The art of crisis management

摘要

Dominique de Villepin knows a thing or two about crisis management. He was President Jacques Chirac's first chief of staff in 1995, which proved a baptism of fire when France promptly restarted nuclear testing in the south Pacific. Two years later, he advised the president to dissolve parliament in the face of huge street protests, only to see the centre-right lose its parliamentary majority to the Socialists. And in 2003 he was foreign minister when France was vilified in America for its active opposition to the war in Iraq. But even this hardened political firefighter, who is now Mr Chirac's prime minister, must be finding the latest outbreaks quite a challenge.