Stardate 20031222.0655

(On Screen): Last week's incredible announcement from Libya seems to have caught a lot of people totally by surprise. "Great power" France was not an active party to the negotiations, and indeed the deal shows no indication of having considered French interests.

The French have been trying to pretend that their active opposition to the US diplomatically for the last two years was nothing more than a disagreement between two nations which are the very best of friends and closest of allies. Naturellement, there was no long term damage to the relationship. How could there be? It was such a minor issue, a mere peccadillo, the faintest bump in the road. The French have been hoping against hope that this might be true, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the evidence that France is now very high on Washington's shit list, and that Washington no longer views France as a friendly nation or as a trusted ally.

Yesterday, French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie claimed that the French knew all about the negotiations. Non! We were not left out! Our good friends the Americans told us about this months ago!

Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said France was kept informed of discussions between Washington, London and Tripoli which culminated in a surprise announcement on Friday that Libya was giving up its banned weapons programs.

"France was perfectly aware of these negotiations. We are happy they succeeded," she told French television station LCI. "France was informed by the Americans several months ago."

But today French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin contradicted his esteemed colleague:

France was not informed about the negotiations Britain and the United States held which led to Libya renouncing weapons of mass destruction, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said Monday.

Why did he 'fess up? I think it's because he didn't want someone asking Rumsfeld about Alliot-Marie's claim, giving my man Rummy a chance to respond that we didn't tell the French because we wanted the negotiations to succeed, or something equally cutting and pithy. It's bad enough for de Villepin to have to admit that France was completely shut out, but it would be worse to claim involvement and then have the Americans deny it. Then the French would be revealed not only to be pariahs, but also to be presumptuous fools.

Nonetheless, it's looking very bad. During the last 8 months, there's been a steady drone from Chirac and de Villepin denying any damage in France's relationship with the US. Yet the common Jacques-on-the-street could see with his own eyes how much things had changed, with the sudden scarcity of American tourists. There was also the announcement that French companies would not be permitted to bid on $18 billion in rebuilding contracts for Iraq, though other European nations (like the Spanish) would be welcomed. And now it turns out that France was totally excluded from the most amazing diplomatic achievement of the last ten years. France's pariah status is no longer in doubt, and months of claims that France's opposition to the US had done no real damage to their relationship with the US are now in shreds. Fact is, those claims do make them look like presumptuous fools anyway.

It's interesting to compare the way the world looks right now for Bush and for Chirac. The US economy is rebounding strongly, but the French economy is stagnant. With the capture of Saddam and the deal with Qaddafi, Bush now has substantial foreign policy achievements he can refer to. With the capture of Saddam and French exclusion from the Qaddafi deal, Chirac now has two foreign-policy black eyes. Bush is leading the team to touchdown after touchdown, and Chirac isn't even warming the bench, since he's now revealed as having been booted off the team entirely. For Bush, things really could hardly be better, barring some miracle – and for Chirac, it's hard to see how things could get a lot worse, barring some catastrophe.

And it's not just France's relationship with America which has suffered; increasingly, they're becoming more and more isolated within Europe. If the British and Americans just pulled off a diplomatic triumph with Libya, France's biggest diplomatic effort of the last ten years is now a failure. Former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's attempt to write a constitution for the EU that would make it into France writ large has just gone down in flames and probably is dead. Even Giscard d'Estaing is saying that there should be a long delay before any new talks.

It's doubtful that Chirac will end up living in a hole in the ground, but right now his political standing is not a lot better than that. Ain't it a shame?

Update: Cato the Youngest suggests that France needs a 12-step program.

Update: According to