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CHRONIC. Any relationship can only work if it is of mutual benefit. However, Berlin now has priorities that are very different from ours.
By Gerard Araud
© ARTHUR NICHOLAS ORCHARD / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP
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Pn the forty years of my diplomatic career, I have received instructions from all successive Foreign Ministers to seek the closest understanding and cooperation with Germany, but I must confess that it is only rarely that I felt the converse was true in Berlin.
Admittedly, we were a privileged partner, a friend and an ally there – which is already a great deal – but my interlocutors did not see our relations as a sort of moral imperative, rather a useful instrument on occasion to promote the interests of their country, an important instrument among others which could, moreover, sometimes take precedence over it.
The French did not want to see that the conditions which had presided over the reconciliation enterprise led by…
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