WASHINGTON: America, with its vast power, can sometimes seem like a bully on the world stage. But, really, the 1,200-pound gorilla is an underachiever in the bullying business. American diplomats have been tied in knots at the UN Security Council. It was seven weeks ago that President Bush demanded the United Nations take rapid action against Saddam Hussein. But when Colin Powell was asked last week how long he would let UN inspectors wander around Iraq, his answer was “months.” Would that be four months, eight months or 18 months?

If you want to see a country punching far above its weight class these days, look at France. The French don’t have a lot of power, but they certainly know how to make the most of what little they do have. At the Security Council, France wields a veto. That lets France’s diplomats go toe-to-toe with the American behemoth, to the cheers of a proud French electorate and a grateful European public. It’s no surprise that the Security Council negotiations have been endless or that the French want another round of debate later. If you’re France, you want these negotiations to go on forever, and then you want inspections to go on forever. When negotiations and inspections stop and fighting begins, the American global superpower goes back to being a global superpower, and France goes back to being France.

France has been punching hard in Europe, too. Last week, President Jacques Chirac persuaded Germany’s internationally isolated and therefore vulnerable chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, to accept a deal on Europe’s ultra-protectionist Common Agricultural Policy. Actually, “bulldozed” was the term used by the Financial Times. “A sordid deal, squalidly arrived at,” was the Financial Times’ judgment.

When Tony Blair found out about the deal, he let loose with some choice words regarding countries that want “to protect their own farming industry” at the cost of “damaging” world trade and the developing world. But Chirac popped him one right back. “You have been very rude and I have never been spoken to like this before,” Chirac told Blair in front of all the European heads of state.—Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post