Giving France A Hand

[jakpalmer]

"In its Ivory Coast diplomacy, the U.S. resists retribution."

By Jim Hoagland
Thursday, November 25, 2004

"American diplomacy is seen as an oxymoron these days by many Europeans, particularly the French. That makes the effective work of the Bush administration in limiting the poisonous fallout of anti-French turmoil in Ivory Coast all the more remarkable and salutary.

As details emerge of a month of riots, racial and religious clashes, and a targeted air raid that killed nine French soldiers and an American aid worker, it becomes evident that Ivory Coast's president, Laurent Gbagbo, may have been betting that he could manipulate badly strained French-American relations to his advantage in an example of trickle-down instability.

<...>

Gbagbo may have assumed that the Iraq crisis had soured big-power relations so thoroughly that the United States would eagerly succeed France as Ivory Coast's foreign protector. It is hard to see what else would have emboldened Gbagbo to the point of ordering his East European mercenary pilots to attack French peacekeepers on Nov. 6."

<...>

Link: www.washingtonpost.com

I wonder what the * administration is up to with France nowadays...