Posted on 03/16/2003 8:05:41 AM PST by knighthawk
WASHINGTON--Like fractious brothers whose frequent fighting clouds their fraternal bond, the United States and France have been tormented allies for more than three centuries.
From the Battle of Yorktown in 1781 to the Normandy invasion of 1944 and on to the jungles of Indochina in the 1950s and 1960s, American and French sailors and soldiers have fought on the same side.
Nearly as often, their leaders have quarreled, pointed fingers and lectured each other about proper behavior on the global stage.
"There is no doubt that France and the United States are mirror images of each other," said Jean-Robert Leguey-Feilleux, a French-born political science professor at St. Louis University. "Both countries are very proud of their pasts. Both are very independent. Both like to do what they want to do. That leads often enough to them being at opposite ends of the policy arena. There is a lot of jealousy over the role each should play in world culture."
Even while their troops fought together in World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt and Gen. Charles de Gaulle fostered a mutual animosity that helped sour their governments' relations for a quarter-century.
And now, with the United States in the role of uncontested superpower and France leading international opposition to a U.S.-led war in Iraq, relations between the two countries are under new strain.
Experts on U.S.-French ties can't agree on whether the trans-Atlantic sniping between Washington and Paris is sending relations to a new low -- or whether the dispute over Iraq is just another struggle in a long, tumultuous alliance.
"It hasn't been this bad for a very long time," Martin Schain, director of New York University's Center for European Studies, said from Paris, where he is on sabbatical. "France and the United States have had their differences, and certainly in diplomatic circles in Washington there is always complaining about how difficult the French are. This, however, is by all measures I know beyond what has happened before. It will be extremely difficult to put things back together again."
Counters Irwin Wall, a history professor at the University of California at Riverside and author of two books on U.S.-French relations: "I could cite you a dozen instances since 1945 when observers have said that American-French relations were at an all-time low. This has happened many times."
One thing is certain: U.S. and French leaders, and plenty of their countrymen, are hopping mad at one another.
At the United Nations and around the globe, French President Jacques Chirac is rallying opposition to President Bush's bid to use force to disarm Saddam Hussein if the Iraqi dictator fails to disarm immediately.
Chirac, a disciple of de Gaulle's, has threatened to use the veto France holds as a permanent Security Council member to block any resolution authorizing war. Bush has threatened to ignore that veto by attacking Iraq without U.N. approval.
"France looked at the British proposal, and they rejected it before Iraq rejected it," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer complained Thursday. "If that's not an unreasonable veto, what is?"
Chirac's hard-line stance has boosted his popularity in France to its highest level in almost three years, according to a poll conducted March 7 and 8, before his vow to veto any new U.N. resolution paving the way for war as long as weapons inspectors report progress. France has not vetoed a Security Council resolution supported by the United States in nearly a half-century.
A role in Europe
Other analysts say that France's prominence in the debate over Iraq has little to do with the United States. It is tied instead, in their view, to the French desire to play a leading role in an emerging European Union that is not dominated by the United States through Britain and newfound U.S. allies in the former Soviet states of Eastern Europe.
"It's not France versus America, because all Frenchmen understand that the United States is a huge, powerful country, and that France opposing America all by itself makes no sense whatsoever," said Patrice Higonnet, a French history professor at Harvard University. "It's about France trying to find some kind of national purpose inside Europe."
Some scholars note the irony that, for all their differences over Iraq, the United States and France are both driving a wedge in Europe not long after it was celebrating post-Cold War integration.
Key Bush administration officials see increasingly little use for NATO now that the Soviet Union doesn't exist and U.S. military might is unparalleled. Chirac, for his part, has blocked rapid expansion of the European Union to include former Soviet-bloc nations that are now pro-American.
Chirac infuriated leaders of those countries when he scolded them for signing a letter in support of Bush's hard-line stance on Iraq.
"It is not well-brought-up behavior," Chirac said. "They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet."
Spain and Italy, which have also backed Bush on Iraq, along with the Eastern Europeans fear the new French-German nexus -- the continent's historic bane -- as they watch Paris and Berlin join forces to try to block a U.S.-led war.
France's defiance has spawned a spate of anti-French vitriol in the United States. At the urging of Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina, "french fries" have been replaced with "freedom fries" in three House cafeterias. Rep. Jim Saxton, a New Jersey Republican, is trying to persuade American aerospace companies to skip the Paris Air Show in June, while other lawmakers push trade sanctions against France.
"Do you know how many Frenchmen it takes to defend Paris?" Rep. Roy Blunt asked other Republicans in Missouri last month. "It's not known -- it's never been tried."
Shop owners and Internet mavens are promoting boycotts of French wine and cheese. Comedians are having a field day.
"I don't know why people are surprised that France won't help us get Saddam out of Iraq," Jay Leno quipped. "After all, France wouldn't help us get the Germans out of France."
'Bush, the cowboy'
In France, much of the anger is directed at Bush, who is widely portrayed as emblematic of a simplistic, arrogant and na•ve nation. Editorials lambasting him run under headlines such as "Bush, this cowboy of the West."
The Liberation newspaper dismissed Bush's campaign against Iraq as "simply the old American cocktail of missionary zeal and crude realpolitik."
"No one I know here has any conception of what the Americans are doing," Schain, the NYU professor, said from Paris. "They are stunned by what this administration is doing."
Two best-selling books in France, "The American Enemy" and "The Anti-American Obsession," both written by French authors, say many French blame all ills in the world on the United States. Two other popular books, "The Big Lie" and "The Frightening Fraud," argue that Bush knew about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in advance but allowed them to occur and that American Airlines Flight 77 didn't really hit the Pentagon.
Jean-Philippe Mathy, a professor of French at the University of Illinois, said the current dispute is prompting Americans and French alike to think the worst about each other.
"One of the main stereotypes in the United States is the image of the French as a cowardly people," Mathy said. "That obviously goes back to the spring of 1940 when the French army just collapsed in front of Hitler. But Americans never talk about World War I, when France fought in the mud and the ice and the trenches for four years and lost 1.4 million soldiers."
Unfair prejudices, Mathy said, abound on both sides of the Atlantic.
"The French say that Americans are childish, that they don't have any taste, that they're overweight," he said.
Fundamental difference
Laura Frader, French history professor at Northeastern University in Boston, said French people have an almost schizophrenic attitude toward the United States. They mock American films, for example, but idolize director Woody Allen and comic Jerry Lewis. A French takeoff on the hit American TV show "America Idol" just started.
"They criticize American culture, yet they consume American fast food, wear American blue jeans and watch American television as much as anyone else," Frader said. "There is a love-hate relationship. Maybe it has something to do with a certain competition."
Lost in all the trans-Atlantic quarreling, some experts say, is a fundamental difference of opinion over the outcome of war in Iraq.
Bush sees an opportunity to topple a tyrant, free the Iraqi people, control weapons of mass destruction and strike a blow for democracy in the Middle East. Chirac, whose country is home to 5 million Muslims, fears the spread of terrorism and providing fertile recruiting grounds for Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network.
"There is an honest disagreement about what this war is going to do," said Wall, the University of California historian. "The French see a catastrophe. We see a good outcome."
If people want on or off this list, please let me know.
The one line that really hacked me off was the idiot that said, "There is no doubt that France and the United States are mirror images of each other," said Jean-Robert Leguey-Feilleux,..." Any adult that keeps a name like that after becoming an adult is a finer example of Frog idiocy and it's no wonder he could make that comment.
I caught that one, too. Strangely, I don't recall the US ever surrendering to the Germans.
Pithy, absolutement!!
Nouvelle Algiers...any French major/minors out there to make it grammatical? C'mon, I took only Fr 101.
Are we so different.
We are undergoing a dramatic change in our ethnicity and culture along our southern boarders.
California will so be much more reflective of the Novelle Americana than of old Europe.
They surrendered as fast as they could, and then the non-Jewish French even prospered. American troops were amazed how well the Parisians were doing. The French Jews were tossed to the Germans of course, except in a few brave exceptions.
France is becoming North Algeria, but the only thing that will matter to them is that the Muslims all speak French.
With friends like Chirac who needs enemies. I guess Chirac is fuming that his "friends", the Americans are going to expose his complicity with saddam.
There was something going on the cafe society of Paris during the 1930's. Americans like William L. Shirer commented on it. A blase sort of atmosphere where no one cared about anything, and don't tell them about problems. Sartre's "existentialism" was a later outgrowth of that. It would appear that the French leaders don't want to fight anymore, but they still want to control things. World War I, fought on French territory, shocked the hell out of them and they drew the wrong conclusions.
More evidence of delusions of grandeur on the part of the French.
In a way, America and France are mirror images of each other : what ever position the United States takes, France takes the reverse positon. I doubt that's what the professor meant though.
He is right. A mirror image is the exact reverse of what ever it is reflecting. france is the exact reverse of the US.
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