Max Boot analyzes France's pitiful attempt to pretend it's a great power.

There’s more to French policy than amoral profiteering, however. There is also the search for lost glory. France has been in decline since, oh, about 1815, and it isn’t happy about it. What particularly galls the Gauls is that their rightful place in the world has been usurped by the gauche américains, with their hamburgers and blue jeans. Jean-Paul Sartre pithily summed up the French attitude in 1953: “America has rabies. Let us sever all our links with her, or else we shall get bitten and become rabid.”

France hasn’t severed all links, but it is desperately trying to make Paris an alternative power centre to Washington. Lacking the tools of a Great Power (powerful Armed Forces and a vibrant economy), France is taking full advantage of its leadership positions in the EU and the Security Council.

This has already paid dividends for M Chirac. Normally no one in his right mind would look to France for anything more weighty than a good soufflé recipe. But by dangling his Security Council veto, M Chirac has moved closer to the centre of the geopolitical universe, at least for a few minutes.

There is no reason for Mr Blair to feed French megalomania any further. M Chirac will no doubt pressure the Prime Minister to back the French line in the name of “European unity”, but most of Europe is closer to Washington on Iraq than to Paris. There are deep wellsprings of anti-Americanism across Europe. But many Europeans no doubt remember what happened when they entrusted their security to France (1914, 1939) rather than to the United States (1945, 1989).

This isn’t just ancient history. France hasn’t shown itself any more capable of handling international crises in the intervening decades. Recently M Chirac sent 2,500 soldiers to Ivory Coast. They’ve done such a skilful job that crowds in Abidjan marched with signs that read “Bush Help. Chirac is a criminal” and “America welcome in Ivory Coast. France bye-bye”. Until Paris can manage Ivory Coast, maybe it should leave off telling Britain and America how to handle Iraq.