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.Indeed, it was theconstant drumbeat of mutual accusations often expressed by strongproponents or opponents of war deliberately to discredit the views ofthe other side that to a large degree contributed to the growing gapbetween American and European views on Iraq.Instead of trying to76THE SOURCES OF DISAGREEMENTclose that gap, many on both sides of the Atlantic seemed determin-ed to widen it.The efforts by American proponents of war to castEuropean opposition as the product of mercantile interests, combinedwith anti-Americanism, was mirrored by European efforts to suggestthat the Americans were solely driven by a desire to expand U.S.powerand by the thirst for foreign oil.False PremisesOne commonly suggested explanation for French and German policy,for example, suggests that it was driven primarily by commercialinterests.As former CIA Director James Woolsey explained it:  I thinka lot of the French interest is economic, they have a lot of deals withSaddam Hussein, oil deals and others. Fox News anchor Tony Snowwas even more categorical, explaining that whereas  Americans on theleft and right believe morals matter and that foreign policy should notserve merely economic and territorial aims, the German and Frenchpositions.proceed from expediency.Germany has supplied thehardware for much of Saddam s biochemical weapons program, andthe French position on Iraq is all about oil. Even Secretary of StateColin Powell, less inclined to disparage allies motives, attributed atleast part of French policy to  various commercial relationshipsbetween France and Iraq.These explanations were incomplete at best.While both France andGermany once had significant trading relationships with Iraq, by theearly 2000s the 12 years of sanctions on that country had reducedbusiness interests to a minimum.From 1997 through 2002, French exports to Iraq averaged approx-imately $388 million per year less than 0.3 percent of overall exportsand around 0.02 percent of France s GDP.French imports from Iraqduring that period averaged around $850 million, or 0.2 percent ofoverall exports and 0.05 percent of French GDP.These were hardly77ALLIES AT WARlevels likely to have a major impact on French foreign policy, even ifthe French business community had much political clout.For Germany, the Iraqi trade share was even smaller; export andimport percentages for 2002 were 0.001 and 0.062 percent, respective-ly.Moreover, nearly 100 percent of the imports from Iraq were frompurchases of oil, which could have been purchased at the same pricefrom any of a number of other suppliers.The United States in the early2000s was importing nearly $6 billion in Iraqi oil per year six timesas much as France an amount that does not seem to have givenWashington an interest in the maintenance of the Saddam regime.French oil companies, it was true, did have potentially lucrative oilagreements with the Iraqi regime, which were probably a factor inFrance s efforts during the 1990s to work toward lifting the sanctionson Iraq.But officials in Paris also understood that as long as sanctionsremained and in the post September 11 environment, no one couldseriously believe that the United States would fail to veto the lifting ofUN financial controls on Saddam those deals would never be real-ized.Neither the French government nor French oil companies, in fact,ever believed they would conclude deals with Saddam Hussein s regimewhile the UN sanctions regime remained in place.The same was truefor the approximately $5 billion in Iraqi debt to France stemming fromdecades-old business deals it was highly unlikely that the debts wouldbe paid as long as Saddam was in power.The bottom line is that if commercial interests and cynicism werereally the main factors driving policy, the best strategy for France andGermany would have been to strongly back the U.S.threat of force, jointhe coalition, and insist on a share of the spoils.With the United Statesby the end of 2002 desperate to win UN backing for the invasion, it islikely that France could have successfully cut a deal that would haveincluded debt repayment and a significant stake for French companiesin Iraqi oil development a far better economic outcome than theone France ended up with.78THE SOURCES OF DISAGREEMENTIt was also overly simplistic to ascribe European public opposi-tion and French and German policy to  anti-American motiva-tions, as was often done in the United States [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]