Lara Marlowe
Paris
Mr Thierry de Montbrial, the founder and director of the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI), counts prominent members of the Bush administration as personal friends, and maintains close links with French officialdom. That's what makes his judgments on what he calls French "tactical errors" and US "lack of preparation and inconsistency" so interesting, four months after the Iraq war started.
Much of the world shared "deep reservations about \ unilateralism" - the foundation of France's Iraq policy, Mr de Montbrial said in a meeting with the European Press Club yesterday.
However, Paris made mistakes. "It was pointless" for the French Foreign Minister, Mr Dominique de Villepin, "to provoke" the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, Mr de Montbrial said. "It was pointless to wave the veto. It helped the Americans and the British, because they could say there was no longer any point dealing with the Security Council."
France, Mr de Montbrial continued, was "over-zealous" in campaigning against a resolution authorising war. "It really angered the Americans," he noted. "In any case it was futile."
Paris let Moscow and Beijing "hide behind" the French position. "The others said, 'Why should we expose ourselves? Why should we put ourselves on the line?' We made it easier for others, but I'm not convinced it was in France's best interest."
France lost credibility by over-emphasising the primacy of the United Nations, Mr de Montbrial claimed. Gen Charles de Gaulle, he recalled, used to dismiss the UN. Since the second World War, only two wars - Korea and the 1991 Gulf War - were fought with clear UN mandates. "Saddam Hussein's dictatorship was an extreme, grotesque case," he said. "It was difficult to defend it in the name of international law." The US prepared well for the Iraq war militarily, but utterly failed to foresee its aftermath.
Mr de Montbrial is one of five European members of the Washington-based World Council on Foreign Relations. US officials have told him privately they believe US troops will have to stay in Iraq for at least a decade.
The US made a profit on the 1991 Gulf War, because it was financed by Japan and the Gulf sheikhdoms.
But they will not reimburse Washington for this year's Iraq war, and the US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, has realised that in Europe, only France and Germany have the money and manpower to help.
Mr de Montbrial was sceptical about French or German involvement. With 40,000 soldiers already deployed abroad, from Afghanistan to the Balkans to the Congo, France is "over-extended", he said. And the German military is still based on a conscript army geared to fighting the former Soviet Union.
"Consistency has always been the Americans' big problem," Mr de Montbrial said. "They're very good in the short term, not so good on the long haul." But ultimately, he believes, "With Bush or without him, the US is condemned to 'go whole hog' in Iraq." This would mean accepting the loss of hundreds of US lives every year, and spending tens of billions of dollars. "But over 10 years, if the US commits itself in Iraq, with enough carrots and sticks, they'll accomplish what they want to."