Monsieur Chirac, quel est votre problème?

The transatlantic relationship is one of those topics that provokes a lot of furrowed brows and tony conferences. I’ve been invited to my fair share over the past year, and the core question that inevitably pops up is, “How much of the transatlantic rift is due to clashes of style and how much is due to clashes of interests?’ The hip answer to give is the latter. According to this narrative, the important date in the relationship was not 9/11 but 11/9 — the date the Berlin Wall fell, and the Cold War glue that held the U.S. and Europe together disintegrated. That was the date when NATO jumped the shark. Me, I’m not so trendy, and think that the clash of styles is pretty important. Part of this is due to George W. Bush. You could not have asked central casting for a better epitome of everything about the United States that Europe loathes — Texas, conservatism, directness, religious devotion, and a lack of facility with most European languages — including English. That said, a very healthy dollop of the current clash of styles is due to Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac. The former appalled his foreign policy establishment by making Iraq the centerpiece of his re-election campaign, and by adopting a position that was more unilateralist than the United States. Mention Schroeder’s campaign behavior to European foreign policy experts, and they tend to look down and shuffle their feet. However, the real piece of work on the European continent is Jacques Chirac. His latest exhibit of pique comes in response to the official NATO statement on Iraq — which is broadly supportive but pretty bland. This, however, was too much for Chirac to stomach — according to Judy Dempsey’s account in the Financial Times:

Jacques Chirac, the French president, yesterday held out against Nato playing any role in Iraq, in a move that could tear apart a modest, if vague, agreement forged by the 26-member alliance to train the Iraqi security forces…. Mr Chirac said Nato had no role inside Iraq. “I do not believe it is the purpose of Nato to be in, or intervene in Iraq,” he told journalists in Istanbul’s military museum. “I believe there would be tremendous negative consequences of this.” The French president suggested that members or non-members of the coalition forces could instead train the security forces inside or outside the country. “As far as we are concerned, we are talking about Nato supporting those member states who are involved in training activities. France has no need to oppose that,” he said. “A Nato foothold on Iraqi soil would not be relevant. It would be unwise. Nato could train officers in its excellent training headquarters in Rome.” Mr Chirac said France was ready to train military police, but outside Iraq. Germany will continue to train police in the United Arab Emirates and train senior army officers outside as well. Gerhard Schröder, German chancellor and Mr Chirac’s closest ally on many issues, said Berlin would support a Nato role inside Iraq but would send no personnel.

This sort of behavior does nothing but weaken NATO — something that Chirac did in spades last year. If the French president really had a problem with the language of the statement, he shouldn’t have agreed to it — which would have been better than his current course of action, which is erratic in the extreme. Glenn Reynolds has more on Chirac’s obstinacy — including this tidbit from the Observer:

[T]he increasingly volatile Chirac is in no mood for pandering to the British. ‘He’s tetchy, unhappy, doesn’t quite know which way to go – his officials are all frightened of him and nobody’s giving him any advice,’ says one Foreign Office source.

The Bush administration has contributed its fair share to the lack of transatlantic comity — but powerful Europeans are behaving even worse. UPDATE: Greg Djerejian has further thoughts on just what NATO will do in Iraq.