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.Chirac maintained the basic tenets of Gaullism including national and Europeanindependence from the US.In December 1974, Saddam Hussein then Vice President24 James C.Bennett, The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking NationsWill Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century (New York, 2004).Allies 145of Iraq, hosted Chirac in Baghdad and approved a deal granting French oil companiesa number of concessions including a 23 per cent share of Iraqi oil.France also sold anuclear reactor to Iraq.Chirac was initially very sympathetic to the US after 9/11 andFrance agreed to assist in the GWOT and provide forces to Afghanistan and by 2006more than 4,200 French military personnel were operating in Afghanistan.The differences between France and the US were principally over the invasionof Iraq.France opposed the US plans for the invasion of Iraq from early 2002.TheFrench government was more closely connected to the Iraqi Ba athists and tradedwith Iraq, importing oil and providing value added product.Chirac s party mayalso have received covert Ba athist financial assistance.This also coincided withan independent diplomacy in the Middle East which had been a part of French geo-political strategy since the Gaullist ambition of creating a  third force in globalpolitics with the EU.This ambition had popular support in France, and was buttressedby mass anti-Americanism.Throughout 2002, therefore, Chirac tried to organize a European coalition inopposition to the US plan to invade Iraq.It was mainly this coalition that preventedthe US from getting a further enabling resolution from the UN Security Councilin September 2002, which the French made it clear they would veto.In any case,the Russians or the Chinese may well have done so.The French then continued tooppose US policy in Iraq but with progressively less determination and effect afterthe occupation and reconstruction was underway.In any case, Chirac s governmenttended to lose domestic authority after extensive riots by Muslim youths in late2005, by opponents of labour law reforms in early 2006, and as the administrationlimped through several scandals towards it final days and election of a new Presidentin May 2007.That election was won by Nicolas Sarkozy, who was more pro-US,more liberal and less inclined to tread cautiously with Islam that Chirac.But after 2003 the French continued their contribution to Afghanistan and thepursuit, arrest and interrogation of terrorists caught elsewhere.Paris then in 2005significantly boosted its military presence in Central Asia and Afghanistan as bothit and Washington mended fences after their bitter falling out over the Iraq War.25A French Defence Ministry official said Paris was determined to keep battlingterrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and was increasing its military cooperationin Afghanistan to support the 2005 landmark elections. We had a very clear positionwhen it comes to Iraq & That has nothing to do with our fight against terrorism, withFrance working with our American colleagues.26 By 2007 France s deployment wasits largest since the start of the Afghan campaign and included 500 French pilots.ButFrance had not diluted its opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq.The German government of Gerhard Schroeder was the major French EU ally inthe efforts to forestall the US invasion of Iraq.Like the French, however, the Germanscontributed to the Afghan campaign under NATO auspices.The US had been tryingto make NATO into a global alliance since the mid-1990s and its intervention inthe Balkans.The Schroeder government was a coalition of left wing parties led bythe Social Democrats including the Greens, thus combining old style Marxists with25  France Steps Up Role in War on Terror , NewsMax.com Wires, 29 Aug 2005.26 Ibid.146 The American Challengeenvironmentalists.Both parties were anti-American and one Minister compared Bushwith Hitler during the course of the diplomatic hostilities in 2002 03.In opposingthe war in Iraq, Schroeder undoubtedly tapped into contemporary German pacifismand isolationism.Indeed, during the 2003 election campaign, Schroeder successfullystepped up his anti-American rhetoric to improve his vote.But Germany s flagging economy and the unpopularity of Schroeder s liberalreform program resulted in a series of SPD electoral defeats in 2004 and 2005.Schroeder called an early election in September 2005, which resulted in a protractedperiod of political stalemate.In October 2005 a deal created a left-right  grandcoalition led by the new Christian Democratic Union Chancellor, Angela Merkel,who was much more sympathetic to the US, but not keen on joining Bush in Iraq [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]