Multilateralismo à francesa V

Ou como Hobbes e Morgenthau continuam a ser essenciais para compreender as relações internacionais para além das banalidades do discurso politicamente correcto: UN and US back French intervention in Ivory Coast

UN backing is vital to the French intervention, giving the necessary gloss that they are acting on behalf of the ?international community?. Supporters of both sides in the conflict, especially the pro-government demonstrators, have charged France with neo-colonialism, and within France itself fears have been raised of being drawn into a Vietnam-type situation. President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin are both keen to reassert French influence in Africa. Not only was the Ivory Coast a key focus for French investment and a centre of economic activity in West Africa, but new discoveries of oil and increasing oil production in West Africa lend the region strategic importance.

The Security Council resolution could not have been passed without the backing of the United States. The decision to support France marks a shift from the position at the beginning of January when US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that UN backing for Ecowas or French troops in Ivory Coast was ?inappropriate?. Taken together with British Prime Minister Tony Blair?s comments at the recent Franco-British summit (?I express my full and complete solidarity with France for its treatment of the situation in Ivory Coast?), the change in US attitude may well be part of horse trading in winning French backing for war against Iraq.