French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner is getting lots of attention for his statement on French radio that the world should be prepared for the worst, that is, for war with Iran, if the latter was to acquire nuclear weapons. Two preliminary remarks must be made, amidst usual French internal accusations of “Atlantism” at best and allegiance to Judaism rather than to France at its unfortunately usual worst (look respectively at the post and comments here):

1) Kouchner’s position is not new: ten days ago, he was saying exactly the same thing to the media: “There are a lot of solutions (other than war) to envisage, other paths to explore, peace negotiations to conduct. There must be dogged diplomatic efforts. Let’s listen, negotiate, negotiate again and prepare ourselves for the worst.” [By the way, in this same article he restates his relation to Judaism, which makes him a very Jewcy Jew]

2) Kouchner’s position is not simply his own: it’s France’s in general (supported by both the President and the Prime Minister).

But what exactly is proposed? The clearest statement is perhaps here (in French). The immediate problem is that of sanctions on Iran. France proposes unilateral European sanctions, without waiting for the UN to move –the Netherlands disagree, but Germany is in favour (actually they originated the idea). A secondary problem is what to do if those sanctions fail. But this isn’t really the question. Rather, it seems that this situation is an almost direct parallel to the 2003 debate about Iraq. Kouchner’s position then (‘Neither War Nor Saddam’, an interesting elucidation of which can be found here) was that France was making an enormous mistake by opposing its veto to the ‘disarmament ultimatum’ resolution put forward by the US and the UK. The sight of a disaggregated coalition was a comforting sight for Saddam and would imply that there would be no military coalition of 1991 magnitude against him. Diminishing thus the threat of intervention meant, simply, that diplomacy would have no bargaining tool (maybe a primitive argument, but Saddam was hardly a rational leader). A united diplomatic front now absent, there was no other option for the committed U.S. but to go it alone. In other words, the mistake according to Kouchner has always been to show a disunited diplomatic front, in particular insofar as sanctions, from economic to military, are concerned. Diplomacy against rogue regimes has no way to proceed forward unless they understand that we mean business.

Kouchner’s call not to absolutely remove the military option from the table then and now is thus first and foremost a way to guarantee that negotiations actually do move forward. He is no lover of war, and his actions are solely aimed at avoiding this extremity if at all possible; however to do so, the threat of war may have to be used. As chess player Aron Nimzovich once stated: ‘The threat is stronger than the execution.’