“Terrorism cannot be eradicated with bombs, because once it penetrates hearts and minds, it spreads,” says Dominique de Villepin (Rabat, 69 years old), former foreign minister and former prime minister of France. “For every bomb that falls on an ambulance or a school in Gaza, dozens of new terrorists are born and rise. This is what needs to be understood. “I’ve been saying it for more than 20 years.”
With his appearance as a 19th century dandy, Villepin also has something of an old rocker about him. A Mick Jagger of politics and diplomacy, albeit a decade younger. It stays in shape, like the original, and jumps, if only dialectically. Every interview with him is a performance. Like a concert with the greatest hits. His success, his special satisfaction, is the speech he gave to the UN Security Council on February 14, 2003. He then headed French diplomacy. The United States was about to invade Iraq. And with the diplomat’s lively and spirited oratory, he warned of the dangers of invasion. Time proved him right.
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It’s been 20 years. Since leaving politics, he has worked as an international consultant and is an art collector. On November 7th last year, in a booth at Brasserie Le Bourbon – and in front of a smaller audience than in its heyday: five correspondents from the European media network LENA – it was like a revival. What was then the invasion of Iraq is now the Israeli war in Gaza after the Hamas attack on Israel just a month ago. The scenario and context have changed. The message, not so much.
“What I say now, I say as a friend of Israel, just as I spoke as a friend of the United States in 2003,” Villepin said. “Who were his real friends back then? Those who supported the war at all costs? He quotes, among others, the Briton Tony Blair and the Spaniard José María Aznar. “Or was it France that, out of realism and friendship, said: ‘Don’t do this nonsense’? Well, today I say it again and it is necessary that European countries realize: it is not a friend of Israel to encourage it in this policy of violence, because it is a dead end and will end up leading us into a fight face to face, the West. against the rest of the world, civilization against civilization, which is a frightening prospect.” And he adds: “There is a risk that internal fronts will flare up due to misunderstandings.” “For this reason,” he adds, “we must to be fully mobilized in the face of the rise of anti-Semitism in France, Germany and other European countries.”
While making these reflections, the former Prime Minister answered the first question without interruption for almost half an hour. Like a conference. Or as if he was replicating the UN speech. Then come the remaining questions.
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Dominique de Villepin, photographed in front of the National Assembly building in Paris, November 7th. Samuel Aranda
Three simultaneous wars
Villepin explains that Israel is currently fighting three wars simultaneously and in his opinion only one is acceptable. The first is what he calls the “siege war” in Gaza. Unacceptable. The second is the “massive bombings” aimed at “destroying any possibility of resistance,” which he considers “a strategy that is not only ineffective but also counterproductive.” Unacceptable again. The third option is ground intervention with precise military targets. This is more acceptable. “The eradication of Hamas is an illusion,” he says, referring to the goal set by Israel. “The only credible military objective,” he defends, “seems to me to be the elimination of those responsible for Hamas and the October 7 horror, and that requires concrete ground operations that are undoubtedly more dangerous for the Israeli army.”
Villepin claims that “wars in the 21st century can no longer be fought the way they were fought 70 or 100 years ago.” Think of the Allied bombings of Germany or Japan in World War II. “Today,” says the experienced diplomat, “if you do not take the civilian population into account, the opposite of the desired result will be achieved.” That is why I think that Israel is waging yesterday’s war, an outdated war that leads to escalation and us Western countries toward the logical worst.” He alludes to wars “that start but don’t end,” like the ones the United States and the West started after the 2001 attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are failures, he says, that “play into the hands of those who want to destabilize the international scene.” Today Russia or Iran.
He is convinced that “the war against terrorism is not won with armies, but that it is a political strategy.” “And therefore,” he adds, “we must distinguish the response through violence, often driven by revenge, from the response through justice.” “What allows us to respond to terrorism is justice.”
The word “justice” as opposed to “revenge” is repeated like a refrain. “To get out of the cycle of violence and revenge, we need not only a policy that relies on violence, which is futile, and these are the same words that I used at the time of the Iraq war. There needs to be a political strategy,” he says. “The antidote is to escape revenge and restore justice. And there is no justice without the creation of a Palestinian state.”
During the conversation, which lasted more than an hour, the man who said no at the United Nations made several references to the Iraq war and 2003. At that time he was President Jacques Chirac’s minister and today he, perhaps alone, still embodies this tradition Chiraquiana. Some Gaullism – a confident and sometimes pompous defense of French interests in search of a balance between powers – combined with Third Worldism – attention to the Arab world and what is now called the Global South – and skepticism of any interventionism in the name of democracy or human rights. In recent weeks, his interventions have garnered more applause from the Israel-critical left than from his political family of origin, the right.
Villepin sees a “multiple trap” in today’s world for France, Europe and the United States. “The first [trampa] It is Occidentalism, a once-triumphant West trying to maintain its dominance, but the world has changed.” The second is militarism. The third, “democratism.” That is, “believing that because we are democracies we have the right to impose our values on the rest of the world.” And the fourth: “moralism.” “All too often,” he complains, “this is a morality of variable geometry, a morality of double standards.” “Look at what is being done with Ukraine and the Middle East: it turns out they are not the same thing . In one case, international law is defended; in the other, no. And the whole world sees this, and it creates a divide between them and us.”
Dominique de Villepin, who, among his other professions, is also a poet and essayist, stands up at the end of the interview. As a child and teenager he lived in Venezuela because of his father’s work. He says goodbye with a few words in Spanish. A sweet American accent. “It’s the same accent as Hugo Chávez,” he smiles.
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