.

I travelled a lot in the past few weeks, I was in Madison, Minneapolis, Miami, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Los Angeles, an New York; and in all these places, I met the boards of the local media, newspapers, participated in talk-shows, and so on. And frankly, my personal view is that the Americans focus on the future, they’re not interested in what happened. What they want to do is what we do together today, and what we’ll do together tomorrow, and here, I have good news for them.

Moderator:

Daniel Fried: I was last week in Rome, Paris and Berlin, and I certainly sensed a strong desire on the part of government officials to work together with the United States, and not to indulge in the politics-rooted disagreement of 2003. I felt that strongly in Paris and Berlin, with which we had differences over Iraq, as well as in Italy. I did not get a sense of rising anti-Americanism. Now when I look at those polls I have two reactions: one is that anti-American sentiment in Europe did not start with the war in Iraq, nor with this administration; it comes and goes and has in every decade since 1945. The anti-CocaCola-isation campaign, that’s in the 1950’s! The Vietnam War, the massive demonstrations in the 1980’s, these were all much common, and in every decade there is a great deal of articles about the death of the Euro-American alliance. So I take these things a little bit philosophically. Certainly the dispute over Iraq was very sharp and I agree with Jean-David, but you can’t take poll results and use them as the basis for making strategic projections.

But there is a larger issue which I’ve been thinking about, having to do with the European unease about the United States. We are in a new strategic area after 9/11. I don’t mean just the global war on terror, which is much talked about. But President Bush, and this was most clearly expressed in his second inaugural speech, has outlined what is popularly called a freedom agenda, or a foreign policy of promoting democracy around the world, and especially in the broader Middle East, as a longer term strategic response to the pathologies in that region which produced 9/11. That is a big shift in American foreign policy. It is, and President Bush said so in his speech in London, basically a shift away, and even a repudiation – my word, not the President’s word – of the great Arab exceptionalism we had in our policy to support democracy. This is a big change, and it may be a very unsettling change for the Europeans. The United States is the number one power in the world, and by all rights, in classic political science, a status quo power. That is what they teach in American universities, the number one power is supposed to be a status quo power, and here the United States starts talking as a power interested in changing the world. A lot of European friends would say to me things like, “ What you do in the world affects my life and the life of my country, and we don’t get to vote in your elections. We need more consultations, we need to have a stake in this new strategy the United States is advancing.” And some of those Europeans have a point, we need to develop our strategic dialogue with Europe, so that we are partners and seen to be partners in the world advancing freedom and dealing with the problems in the broader Middle East. Now, one of the challenges of foreign policy-making is to distinguish what you do everyday, the problems that take twelve hours a day to fix, and what’s really important. There is an overlap, but it’s not as much of an overlap as there should be. What we think is important everyday is not always what is important. What is important is a strategic junction of the US and Europe now and in the period ahead, so that we are facing this new world, and this new strategy, together. And I think when we look back at the period we’re in, we will not see simply US-European friction - but we will also see some of those -, we will see the forging of a new strategic model for the US and Europe to work together in the first part of the 21st century on a new agenda.

One more historical analogy: we look back with veneration at leaders in the late 1940’s, Europeans and Americans who put together the strategy and institutions for fighting and winning the Cold War. And as we look back the subtext is, “Why can’t our leaders be as smart as those leaders then?” But if you picked up a newspaper any given week during this Golden Age of wise men, you wouldn’t read articles about how wise there were, but how desastrous these events went: the fall of China, the coup in Czechoslovakia, the creation of the Iron Curtain, the beginning of the Cold War, Stalin developing a nuclear bomb, that is what these people were dealing with everyday, it was going from one desaster to another.

What we do everyday, and the headlines we deal with, and the polls we deal with, are not always good guides to the significance of what you achieve.

Moderator:

Jean-David Levitte: Of course not. I would say that the US and France are two countries separated by shared values. What I mean is that our two countries were born together, we were in the 1790’s the sons of the philosophers of the Enlightments with the Philadelphia Constitution in 1787, and our Declaration of Human Rights, in 1789. And since that period, we have been both together fighting for the same causes, liberty and democracy, and at the same time fighting each other over the best way to achieve the same goal. That is the specificity, I’d say, of the French-American relations, we are passionately defending the same cause with nuances about how to achieve the same cause. Of course, we as French want to see more democracy, more freedom, more market economy, more development in the developing world, a better government to, and so on. We share the same goals. Let’s accept this debate between our two countries as a healthy debate about the best way to achieve the same goal. Nobody has got a magic wand, a miraculous recipe about how to spread democracy in the Middle East, how to have China becoming a true democracy, what to do with the Iranian election, and so on. But this is a good, healthy debate through which we get a better understanding about the best way for all.

Moderator:

Jean-David Levitte: Of course not. First I think that maybe the US media were right in a way not to dramatize the situation, it’s not a tragedy. John Bruton, the former Prime Minister of Ireland who’s now the ambassador of EU in Washington, had a perfect image. He said the Europeans wanted to put the icing on the pudding; in a way we don’t get the icing but we keep the pudding. And that’s a good image, that is, we stay where we are, with all our treaties, and they work. We wanted to improve the way the treaties are working, but it’s not the end of the day, it’s a bump in the road, it’s not the end of the road. So this explains probably most of the American comments.

Now, it will have some limited consequences because as you see with the European Council we will focus on how to deal with the situation. We will be in a way more inward looking for the next two or three years to come. It’s not the first difficulty in the European Union’s long history of fifty years. We move from one crisis to the other but each time we found a solution and we made progress. Remember the case when General de Gaulle decided to boycott the European institutions and for months there was the French empty seat. So this was a crisis. We don’t see that today, everybody is participating and trying to address the new situation, give more time to time, and in the meantime solve the daily problems ahead of us.

But I agree with what Dan said, that is during that period even if we are a little more inward looking, we will continue to be confronted with the same threats: terrorism, the spread of arms of mass destruction, and we will have to confront these threats together and we will do it.

Moderator:

Daniel Fried: Well, in the stricter sense, we don’t have an opinion on the referendum because we don’t have a position on the Constitution. I haven’t read the Constitution. I won’t ask Jean-David whether he has read the Constitution. I wonder how many people in this room have read the Constitution… The United States government does not have a position on the Constitution. That’s the first part of the answer. The other half of the answer is that we most certainly have a position on Europe: we want a strong Europe as a partner. That is what President Bush said on February 22nd. We do not want to see Europe go into an introspective phase over the next two or three years. As Jean-David just said, the problems won’t wait. We have an opportunity to help achieve a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, we have an opportunity to help achieve Lebanese sovereignty and democracy, to help contain and prevent Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions, to help the people of Iraq. The list goes on. These problems will not get better by themselves. They will not solve themselves. The United States is far better off working with an active strong European partner than we are acting alone. I don’t know how we solve the Balkan problem, how we address the issue of Kosovo’s future unless we have a credible option of a European future for the countries of the Western Balkans. I hope Europe- whatever they change in the Constitution- I hope Europe gets through this period and becomes an outward, out-focused partner. Because that is what the challenges are. We, the United States and Europe have the power, the means and the shared values, and therefore we also have the responsibility to act together in the world.

Moderator: I read somewhere that, had President Chirac announced on the eve of the referendum that France did not favor Turkey’s entrance to the EU, that the referendum would have sailed through with a Oui instead of a Non.

Daniel Fried: I’ll let Jean-David answer the impossible “what if” question, as for myself I don’t think there is one factor in the French referendum. What I told my Turkish friends is, don’t obsess with Europe’s internal politics. Don’t go into a panic about the current situation with respect to the current debate in Europe about enlargement. Take care of reforms at home, do what you need to do and that debate will become easier over time. So far the Turkish reaction has been restrained and responsible rather than hysterical. I certainly hope that Europe does not draw long-term strategic conclusions from the results of a current referendum which is after all a snapshot of the moment. The process of EU enlargement has been a fabulous success. Peace and freedom in Europe are the results of the enlargement of the two great European institutions, the EU and NATO, the latter being mainly a European institution as well as a transatlantic one. This has been a great success and we don’t want the door slammed in the face of Turkey or the Balkans or Romania or Bulgaria or anyone else… You won’t see us shouting or taking full page advertisements in Le Monde urging the French people to welcome Turkey next year. It’s for the Europeans to think this through. I was struck when I was in Europe, when I was in France, by all the talk of the Polish plumber, this mythical figure which threatens to take people’s jobs away. It struck me as a kind of national disquiet which reminded me of certain periods in American history over the last thirty years. With leadership Europe can get passed this and I hope it does.

Moderator:

Jean-David Levitte: Tony I voted as a French citizen in Washington. 88% of the French voting in the US voted yes to the Constitution and it’s very difficult from this side of the Atlantic to tell you exactly what were the reasons, and I put an “s” because when you ask the French one question, you get at least five answers which have nothing to do with the EU constitution but a lot to do with of course the economic and social situation, globalisation, and maybe also some unease with the state of affairs in the European Union. Remember we had in the last few years a number of very important breakthroughs; only few years ago we absorbed the Euro with enthusiasm, but when we voted on the Euro in 1992, we voted with a razor-thin majority of 51 against 49%. Immediately after that we had the most ambitious enlargement. We started at 6 countries, and the expansion process was a very slow, progressive one: 6, 9, 10, 12, 15 and in one big jump, to 25. And it’s a miracle in a way because the ten newcomers were only fifteen years ago part of the Soviet block. Poland, the Czech Republic etc… Three of them were even more miraculously emerging from the Soviet Union: the three Baltic states. When we meet in Washington as the 25 ambassadors of the EU I’m seating between the ambassador of Poland and the ambassador of Estonia. And for me it’s a miracle. For the French what they see is what you see in America, that is the problem of outsourcing, China, India, plus the problem of outsourcing inside the EU, the mythical Polish plumber. In fact France is the number one direct investor in Poland. You have here a promising country, getting a lot of financial aid and being part of the common market. So it’s good to invest if you are a French company in Poland. And that’s outsourcing inside the EU. The number of Polish plumbers in France, frankly, must be very limited. But all this has produced question marks: where are we? Is it not going too fast? Where are the borders of the EU? And it is true that it is difficult to address these questions, because the answer will come in due time, and if someday we have to vote on Turkey the French will decide through a referendum, as we did for the UK for instance, if we want Turkey in or not. But this will come in due time and it was not part of the debate, it was there because the enlargement process is still going on. Beyond the 25 we’ll have in two years’ time Romania and Bulgaria if all goes well and then we know that Croatia would like to start a negotiation, Ukraine expressed interest in joining and so on. All these questions were in a way the background of the debate about something which was completely different, the text of the Constitution./.