Jacques Chirac's ‘non’: France, Iraq and the United Nations, 1991–2003

This article narrates selected aspects of the background to France's threatened use of its UN Security Council veto in March 2003. The article suggests that, although far from inevitable, Chirac's ‘non’ of 10 March arose from a policy framework established by September 2002. Decision‐making therefore had a coherence and continuity largely ignored in English‐language reporting of French diplomacy in the run up to war. This framework was informed by principles long central to French foreign policy, including the primacy of the UN Security Council as a source of international legitimacy. The text examines the range of diplomatic and commercial interests behind the revival of Franco‐Iraqi relations during the 1990s. Ties with Baghdad are in turn related to aspects of France's broader Arab and Middle Eastern policy, with Paris both echoing and harnessing regional unease with and opposition to sanctions on Iraq by the later 1990s.