Classic Diplomacy in the Information Age
Article Summary
France's foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, is often charged with being anti-American. As his new book shows, however, his brand of realist diplomacy is more subtle and pragmatic than his American critics see it.
Stanley Hoffmann is Buttenwieser University Professor at Harvard University and reviews books on western Europe for Foreign Affairs.
Globalization also needs to be contained in the one crucial domain of culture, Vedrine argues. No French speaker will find surprising his defense of the French language, the "genetic code" of his country. He does not mean this as an insult to other languages. Rather, he sees language as the cement of French unity, a role similar to the one played by the U.S. Constitution for Americans. Furthermore, Vedrine's plea for cultural diversity and a robust French cultural policy is one that Americans should have the imagination to accept. Would they react any differently if, say, the Chinese language dominated the Internet, world business, politics, and culture?
Unfortunately, Vedrine does not say enough about French policy in Africa -- perhaps because he is in a difficult position to do so. He cannot -- and does not wish to -- endorse past practices that were shockingly undemocratic and corrupt, including those under Mitterrand. Nor does Vedrine want to condemn these policies publicly, since he had served as Mitterrand's aide and remains Chirac's foreign minister. But he is more explicit and persuasive on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Calling for a real EU policy, he asks the Israelis to understand that they need to accept a "genuinely viable Palestinian state" and the Palestinians to understand the deep Israeli need for security; he also praises Clinton's active intermediary role as "essential and extraordinary."
L'EUROPE, C'EST NOUS
On globalization and the Franco-American relationship, in short, Vedrine is quintessentially French. On Europe, however, Vedrine takes a more pragmatic course. He defends EU enlargement as necessary and rightly argues (contrary to critics such as Judt) that Mitterrand did not try in 1991 to keep eastern Europe out of the EU, in a permanent limbo, with his "confederation" proposal. But Vedrine erroneously blames Czechoslovakia's president, Vaclav Havel, for this fiasco, rather than the proposal's faulty formulation, which included Russia but excluded the United States.
Vedrine is also right that a 27-member EU will be a very different entity from today's 15-member organization. It will need far less byzantine institutions and much greater diversity in the links among the members. Vedrine is quite explicit on the latter subject, preferring "variable geometry" (different participants for different functions) over the idea of a "core" surrounded by less-integrated countries. But he has very little to say about what kind of institutional design would fit his kind of Europe, and he provides no encouragement to the "Federalists," who now include German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and German Chancellor Gerhard Schršder. Although he acknowledges the meaninglessness of monetary sovereignty for EU members (especially the non-Germans), he defends their right to conduct their own foreign policies. As he sees it, a single monetary policy will coexist with a common (but not single) foreign policy that "orchestrates" the diverse views of its members -- whose viewpoints about European-American relations are too divergent to come down to a single approach.
Vedrine's rather lukewarm stance on European integration may result from his conviction that the EU has done little to enhance France's power since the early 1990s, even with German unification aside. On Germany, his discussion is also devoid of illusions. He sees the Franco-German partnership as less harmonious than before, but he acknowledges that cooperation between the two remains necessary, if no longer sufficient, for integration's progress. Vedrine also does not fret over Germany's potential domination of Europe in the way that so many foreign experts (Judt included) would expect. Vedrine's silence on this topic is not proof of his anxiety. When he writes that Germany's rediscovery of its national interests is perfectly normal, he is simply following his own view of the state as the primary actor.
In defense and foreign policy, Vedrine takes a similar tack. Europe's role, he believes, will be to organize the convergence of state policies, and each foreign minister will have to merge national interests with the growing "European interest" that results from such convergence. Vedrine acknowledges that a larger Europe will not be France writ large, but he shows sufficient confidence in French strength to believe that this mix of national self-assertion and cooperation is satisfying. He endorses the planned EU rapid reaction force but does not touch on the controversial issues of the extent of its autonomy and its relationship to NATO.
Vedrine's pragmatic approach to European integration raises three questions. First, how effective will the future EU be if it maintains its intergovernmental institutions in diplomacy and defense while the Council of Ministers remains the predominant legislative organ, even when the supranational European Commission plays a major role in areas such as economic and social policy? Will the French and the British -- the most reluctant "Federalists" -- be forced to choose between a federal Europe and the mixed approach that Vedrine espouses? The United States once had to move from a confederation to a federation. Although parallels between European and American integration are perilous, considerations of integration's effectiveness may be compelling in both cases. Second, can one call for a multipolar world and yet, as Vedrine does, relegate Europe to a diplomatically limited role with "too many voices and not enough policy" (as Moisi puts it)? After all, France plus the kind of Europe that Vedrine describes do not constitute a powerful enough "pole."
