Apparently he wasn't playing the Apocalyptic Bogeyman with Aznar!

It's almost like he's deliberately trying to splinter Europe, or went out to deliberately antagonise the French so that their oil companies lost out in the carve-up of the oil wealth. Didn't the French have a lot of the exploration and production contracts? and if they joined in it would be hard to transfer them over to US companies.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.