Variations on foreign policy

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Foreign policy often remains a puzzle hard to decipher, as the reflection of force relations between States and the extension of domestic policy to the international level. The Iraqi crisis, as it has split the core of Western solidarity, led the World Organisation near the edge, and has been a disruption from the system’s basic principles, illustrates this assertion. Yet, diplomacies are not condemned to a perpetual « wandering », provided they simply endow themselves with a both rational and empirical method, they may reach their goals. This implies, first and foremost, an analysis deprived of any complacency whatsoever of realities, without which all is but an illusion; this also presupposes that States do not seek to attain goals out of their reach. Thus, France must always remember that getting along with the United Kingdom is essential and that, as important as its part may have been after the Second World War, the Franco-German agreement would run the risk of being an insuperable obstacle on the path of Europe’s political union as soon as it becomes exclusive. – Summary AFRI-2004