As the world prepares to wave good bye to George W. Bush and welcome Barack Obama, a key member of the French government that opposed America’s invasion of Iraq is in the United States to witness the swearing in of the President-elect on Tuesday. And not surprisingly, he is expressing his views on the old president, the new president and the condition the West finds itself in after eight years of the Bush Administration.
Hubert Vedrine, the Foreign Minister of France from 1997-2002 who coined the phrase ‘hyperpower’ to describe Bush’s America, warns in this article by Corine Lesnes of France’s Le Monde newspaper, that the West had better adjust to reality – and that after eight disastrous years with Bush at the helm of the Western world, the planet’s honeymoon with Western values and ways of thinking are over.
Writing of Vedrine’s comments, Lesnes writes in part:
“For him, Westerners have sinned by their arrogance since the downfall of the USSR: “We have taken ourselves for the Olympian rulers of the world. We have decided whom to sanction, whom to bomb … We can no longer continue this Western proselytizing as if nothing has happened.”
“For Vedrine, while the world is not yet ‘post-American,’ in the words of editorialist Fareed Zakaria, the ‘Western monopoly on history is over.’ As the former minister sees it, ‘one day we may speak of the ‘rights-of-manists’ having no more influence over China than the Catholic missionaries.”
In regard to Obama, Vedrine says in part:
“The ‘disastrous’ record sheet of George Bush’s policies, according to Vedrine, gives Barack Obama a wide margin in which to maneuver. ‘The entire world has faith in him, although no one knows what he thinks or what he’ll do,’ Védrine states.”
But all is not lost, according to Vedrine. On the opportunity Obama presents, he says:
“Imagine the influence that an American president capable of settling the Palestinian problem would have. America has this card to play. How can the United States deprive itself [of the opportunity]?”
By Corine Lesnes, Washington correspondent
Translated by L. McKenzie Zeiss
January 14, 2008
France – Le Figaro – Original Article (French)
Is democratization “a legitimate objective” of Western policy? It’s been eleven years since Madeline Albright and Hubert Védrine began debating the question. The former American Secretary of State can still hear the voice of her French counterpart interrupting the hum of telephone conference calls about Kosovo, “Paris would like a word!” Today, their points of view have grown closer. “Madeleine” is less flamboyant. “Blame George Bush,” she says, for, “giving democracy a bad reputation.” Hubert Védrine fears a multi-polar coalition of the world against, “us, the Westerners,” but he sees the United States remaining in a favorable position to dominate, although it’s a position that seems less than assured.
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