France & Iraq
David Styan
I.B.Tauris
This book seeks to understand how and why the French state developed such a close relationship with Iraq’s leaders over the final four decades of the twentieth century. The book first traces the origins and consequences of France’s reorientation of its policy in the Middle East in the 1960s. The end of the war in Algeria in 1962, coupled with President de Gaulle’s increasingly critical stance towards Israel in the mid-1960s, facilitated the reopening of ties with Arab states. This reorientation of policy, which the book terms the ‘reinvention of French Arab Policy’, arose in large part from the role of commercial interests in the formulation of foreign policy. The policy helped French oil companies secure Middle Eastern oil supplies throughout the 1970s. The cost of imported oil was more than offset by increased export earnings from the sale of arms and infrastructure projects to Arab states.
Having established the diplomatic and economic context, the book’s principal focus is the analysis of how France’s bilateral ties with Iraq in particular became so central to French policy in the Middle East. The text traces in detail successive presidential and ministerial ties with Iraqi officials throughout the Fifth Republic. While the roots of the Franco-Iraqi relationship, and indeed the origins of the French oil industry itself, lie in the 1920s, it was from the early 1970s that ... | 
