Kouchner's appointment

This is a tardy comment on the appointment of Bernard Kouchner as French foreign minister. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke's comments are noteworthy:

"It's an amazing appointment, a stunning event in French foreign policy," said Richard Holbrooke, the former American ambassador to the United Nations who negotiated the peace agreement for Bosnia and is one of Kouchner's closest friends.

"He's motivated by an anti-totalitarian drive whether he sees injustice from the left or the right," Holbrooke said. "It will be very positive for U.S.-French relations because he does not come with a visceral anger towards the American 'hyperpower.' "

Kouchner's appointment is a shrewd move in domestic politics, as it throws the Socialists, who have now expelled Kouchner from membership, into confusion and deprives them of a prominent figure. Sarkozy has simply outmanoeuvred his opponents, much as François Mitterrand proved a formidable tactician against his nominal allies, the Communists, in the 1970s while being part of the Union de la Gauche. (It's often forgotten that the Socialists were initially much the junior party to the Communists.)

More important, though, is Kouchner's philosophical stance. There is an excellent account of this, and of Kouchner's place among the soixante huitards, the rebellious generation of 1968, in Paul Berman's Power and the Idealists. (A new edition has just been published that includes a foreword - which I have not read - by Holbrooke. I reviewed the first edition of the book here.) Some of the less informed commentary in the British press appears unaware that Kouchner has been a prominent figure in debates over humanitarian intervention since long before the Iraq war. In some respects he is a more Blairite figure than Tony Blair.

Kouchner's great achievement was the founding in 1971 of Médecins Sans Frontières, which drew on his experience and that of other aid workers in the Biafran crisis. MSF's significance is aptly described by David Rieff in an invigorating but flawed book A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis, 2002, p. 83:

It is, in an important sense, the conscience of the humanitarian world. For all its self-confidence (some, even within MSF, would say arrogance), it is constantly reexamining its criteria in terms of both its moral and its operational presuppositions, refusing to conform and play the obedient member of the "humanitarian community", and attempting to chart new directions for humanitarian action.

Yet instead of contenting himself with being one of the great and good among humanitarian NGOs, Kouchner insisted that humanitarian intervention needed to be an axiom of state policy and not merely the voluntary sector. He declared (as quoted by Rieff, p. 97), "It is not so much that humanitarians must learn to be political as that states must learn to be humanitarian." It was partly this notion that led to Kouchner's highly public break with MSF and his founding of Médecins du Monde in 1980, and to his accepting the role of special representative of the United Nations secretary general in Kosovo. Clearly his is a controversial view - which I subscribe to and have argued in numerous fora, so will not rehearse here. But you can't sensibly comment on Kouchner's foreign policy stance without looking at this background (well covered by, for example, this profile of Kouchner by Michael Ignatieff in the New York Times from 2000 - link requires fee). Kouchner's is, as Holbrooke says, an amazing appointment - in the best sense.

NOTE: There is a secondary issue, but one worth noting in passing. If you look at the post below this one, on an unrelated subject, you'll find a quotation from an astute observer and longstanding resident of the UK, Agnès Poirier, writing in Libération. That newspaper is very roughly comparable to - though much younger than - The Guardian (for which Agnès also writes regularly), being a notable paper of record with a left-of-centre editorial stance. For comment on UK issues, Libération will naturally turn to a writer who knows the politics, culture and language of this country. You will not find comparable enlightenment from a piece in The Guardian this week about Bernard Kouchner from someone who does not speak French, has no background in French politics, and evinces no awareness of Kouchner's experience in Biafra and MSF. (The article is here. As some readers may recall, last year I noted the reliance of its author, Neil Clark, on "information" gleaned from an obscure group that promotes Srebrenica-denial, and his inaccurate representation of that source to an editor.) For an informed perspective from a critic of the new French president, I recommend a cogent short book Agnès wrote last year called Le modèle anglais: une illusion française. It is the best argument I have come across for French exceptionalism, and it makes many serious criticisms of, among other things, "la presse d’outre-Manche".