Interesting article from the WSJ. Excerpt
France Fears No Reprisals
In Using Veto Against U.S.
By CHARLES FLEMING
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
PARIS -- Having done their best to block America's plans to wage war on Iraq, French leaders are assessing the cost of angering their mighty ally, and are coming up with a surprising figure: virtually nothing.
French political leaders and businessmen, ignoring warnings from Washington, express confidence France can veto U.S. plans in the United Nations without paying a heavy price in its commercial, political or diplomatic interests. President Jacques Chirac, in declaring his determination Monday to reject a U.S.- and United Kingdom-backed Security Council resolution that would lead to war in Iraq, refuted the idea that France would suffer for snubbing its allies.
"There is no risk that the U.S. and France, or the American and French people, will quarrel or get angry with each other," he said.
Mr. Chirac's belief in a virtually cost-free veto is shared by many in France, across the political spectrum. "There's some talk of boycott in the air, but that's a human reaction, and we can understand that," says Jacques Barrot, chairman of the parliamentary delegation of the center-right Popular Movement Union. "It'd be wrong for the U.S. to put on trial a country that is standing beside them in the fight against terrorism," he adds.
But a few analysts here are warning that France is blithely overlooking the anger it has aroused. "The U.S. has the impression that France has betrayed them and committed some form of suicide in doing so," says Nicole Gnesetto, director of the European Union's Institute for Security Studies, a think tank in Paris. "But the French aren't thinking in those terms. They see it as a matter of principle, and not a question of trade-offs."
That may prove a costly error. France would be insulated from formal trade retaliation by world trade laws. But in other ways -- in popular boycotts of French goods, and especially in diplomacy, where the U.S. could act to marginalize France in future standoffs -- Paris is far more exposed. "Even though France has been a friend of ours for many years, will be a friend in the future, I think [a French veto] will have a serious effect on bilateral relations, at least in the short term," said U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in a television interview Sunday.
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