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The French Betrayal of America
vBulletin Book Store > vBulletin books beginning with F
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The French Betrayal of America |
Author: Kenneth R. Timmerman
Published: 2005-03-22 |
List price: $14.95
Our price: $11.66
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As of: December 03rd, 2008 04:22:51 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Not surprising
This is a great book! Mr Timmerman puts a lot of historical happenings into perspective and explains why things happened as they did. I think that now the French are more on our side than they were during the time covered in the book. I heard that some French friends of an acquaintance thought that the US had gone completely leftist as well as France. They were able to "recover". It will be interesting to see if the US can as well.
Fascinating and very well documented.
Noticing the French anti-Americanism captured in After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order (European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism) I wanted to better understand the France U.S. relationship. This book is excellent and is written by an author with strong credentials. He has lived in France for decades, and has developed many contacts within government and defense contractors. He was a correspondent covering the arms trade for 'Military Technology' and 'Defense Electronics.' He published the 'Middle East Defense News. The notes include thirty pages of supporting sources.
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br /Timmerman conveys that France arms exports supersede its foreign policy with disastrous implications for Middle East stability, and U.S. and France's interests.
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br /France acquired much of its military technology by spying on U.S. defense contractors. In the late eighties, the French press divulged that a French intelligence agency placed numerous moles within French offices of U.S. companies. In 1994, the CIA mentioned to the Senate 72 cases within 17 months of industrial spying that would cost U.S. companies $30 billion. The CIA obtained a French document that targeted spying on 49 U.S. high tech companies, 24 financial institutions, and 6 U.S. government agencies.
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br /France is a major arms dealer infringing on arms treaties including anti-nuclear arms proliferation ones. Its major defense contractor, Aerospatial earns more from arms exports to nefarious governments than from the French Defense Ministry. While the U.S. treated France as a privileged ally by transferring proprietary nuclear technology back in the seventies, France transferred this nuclear technology to Saddam Hussein. In 1981, the French developed a nuclear reactor in Baghdad that would have given Saddam a nuclear bomb within two years. But, an Israeli raid destroyed this nuclear reactor just in time. Nowadays, the U.S. still transfers nuclear technology to France knowing full well that France may transfer it to U.S. opponents.
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br /France has reaped lucrative arms exports with Iraq since 1975. The French government believed providing Iraq a nuclear bomb would render it independent from U.S. hegemony. France developed a similarly lucrative relationship with Qaddafi in Libya. In 1983 the French helped Syria establish a chemical weapon and ballistic infrastructure after Syria had killed a French ambassador in Lebanon. Thus, French foreign policy is emasculated by its arms trade.
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br /Because of its arms exporting interests, France has always been against Western military intervention in the Middle East. It was against the first Gulf War when Iraq invaded Kuwait. And, it obviously was against the second one. It is disingenuous to be against an Iraq War solely for boosting its exporting of nuclear and chemical WMD to Iraq. With such chemical WMD Saddam Hussein decimated hundreds of thousands Iranians and Kurds. This blood is on French hands. After 1991, France circumvented trade sanctions with Iraq by exporting arms from front companies in Jordan and South Africa. Chirac caused the UN to streamline its review process to ratify exports to Iraq from 12 months down to 10 days. If UN did not meet the deadline, the export application was automatically approved. This facilitated France massive arms exports to Iraq until early 2003 at the onset of the Iraq War. At the time, the largest French energy company had a huge $100 billion oil development contract with Iraq. This was another incentive for Chirac to be against the Iraq War.
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br /Arming unstable Middle Eastern dictatorships is not enough to satisfy the commercial interests of French defense contractors. They passed on to the former U.S.S.R much of the technology the French acquired through spying on the U.S. In the late eighties, when U.S. officials complained to the French government about this illegal arms trade (per CoCom agreement), the French stated the U.S. were infringing on France sovereignty.
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br /The author contrasts Mitterand (President) vs Chirac (President) and Villepin (Foreign Minister). Even though Mitterand was a socialist, he saw the benefit of maintaining an alliance with the U.S. and he had a good relation with Reagan. Meanwhile, Chirac and Villepin were vociferously anti-American their entire career. Under Chirac, France behaves more as the leader of the Arab World than a Western democracy. France loves the UN not out of love for multilateralism but because it gives them veto power to counter U.S. interests.
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br /As the author states: "Villepin was not content to disagree with the U.S., ..., he actively sought to rally world leaders to treat the U.S.-not Saddam Hussein-as the enemy." This stand was to protect the French defense industry's arm sales to Iraq. Villepin is nostalgic about French imperialist power at the time of Napoleon. He wants a return to centralized power associated with unrestrained government subsidies. He is delusional about his standing in history. After the war, he stated that he and the Pope alone had saved the West from a clash of civilization with Islam.
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br /The author covers how Hans Blix, heading the UN arm inspection team in Iraq turned out to be incapable in the nineties. While his own team compiled an inventory of 603 dual-use machine tools including equipment for their nuclear weapons program, Blix is pressing to stop the arms inspections. The French government promoted Blix position because if the UN inspection team had publicly disclosed finding WMD in Iraq, it would have implicated France.
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br /The author covers the weakness of the French Judicial Branch. The justice minister can ignore a case for "reasons of state." Every year, 122 prosecutors set aside 753,000 criminal cases where the authors are well known. These decisions are never justified. Plaintiffs are rarely informed. Also, Article 68 of the French Constitution gives immunity to the President on most counts. Unlike in the U.S., a French President is legitimately above the law.
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br /With Nicolas Sarkozy, U.S.-France relations may improve as he is unabashedly pro-American as he states in Testimony: France in the Twenty-first Century. Either U.S. and France will become closer allies as Huntington's model suggests in his brilliant The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order or the two countries will further drift apart split by diverging interests as articulated by Kagan's great Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order.
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Our "Allies" the French.
This very well documented, authoritative book opened my eyes into the behavior of the French government vis-a-vis the U.S. effort in the war on terror. Masquerading as an "honest broker" during the UN debate on Iraq, all the while being in bed with Saddam Hussein for oil and arms deals is a clear message that these folks cannot be trusted as friends of America. Their (Chirac and his toadies) claim to be so "sophisticated" and "cultured" in their foreign policy compared to the "cowboy" approach of the Americans is totally laughable. France is now reaping the benefits of its duplicity with its problems with the Arab immigrants (car-burnings, murders, anti-semitism, etc) and they are still in denial. Scadenfreude anyone? Give me John Wayne any day over these cowardly, laughable clowns.
 The Frenchies get fried
A great read. Timmerman documents very closely the close ties that France has had for many years with America's enemies and indeed the worlds enemies. It is obvious that France's position in the UN Security Council, especially with war in Iraq, was not one of championing peace as De Villepin and Chirac fervently put forth but for secretly positioning itself for more dollars and power. War for Oil - yes and more. France like Russia and China were fighting for their arms and oil contracts to remain alive and extend their hegemony in the area of the Middle East and beyond.
Experience and Information trumps Ideology
Whenever I read reviews on a book, such as this, written by individuals who spend little time discussing the content of the book and focus on formulaic rhetoric (most not even original), then I know the author is on to something.
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br /Mr. Timmermans experience in the field of Franco military and political affairs is un-impreachable. He addresses his points and observations very objectively. His resource and research material extend the discussion far beyond the superficial provided by the mainstream media.
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br /I found it most interesting that, unlike many of the negative reviews, Mr. Timmermans conclusions are based on the reality of non-static geo-political affairs. Situations, Alliances, political realities (and expendiances) change and have to be addressed accordingly.
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br /Conclusion, this book is an eye opener. It is a easy to follow, well stated overview of of the very complex subject of US-Franco relationship.
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