A RATIONAL FRENCHMAN LOOKS AT THE WORLD

No snide comments how "rational Frenchman" is an oxymoron.  There are plenty of them, albeit not enough.  I had lunch with one of them here in DC yesterday.  He’s Pierre Lellouche, who represents Paris (4^th district) in the National Assembly (France’s Parliament) and is President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

If you had been there with me, you’d have come away wishing he were Bush’s National Security Advisor for Europe.  Even better, though, is that after Nicolas Sarkozy is elected President of France next April (see Sarko vs. Eurabia, January 2005), M. Lellouche may be France’s Defense Minister.

So if you had joined me for lunch, here’s how you would have heard him describe France and the world.

France.  France is at the end of the road.  In 25 years of governing by Mitterand and Chirac, they have done nothing to prepare France for modernity.  We have the largest public jobs sector, as a percentage of the working population, of any country in the world.  Out of a population of 22 million adults capable of working, six million work for the government, three million are on welfare, and three million are unemployed.  55% of France’s working population doesn’t work, or really work.

France’s only hope is for a new government willing to fight an unprecedented war against the welfare state and public sector unions.

As it is now, we are exporting our best and brightest, who are emigrating out of France by the hundreds of thousands to Silicon Valley, New York, London, and elsewhere.  In their place, we are importing millions of unskilled and illiterate Moslems from Africa and as far away as Pakistan, most of whom go on welfare.

The political center of France is far to the left of most all of Europe.  Thus M. Sarkozy’s most formidable candidate for the presidency is the leader of the Socialist Party, Ségolène Royal, who looks at the world wearing the blinders of 19^th century Marxism.

She hasn’t a clue of what to do.  Not a clue.  All she has is charisma and an ability to spout glib Marxist-populist slogans.  Thus the "Sego-Sarko" presidential contest next April will decide the fate of France – and perhaps of Europe.

Russia.  Every sign in Russia now is in the wrong direction.  The irony is that Putin is the only strong leader in Europe today.  He and his generals still can’t get over Russia’s losing the Cold War.  Thus the short-term problem is their attempt to re-create the Soviet Union. 

This is short-term because Russia is losing one million in population a year now, which may accelerate, not lessen.  Russia’s population has dropped almost 20 million in the last 15 years.  It is headed towards a population the current size of Turkey, 100 million or less.  It is hard to see how a country demographically collapsing can retain control of 11 million square kilometers in Eurasia.

The two key problems of the world.  Europe is suffering a vacuum of power while facing an amazing array of extraordinary problems.  Out of this array, two main ones emerge.

First is China.  The basic question is:  will China be a collective , cooperative player in the world, or a predator?  I’m afraid the odds are that it will be the latter.

People are always complaining of "US imperialism."  Wait until you see Chinese imperialism.  People will soon wish they had US imperialism back to protect them.

Second is Islam.  The basic question is:  will Islam surrender to fundamentalism or accept modernity?  The latter means women’s rights and gender equality, separation of religion and state, and acceptance of the "other" (treating non-Moslems as fully human rather than sub-human).

We must recognize Islamist reality.  The Islamists are waging a global jihad not just against the West, but modernity itself.  Their main focus now is not the West – that comes later – but control of weapons and power in the Moslem world.  So we will see much more Moslem-on-Moslem violence.

Iran.  The problem is not so much Iran but the support of Russia and China for Iran.  Iran knows it can depend on Russia and China to block any effort made to disarm it.  This allows Ahmadinejad to play Europe like a violin.

Russia is demanding we allow it to reassert authority over Georgia and Ukraine in exchange for her to side with us on Iran.  This we cannot do.  China is just behaving like a predator supporting a fellow predator state.

If Russia and China would start behaving cooperatively and not predatorily, we would have an international consensus capable of forcing Iran to abandon its attempt to build nuclear weapons.

The US and Europe.  The most urgent need at this moment is a strong bond between the genuine democracies of the world.  The center of this bond must be of course that between America and Europe.  But it must include Japan, India, Brazil, and other true democracies.  And it must purposefully exclude Russia and China, which must be informed they must democratize before acceptance.

America cannot be asked to solve global problems by itself, nor can it.  The world’s other free nations have got to pitch in, work together, and work with America.  

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That’s the end of my notes.  It was quite a luncheon conversation.  It reaffirmed my conviction that we, meaning us Americans, have got to re-focus on Europe.  It is in dire straits, but the situation is far from hopeless.

Western Civilization cannot be reduced to America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and expect to civilizationally flourish and survive.  It needs a flourishing and culturally confident Europe.  With rational, courageous folks like Nicolas Sarkozy and Pierre Lellouche at France’s helm, this might yet be achieved.