Following the 1991 Gulf War, the United Nations imposed sanctions against Iraq with the approval of European members, including France and Germany.
One decade later, the United States and a coalition of Allies again are preparing to fight Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein. But there is a stark contrast between the 1991 Gulf War and the upcoming war: France and Germany are not on board.
Last week NATO announced all but three of its member countries supported a war on Iraq and vowed to protect the Islamic nation of Turkey if Hussein attacks it. (U.S. troops will use Turkey as a strategic base of operations.) The only member countries refusing to protect Turkey are France, Germany and (an insignificant) Belgium.
For more than 50 years NATO has existed in order to protect its member countries from threats on individual members. However, French and German refusals to protect a fellow member of the alliance, although not surprising, are shameless and cowardly.
However, the alliance’s decisions must be unanimous. The French and German refusal to protect Turkey leaves Turkey without NATO protection. Turkey has nothing to worry about; though NATO will not protect it, the United States will.
Hence the question: Why are France and Germany so decisively opposed to a war and following the war, a U.S. occupation of Iraq?
The answer — which is speculative on my part and is supported by geopolitical scientists and a recent Wall Street Journal article — Once the United States occupies Iraq and discovers weapons of mass destruction, the United States will uncover evidence that the materials used to build these weapons came from France and Germany.
France and Germany have another reason they want Hussein’s regime to persist: debt. Iraq owes France and Germany a sizeable debt — more than $4 billion according to the BBC. But if the French and Germans were concerned only for repayment of debt, they would have asked the United States to assume and repay the debt. The United States probably would have fulfilled the request. France and Germany have long wished to re-establish their economic supremacy and see the United States as an obstacle to that goal.
So what does this speculation mean?
I believe French and/or German companies, with the knowledge of their governments, supplied Iraq with the materials needed to build weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, biological and perhaps, nuclear weapons. Debka, a prominent Israeli intelligence agency, reported last week that Al Qaeda has a secret base located on an Iraqi military installation in the town of Tajdari. Debka also reported Al Qaeda members at the installation likely have or are close to having a radioactive bomb.
If this is true, which I believe it to be, then the United States will probably respond in one of two ways. The first option: do not make the information public and blackmail France and Germany with it for the next several decades. Or, the second option: make the French and German treachery public and punish them for it.
If the French and German perfidy were made public, the backlash in the United States and from other allies probably would be stern and overwhelming. The United States would relegate France and Germany to a status below China. The French and German economies will crumble,their tourism industries will nose-dive and worst of all, NATO and the United Nations will become meaningless because its own senior members betrayed allies.
The virtue of honor, deeply rooted in American culture and history, cannot be underestimated. If the American people learn that France and Germany betrayed them and supplied Iraq with weapons (and are therefore terrorists), the people of the United States will be merciless. The gravity of that treachery can be likened to Pearl Harbor.
However, the French and Germans do not understand the virtue of honor. They demonstrated this in World War II (the French gave up without a fight and the evil of the Nazis need not be mentioned).
France and Germany are not allies and they are not friends. They are the backstabbing bullies who instigate fights in the schoolyard but don’t have the backbone to look their enemies in the eyes.