Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

I was asked recently if the French economy would suffer the wrath of the US as a result of the stance taken by Jacques Chirac in the build up to the Iraq war. Given that I don't have any Washington insider sources, my prediction is just as good as yours. Still, for what it's worth, here's what I said: short-term, yes; long-term, no. My reasoning: luxury French goods and tourism will bear the brunt of US consumer anger over Chirac?s stab in the back, but the profit motive that drives the US model will ensure that once the war is history, if investment in France makes economic sense (extremely unlikely, of course), US companies will invest there.

I admit, however, that I could be reading this all wrong and that a bad moon may, indeed, be rising over Paris. Here, I return to something I mentioned last week: Tony Blair's telling the House of Commons in March during the pre-war debate that what was going on at the time would shape the pattern of international politics for the next generation.

ALTHOUGH INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS are not the only determinant in economics, they play a significant role and what has happened in the past six months is going to colour American-French dealings from now on. It's highly unlikely that the US will take an aggressive approach to the French through trade sanctions, but discussions in forums such as the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund will be frosty in future and, if France — or Germany — starts to complain about the impact of a weak US dollar on their economy, it is difficult to see the Americans doing anything to help them.

And that brings us back to Blair, the emerging key player in much of this. Will he be Washington's sword or Chirac?s shield? More the former going on this story from the Financial Times: "Blair warns Chirac on the future of Europe".

"Tony Blair has issued a direct challenge to France's Jacques Chirac over the future of the transatlantic relationship by warning that the French president's vision of Europe as a rival to the US is dangerously destabilising.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Financial Times, the prime minister foreshadows a continuing Anglo-French struggle about Europe's relationship with Washington. Mr Blair seeks to keep alive the prospect of British entry to the euro but he disavows any personal ambition to become president of the European Union."

(Here's the full transcript of the FT interview with Tony Blair by Philip Stephens, UK editor, and Cathy Newman, chief political correspondent.)

A WILD CARD in all of this could be the effects of the documents found in Baghdad by the Sunday Times (registration required) purporting to show that "France gave Saddam Hussein's regime regular reports on its dealings with American officials". If it ever emerges that the French veto "under any circumstances" of UN Resolution 1441 was motivated by ties between Paris and Baghdad, concerns about France's ambitions will change dramatically. The probable result will be a new Washington policy toward the EU in general, and France in particular, designed to deal with the reality of French hostility and the fact that the country is no longer a US ally.

Diarist of the day: Lawerence Durrell, 29 April 1937

[Corfu] "It is April and we have taken an old fisherman's house in the extreme north of the island -- Kalamai. Ten sea-miles from the town, and some thirty kilometres by road, it offers all the charms of seclusion. A white house set like a dice on a rock already venerable with the scars of wind and water. The hill runs clear up into the sky behind it, so that the cypresses and olives overhang this room in which I sit and write. We are upon a bare promontory with its beautiful clean surface of metamorphic stone covered in olive and ilex: in the shape of a mons pubis. This is become our unregretted home. A world. Corcyra. "