The 2003 Paris Air Show will open its doors June 15 to 22 against a backdrop of bitter conflict and recriminations. But enough of relations between the U.S. and France. This year’s Le Bourget show also cannot fail to be overshadowed by the ramifications of the war in Iraq, which, as of press time, was still raging, despite the best efforts of the Chirac administration and several other major world leaders to halt the conflict.
Paris has been here before. Back in June 1991, the biennial show was held just a couple of months after the first Gulf War ended with Saddam Hussein’s forces booted out of Kuwait, but allowed to skulk back to Baghdad to fight another day. A dozen years on, the key difference is that no fewer than four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council–France, Germany, Russia and China–have blocked the determination of the U.S. and UK to deal with unfinished business, and so the governments of the world’s leading aerospace and defense nations go into this year’s Paris show resolutely at odds with each other.
