POLITICS:Springtime in Paris
Fund, John H.
P O L I T I C S Springtime in Paris violence there. (But then who isn’t?) by John H. Fund EWFRENCHPRESIDENTNICOLASSARKOZYis full of surprises. He stunned observers by selecting Bernard...
...the new Democratic Congress is retreating from the world and the Bush administration looks increasingly at sea...
...Indeed, it was as a doctor that Kouchner first burst onto the political scene...
...She lived in Chicago for six years and developed strongly freemarket views, making her an interesting choice to manage France’s bloated agricultural subsidies...
...It’s an amazing appointment, a stunning event in French foreign policy,” is how former U.S...
...Then when Hussein was on the verge of being toppled, it was Chirac who had Zimbabwe’s mad leader Robert Mugabe to drinks at the Elysée Palace as he rounded up support to oppose U.S...
...There was also an extween the classic technocrats and ver to France...
...A Communist in his youth, he became a physician and drifted rightward...
...to his integrity and honesty...
...As a doctor, I can’t say whether he’s in bad physical shape...
...management of the sectarian Since becoming foreign minister in May, Kouchner has moved quickly to abandon the traditional cynicism of French diplomacy...
...another former Marxist who was re- Despite behavior that one normally doesn’t associate with French elites, Kouchner has long been the most popular political figure in the country, as citizens have warmed Despite behavior that one normally doesn’t associate with French elites, Kouchner has long been the most popular political figure in the country, as citizens have warmed to his integrity and honesty...
...Their deaths filled him with a burning desire not to allow injustice to flourish and always be subordinated to Realpolitik...
...The presithe insult off...
...Who would have thought such a role reversal possible...
...He stunned observers by selecting Bernard Kouchner, a 67-year-old maverick former Socialist minister, as his foreign minister...
...When Sarkozy announced his appointment, a horrified Socialist Party central committee branded the good doctor a traitor and expelled him...
...ambassador K ” kozy, his family roots are not F . Like his boss Sar- is used to being an outsider OUCHNER WILL NO DOUBT SHRUG rench...
...He co-founded the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders in the 1970s, which quickly made a name for itself by opposing regimes of whatever stripe that violated human rights...
...In the present climate of the United States, a man like Kouchner would be regarded as a neoconservative...
...His foreign minister’s paternal grandparents were Russian Jews who emigrated to France but later died in Auschwitz...
...Sarkozy’s new prime minister, François Fillon, has been over to Britain to observe how Tony Blair’s shop works...
...He flew to Lebanon, where he went to the grave of that country’s murdered leader Rafik Hariri, and announced that the UN tribunal investigating Syrian complicity in the assassination must be taken seriously...
...Thus far Sarkozy is moving from one coup de théâtre to the next...
...It was Chirac who assured Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the corrupt leader of the former French colony of Ivory Coast, that democracy was a “kind of luxury” Africans couldn’t afford...
...Its former 5 8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 J O H N H . F U N D Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali once dismissed him as an “unguided missile...
...I said to dent is the son of a Hungarian immigrant, and one of his Sarkozy’s agriculture minister is Christine grandparents was Jewish...
...Let me assure you of my esteem, consideration, and bond...
...He has stiffened the spine of French envoys charged with pressuring the African Union’s on-again, off-again effort to prevent genocide in Sudan’s Darfur province...
...But he does have his enemies...
...Kouchner was withering in his assessment of Chirac and how he weakened French prestige and power: “It’s all very strange...
...He strongly advocated the rights of oppressed Muslim populations in the Balkans and in Kurdish regions of Iraq...
...John H. Fund, The American Spectator’s Politics columnist, is author of Stealing Elections: How Voter to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke reacted to the news of Kouchner’s appointment...
...He traordinary parity be the polic m he told the yself that we should bring that o y wonks Times , often brilliant academics of London...
...In 2003 he was perhaps the only major politician in France to back the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, though he has been harshly critical of the U.S...
...Kouchner is a rare find...
...can do business with...
...But he has not won many friends at the UN...
...France is embracing a more sensible foreign policy at the same time that in the U.S...
...It was not only more simple and informal than in our French governments,” Lagarde, a 51-year-old lawyer who in 1999 became the first woman to be named managing partner of the prestigious U.S...
...Several of its members can be characterized as people the U.S...
...But he seems to have a knack of finding the right targets...
...It was Chirac who once told Saddam Hussein that “you are my personal friend...
...10 Downing Street and found the relaxed atmosphere to his liking...
...All of this is a complete repudiation of the tactics and style of departed President Jacques Chirac’s administration...
...by John H. Fund EWFRENCHPRESIDENTNICOLASSARKOZYis full of surprises...
...Between 1999 and 2001 he served as UN high commissioner in Kosovo...
...All in all, it would appear that France is awakening from its policy slumber of the Chirac years, and doing so in unexpected and encouraging ways...
...That led him to oppose both the crushing of Poland’s Solidarity movement and Augusto Pinochet’s Chilean regime...
...Sarkozy has other pleasant surprises in his new 15-member cabinet...
...But as a citizen, I can say he looks weaker and weaker...
...Guy Sorman, a noted French writer who is also a nominal Socialist, told me that Kouchner’s views transcend those aspects of French policy that so irritate Americans: “You will find him on your side when you are right...
...The fact that the new president has thrown someone of Lagarde’s caliber into the task of managing French agriculture speaks well of both his innovativeness and his commitment to real reform...
...law firm Baker & McKenzie...
...P O L I T I C S Springtime in Paris violence there...
...He told the New York Times, “It will be very positive for U.S.-French relations because he does not come with a visceral anger towards the American ‘hyperpower.’” J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 5 9 Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books...
...He was a pioneer in the highly necessary proclamation that left politics should always be anti-totalitarian,” notes Christopher Hitchens, pelled by the leftist company he kept...
...intervention in Iraq...
...Fillon, whose favorite drink is tea and whose wife is British, says he spent two days as “a fly on the wall” in No...
...It was Chirac who kowtowed to Vladimir Putin and ignored Iran’s nuclear buildup until it even attracted the attention of Kofi Annan at the United Nations...
Vol. 40 • July 2007 • No. 6
