Do you remember the freedom fries? It was around 2003 and several european countries opposed the war on terror launched by the USA president Bush. But the focus was on France. So patriotically, some USA restaurants begun to offer “freedom” instead of “french” fries. I briefly consider the banality of using the word freedom in this context, and moved on to better and more interesting matters. Which, in general, is the same reaction that I have when I read that a government has recalled an embassador for consultations. It is not only that is a very old fashioned expression, from a time before reliable phone lines, email and zoom. Nowadays an embassador needs not to travel back in order to confere with her government. But also, it is one of these rituals that might mean a lot for the embassador, but not a whole lot for the rest of humanity.
But France recalling her North American embassador?
One could describe the relation between the USA and France as one of love and hate. From the very beginning, the success of the North American revolution was heavily dependant on French support against the British, hence the statue of Liberty, a French homage to the nascent country. And from the very beginning, feelings against France have been well documented in the history of the USA. One could think that both the USA and France have national identities based on the universality of their own beliefs, which are not always aligned. One could think in Suez, and the following retreat of France from the Nato. One could think in many other moments of strain in between those two countries.
And yet embassadors have never been recalled.
Once upon a time I strived to see politics, and certainly international politics, as a combination of multipolar lines of tensions. So indeed, the relations between Australia, China, France and the USA can be described in such lines. One could say that the French presence in the east have been historically relevant, that Australia is some sort of western bridge to the east, that China is growing in influence. So it makes a lot of sense that France and Australia closely collaborated, so it makes also sense, then, that if Australia switch her allegiance from France to the USA, that would be a matter of high concern for the balance of power in the area. So one wonders how that switch took shape. How do we know that the Australians choosed the USA above France?
By buying war submarines. Not french, but north american.
The plot thickens indeed. And I become, perhaps by experience, or perhaps out of simple tiredness with this greedy world of ours, more and more cynic by the minute. What the Fuck geopolitical tension lines, What the Fuck estrategic presence, What the Fuck historical sympathies and alliances. Fuck all that. It is about money. It is about building the bigger, faster, meaner weapon. And of course, is about buying it. Let’s not recall the drones of Obama, the israeli computer viruses, or the remote controlled sniper that killed Mohsen Fakhrizadeh few days ago.
Is any fool out there still willing to analyze foreign policy in terms of anything else than big boys buying bigger weapons?