Todd II: The Lure of Russia

Now that France is facing a crisis of governance worse than the union strikes that hit the United Kingdom in 1974, the time seems appropriate to return to Todd. In his book, "After the Empire", the author argued that the neoliberal agenda was an economic system designed to maintain the reserve status of the United States dollar and bankroll the debtor status of the superpower. Preferable alternatives were closed markets, economic substitution, the regulation of the market place in the European (re: French) interest and state directed investments towards favoured national champions. In the earlier age of the Bretton Woods system, economic growth was erroneously attributed to state intervention and national champions, a myth that has perpetuated itself amongst producer interests into the twenty-first century.

With a narrative that is based upon an anti-globalisation riff, Todd predicted that the United States woud become increasingly militaristic in order to maintain the economic system outlined above, picking low-grade opponents in order to demonstrate superiority. Other powers would increasingly be drawn towards each other and offset the unbalanced interventions of the US.

Predictions of a multipolar world are more substantial following the rise of China and India. However, Todd's diagnosis that an alliance between the civilised heart of the European Union and the egalitarian dreams of a revitalised Russia fall wide of the mark. Bewitched by the superpower, Todd falls for the counter-spell: an alliance designed to contain the United States and mitigate the disruptive decline of neo-liberal imperialism.

The echoes of Chiracism during the preparations of the Iraq war are clear to all, and provide valuable insights into the foreign policy perceptions of the French elite. As such, the French threw their cards into an alliance with an unpredictable Germany and an aggrandising Russia seeking to regain its sphere of influence. So much for kinship patterns promoting an egalitarian ideology. Was Chirac expecting an economic decline that would result in an American defeat, either diplomatically or on the battlefield? If so, his actions were a miscalculation that haunt France to this day.

To conclude, Todd echoes the preoccupations of the French elite with the decline in their power. Multipolarity and the relative decline of the United States are all problems that pundits engage, but the foreign policy solutions dreamed here are the narrow solutions of the diplomatic chasm that opened up before the war. Time has moved swiftly on....