President Chirac’s decision, announced in a television broadcast, to veto any second Security Council resolution authorising war in Iraq is as fateful as it is foolish. For the first time since the Suez crisis of 1956, France is preparing to block a resolution introduced by America — and one, moreover, that is not only central to US strategic and defence interests but is seen by Washington as being of vital national importance. France’s action will leave lasting bitterness in America, weaken the United Nations, divide the European Union, wreck the transatlantic alliance and signal the possible end of Nato as a useful political and military body.

By suggesting that France will oppose any second resolution, whatever the wording and whenever it is introduced, M Chirac, as Tony Blair noted yesterday, has sent a message to Saddam Hussein that he is “off the hook.” It will encourage dictators around the world, from Pyongyang to Harare, to believe that they can defy UN resolutions, oppress their people and get away with it, safe in the knowledge that France will take a self-indulgent and unprincipled stand, at least as long as M Chirac is in the Elysée.

Glimpsing the moral highground that has been alien territory to him in 40 years of political manoeuvring, M Chirac is now insisting that he is acting to protect the authority of the United Nations. Such sentiments sit ill with his own record as a man who rarely lets obligations or scruples interfere with what he considers France’s interest. Within months of coming to office he ordered nuclear tests in the South Pacific that were seen as a breach of faith by friends in the region. He has intervened in Africa without reference to the UN. He has ignored European Union directives unpopular with French public opinion. And more recently he has undermined EU attempts to curb President Mugabe by offering him a platform in Paris to mock his opponents.

Of course M Chirac may think that he is responding to the calls across Europe and the Middle East for European leadership to oppose American unilateralism. He may believe that the cheers about his head from adoring crowds and fawning politicians of all parties justify his stance and cast France in the noble role of a David opposing a bellicose Goliath. He may also, less publicly, reason that his actions suddenly open the way to achieving elusive goals that have been the lodestar of Gaullist policy for almost half a century: the weakening of Nato, the marginalisaton of British influence in Europe and the refocusing of the European continent on Paris. If he believes any of these motives, he is a more naive politician than even his detractors claim.

To M Chirac’s chagrin, France is no longer seen by most Europeans as their natural leader. Mediterranean and Eastern European countries, once particularly susceptible to French influence, have mostly lined up behind Washington, as shown in their two letters of support; several have been deeply angered by the subsequent patronising threats from Paris to EU applicants. Any war that followed a French veto would not, as Paris is now suggesting, highlight French principle and allow it to rescue the United Nations; it would instead set the West squabbling among itself, reduce France’s global reach and ensure that M. Chirac is regarded as a jejune jester.

To his credit, Mr Blair has shown considerable restraint in response to M Chirac; he must, after all, live with his fellow EU leader. It would help if France were to show similar respect for the US. The two countries are bound by an alliance, by shared democratic values and by responsibility for the functioning of the Security Council. The threat to use the veto mindlessly has already caused damaging turmoil; there is still time for France to think again.

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