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Gordon Cucullu- Contributor

Former Green Beret lieutenant colonel, Gordon Cucullu is now an editorialist, author and a popular speaker. Born into a military family, he lived and served for more than thirteen years in East Asia, including eight years in Korea. For his Special Forces service in Vietnam he was awarded a Bronze Star, Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, and the Presidential Unit Commendation. After separation from the Army, he worked on Korea and East Asian affairs at both the Pentagon and Department of State as well as an executive for General Electric in Korea. His first major non-fiction work, Separated at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin, is based in large part on his extensive experience in Korea and East Asia as a governmental insider and businessman. [website] [go to Cucullu index]

Atomic Procreation
Immigrating into the club…
[Gordon Cucullu] 3/3/05

We’re all aware of the scramble some countries are making to go nuclear. North Korea and Iran are foremost. Others, like Pakistan and India already achieved the goal. A few of the former republics of the doornail-deal Soviet Union also inherited atomic weapons. We are also worried that terrorist groups like al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and others yearn for a bomb to explode in Israeli or American cities. But there is another way that the radical Islamists may come into atomic weapons, albeit long-term: they may simply procreate their way into power and take over a nuclear weapons country.

On the face that sounds absolutely preposterous. Who would allow such a ridiculous scenario to develop? One candidate is France. Bear with me while we look at how this came about. If there is any consistency to France it is that as a country it can be fickle, ungrateful, and totally self-serving. As Tallyrand is reported to have said, ‘France does not have friends; France has interests.’ Fair enough. In the post-WWII days, one famous Frenchman, General Charles de Gaulle made himself sufficiently acerbic and opportunistic that it was considered necessary by the US and Great Britain to humor him. As a consequence France got a piece of the divided Germany, a veto-wielding seat at the new United Nations, and a key role in NATO.

It was considered necessary at the time to award France these concessions despite the fact that it had been a Vichy collaborator with minor contributions if any toward ultimate Allied victory, because the internal communist movement had grown so strong within France that its post-war government teetered on collapse. There were those who worried with cause that a communist takeover might presage a strategic alliance between a newly communized France and the highly aggressive post-WWII Soviet Union. While the Soviets were gobbling countries like M&Ms in Eastern Europe and fermenting uprisings in Greece, Iran, and Italy, it was all the Allies could do to confront them there. Having France flip into the Soviet sphere would have exposed America, Great Britain, and their allies to a strategic flanking movement that probably would have made Central Europe indefensible.

So France was treated like one of the big kids on the block despite wartime perfidy, minor contributions, and what in today’s vernacular would be called major attitude. In ensuing years France, under de Gaulle and his successors, established a firm reputation as a thorn in NATO’s side. At one point de Gaulle decided to go it alone. He announced formation of his ‘force de frappe’ that signaled France’s independence from the American defense umbrella, and announced that France would have its own nuclear capability. Testing was conducted in its South Pacific Island colonies. Additionally, France tossed out American forces. President Lyndon B. Johnson famously instructed his representative to ask de Gaulle personally, ‘when you say you want all American soldiers out of France, General, does that include the ones who are buried here too?’ De Gaulle snorted, spun on his heel and walked away. Score one for LBJ.

The ultimate result is that France remains a nuclear power. In the ensuing decades that has not been a particular issue. France is a democracy, albeit an eccentric one, and has not threatened its neighbors with atomic weapons unlike Kim Jong Il or the mullahs in Teheran. But France has exposed an internal flank to a persistent enemy, and may not even be savvy enough – or sufficiently introspective – to perceive the danger. For the past twenty years France has permitted virtually unlimited immigration of Muslims. Most have come from Algeria, a former French colony. Others have come from different parts of the Muslim world. They came as workers for the agricultural, industrial, and manufacturing sectors of the French economy. They filled many service jobs: taxi drivers, clerks, waiters, food preparation, janitors, and other manual, menial laborer tasks. Few professionals were among these immigrants.

The immigrants chose intentionally not to assimilate into French culture. Rather than try to ‘become Frenchmen’ the Muslim immigrants established enclaves – literally states within the state – that were exclusionary to non- Muslims and held to the old ways. An ingenious system of arranged marriages acted as a catalyst to increase immigration dramatically. Brides and grooms would be selected from families that remained in Algeria or other Arab countries. After the marriage, the entire extended family of the newly married person would now be eligible to move into metropolitan France and become citizens. Further exacerbating the issue, France has an asylum policy that encourages dissidents to flee to France. Few are actually granted asylum but none are ever deported.

Into this fertile, disaffected immigrant soil came Saudi Arabia with its proselytizing, aggressive wahabbist ideology. Wahabbism is vitriolic, anti- Western, xenophobic and jihad-oriented. It encourages hatred of and actions against those defined as ‘infidels’ and ‘nonbelievers.’ The Saudis continue to pour uncounted hundreds of millions of dollars into Europe, including France, to promulgate this offensive ideology. The result is that Muslims in France are highly radicalized, anti-French, anti-Western, and bent on ultimate conquest of their hosts. Texts from mosques in France – issued by the Saudi public affairs office – refer to Muslim residents in France as ‘living behind enemy lines’ and ‘representing a force for the ultimate conquest by Islam of the infidels.’ Muslims are taught to hate their Christian, Jewish, and secular neighbors and to work assiduously to undermine the government. More than one thousand of these Muslim enclaves exist in France. It is said that French police will not enter 400 of them.

While demographers bemoan the rapid, perhaps irreversible, decline in ethnic French population, the Muslim immigrant population is exploding. Within just a few years it is conceivable that the Muslim immigrant community may be able to establish itself as a key if not controlling bloc in the French government. They may not have sufficient power to be kings but they can certainly be king-makers. At what point will the scales tip sufficiently into their hands that the French constitution could be re-written to mimic that of a theocratic state? At what point will Islamist interests be strong enough to control the military forces, including the nuclear weapons? These are not idle questions because time is roaring like a freight train and the demographics may be out of control. And the French public seems totally unconcerned about the situation. That makes it even more frightening.

Sixty years ago we were concerned that US strategic interests would be compromised by a France that fell to communism. Today France is again a concern. All it would require is a ‘one man, one vote, one time,’ scenario to flip France into the Islamist camp along with its nuclear weapons capability. That is a strategic issue that no one wishes to see come about; but frighteningly no one seems willing to acknowledge. tRO

Curious about North Korea? Learn more in Gordon’s best-selling book Separated at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin became the Evil Twin, Lyons Press available at bookstores now.

copyright Gordon Cucullu 2005

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