FRANCE, SPAIN, GERMANY

The French and German opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq caused a lot of heated debate and an even larger amount of childish and pathetic behaviour on both sides (viz French Fries becoming Freedom Fries and France sticking their noses up the Chinese backsides).

Now the French are proposing to hold joint naval exercises with China (as Simon points out) and the new Spanish Prime Minister is threatening to pull out their troops out of Iraq, while the Germans are still calling for the U.N. to take over the running of Iraq.

A lot of people seem to be viewing these developments as evidence that the French, Germans and Spanish are "weak on terrorism", and that the French in particular seem to be deliberately aligning themselves with an anti-US bloc - namely China.

Without agreeing with their positions, in their defence I would like to make a few points.

The French have been driven away from the U.S. by the hysterical reation of the American public to their anti-war stance, and even more so by the childish rhetoric adopted by the Amercian administration - referring to them (and Germany) as Old Europe is a bit feeble, and ironically for the French in particular it is probably regarded as a compliment - they are proud of their heritage, history and culture and would much rather be "old europe" than "new world" any day. The U.S. position has left French politicians no option other than to find another power to align themselves with and in the current world that can only be China. Quite what else they would be expected to do I don't know. Why would they support a country and administration that is openly hostile and scathing to them? As a kid would you have supported the school bully if he was bullying you?

Secondly, I would like to point out that the 3 countries most in favour of the Iraq War were the USA, the UK and Australia. and they were the 3 biggest contributors to the invasion force. There were token efforts from the Spanish and Polish armies but these were more symbolic than anything else. The 2 countries most against the war were France and Germany.

The obvious connection here is that the 3 most pro-war have not had any wars fought on their home soil in living memory, while the 2 most anti-war most certainly have (we'll gloss over the fact that it was all the fault of 1 of them), and these wars will be particularly vivid in the minds of ageing politicians who either grew up during or in the immediate aftermath of WWII. I am certain their experience of war, and all the death and destruction that inevitably goes with it, led them to adopt the view that any form of military intervention had to be an absolute last resort.

They also both have significant muslim populations which many have argued makes them more conciliatory as they don't want to provoke unrest at home. This may well be true but perhaps it also means they have a better understanding of the extremists (France in particular has had a lot of trouble with Algerian muslim extremists and has had several small scale terrorist attacks over the years), and felt that removing Hussein with a show of force would only create a martyr.

So intead of postings such as "fucking frogs" on Gweilodiaries perhaps a bit of rational thought and debate would be useful.