The Middle East has traditionally occupied an important place in the system of foreign policy priorities of France due to its geographical proximity and its geostrategic significance as a link connecting Europe with Africa, part of Asia, and the Indo-Pacific zone. After the Second World War, the actions of French diplomacy in the region were complicated by the pro-Israeli position of the governments of the Fourth Republic and the colonial war in Algeria. It was able to become more active after the founder and first president of the current Fifth Republic, General Charles de Gaulle, having ended that war, made a turn to the “Arab policy”. His successors as head of state generally maintained the continuity of de Gaulle’s course. At the same time, they made certain changes to it, conditioned primarily by the evolution of the situation in the Middle East, in particular, the “oil shock” of 1973, the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the US invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003, threat of Islamic terrorism. France’s strategy in the struggle for influence in the Middle East was and is determined, on the one hand, by the insufficiency of its economic resources, which predetermined the emphasis on military cooperation and arms exports, and on the other hand, by the need to take into account the dominance of the United States here.
Middle East; “Arab policy”; arms exports; Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Iran nuclear issue.