Repères 30/10/06 - Les implications stratégiques du voyage de Jacques Chirac en Chine

Chirac's strategic visit to Beijing
By Federico Bordonaro, Asia Times 27/10/06

"...At a press conference just before the French president left Paris for Beijing, his spokesman Jerome Bonnafont said: "Part of France's place in the world of tomorrow depends on its ability to construct a particularly strong relationship with China."

Such an observation is perfectly consistent with Chirac's geopolitical world view. Since his first election in 1995, the successor to Francois Mitterrand has repeatedly expressed his unease with the US "hyperpower" and with Washington's "unipolar moment", which he sees as a not-so-benign hegemony.

Accordingly, the French president has been promoting what he believes is the logical and desirable alternative to US-led unipolarity, a "multipolar world" predicated on a new balance of power among major political-strategic and economic poles: the United States, the European Union (politically headed by a strong Franco-German combine), Russia, Japan, India, Brazil and, of course, China.

As the Franco-German axis entered a strategic impasse after the EU's successive enlargements, and the Franco-German-Russian strategic alignment created in 2003 against the Iraq war does not seem capable of replacing the Paris-Berlin axis, Chirac now sees France's ties with the rising Asian powers as a vital tool to boost Paris's political influence, economic interests and strategic independence..."

"...Should Galileo acquire a military dimension, Washington and its closest allies will have good reasons to be alarmed, also in the light of a recent satellite incident. On October 12, according to a report in Jane's Defence Weekly, China used "high-energy lasers to interfere with US satellites", which would show that Beijing has nowadays "some level of confidence" in its "laser countermeasures system".

With space politics rapidly increasing in strategic importance, a likely European satellite-technology transfer to China may further complicate US security plans.

Consequently, if presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy - whose US-friendly stance is well known - should win France's general elections next year, Paris may lose some of its enthusiasm for enhanced Franco-Chinese military and satellite-related cooperation..."