The French Aren’T Appeasers?

Rich Lowry is a very smart fellow, so you have to pay attention. But I'm skeptical of his argument, because I don't see how you "balance" against a military superpower when you have no military of your own that amounts to much (France), and your major partner is virtually pacifist (Germany). What kind of balance could you base on that kind of "Franco-German entente"? It seems to me any balance you could arrange, along with your "defiance", could only exist at the pleasure of the superpower, and not a minute longer. For example, if France, Germany, and Russia don't get on board against Saddam, their considerable financial stakes in Iraq could all be eliminated, depending on what the US decides to do in post-war Iraq. What, in that case, could these "balancers" do about it? Exactly nothing, so where's the power that has supposedly been grabbed?

If this is what France and Germany are up to, it looks delusional. A paper tiger entente. The allusion to the 1930s is not clear to me, either. Germany was arming to the teeth, while Britain and France were in the thrall of pacifists and appeasers; France and Germany are not today arming against a pacifist US (Europe has been demilitarizing for a decade), so I don't see the parallel. It still looks to me like a few countries trying to preserve their economic relationships with Saddam Hussein's regime, and not much beyond that. If that's the case, then they will try to bandwagon at the very last minute. If so, I hope we give them the stiff arm.

-Byron