Keep #France at arm’s length from Syrian
▻http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2015/09/28/keep-france-at-arms-length-from-syrian-war
There is not the slightest sign of unease in Washington or in any western capital that on Sunday France launched its first air strikes in Syria. It is a poignant moment. Do not forget that France, along with Great Britain, was the ‘creator’ of modern Syria.
To use violence against a progeny is not unusual for France – it keeps doing that in Africa – but nonetheless it reeks of insensitivity in this case, given the shame that still surrounds the #Sykes-Picot pact. (The centenary of that shameful chapter in Europe’s colonial history falls in May next year.)
What France has done is reprehensible for yet another reason. It is a permanent veto-holding member of the UN Security Council and it has violated the territorial integrity of a UN member country without even so much as bothering to seek its concurrence. The French interventions abroad are devoid of principles or morality. Libya is the last instance where it marched in, destroyed a country and its established government, left an anarchic trail and then simply washed its hands off the ensuing chaos.
In this case too, France smells that the search for a political solution to the Syrian conflict is probably beginning and it wants to have a ‘say’ in it. It is in France’s DNA, except that what we see here is a slightly cruder version of the devious role France played during the negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal, when it took money from Saudi Arabia and began creating hurdles in the ‘P5+1 and Iran’ negotiations for as long as it could, but when the accord became a fait accompli, France simply crossed over to the Iranians to do ‘business’.