Patterns of force

Big “imperialist” power, seeing regional strife in an area it has “interests” in, intervenes with a large troop deployment. It pressures the head of state to sign a treaty, spurring large protests by the locals, which it promptly ignores. Then it goes to the UN Security Council to get permission to send in even more troops to enforce the deal.

Funny how the UNSC is willing to approve such things when it’s France that’s doing the “invading.”

Actually, here’s an interesting article that argues that the French aren’t the Eurowimpy Surrender-Monkeys that they’re painted to be, but extremely successful Macchiavelians, fighting on turf — battlegrounds or diplomacy — where they can win.

Meanwhile, the peacenik predisposition of the other Continentals is a useful cover for French ambition. Last year Paavo Lipponen, the Finnish Prime Minister, declared that “the EU must not develop into a military superpower but must become a great power that will not take up arms at any occasion in order to defend its own interests.” This sounds insane. But, to France, it has a compelling logic. You can’t beat the Americans on the battlefield, but you can tie them down limb by limb in the UN and other supranational bodies.
In other words, this is the war, this is the real battlefield, not the sands of Mesopotamia. And, on this terrain, Americans always lose. Either they win but get no credit, as in Afghanistan. Or they win a temporary constrained victory to be subverted by subsequent French machinations, as in the last Gulf War. This time round, who knows? But through it all France is admirably upfront in its unilateralism: It reserves the right to treat French Africa as its colonies, Middle Eastern dictators as its clients, the European Union as a Greater France and the UN as a kind of global condom to prevent the spread of Americanization. All this it does shamelessly and relatively effectively. It’s time the rest of the West was so clear-sighted.

Interesting.

(via InstaPundit)