If, as the bard says, the course of true love never did run
smooth, one would expect the course of love-hate to be even rougher.
And that is indeed what emerges from this series of conversations
between two leading journalists, one French and one American,
who ramble briskly but intelligently through the thorny thicket
of relations between their countries in an attempt to throw light
on the latest rift between them. Jean-Marie Colombani is editor-in-chief
of Le Monde, France's leading intellectual newspaper;Walter Wells
is executive editor of the Paris-based International Herald Tribune,
now wholly owned by The New York Times.
The format, described in the foreword
as "a cordial debate, makes for an
easy read. The debate part of the book,
minus notes, bibliography, etc., comes to
only 145 pages; both participants are
highly articulate and the discussion moves
along quickly. They do not waste words
on a well-worn subject, on which it is
only too easy to be wordy. Often, the two
debaters disagree, in a civilized manner,
though sometimes they see eye to eye.
The topics range from the oftenmisunderstood
origins of the relationship
between the two countries, when royalist France came to the aid of revolutionary
America - as payback for
Britain's expulsion of France from
Canada - through differing U.S. and
French views of the role of the State to
American "cultural imperialism. For
anyone interested in the complex
Franco-American relationship, and for
those approaching it for the first time,
this little volume should be required
reading.
Such a personal dialogue, however,
ought not to be treated as a textbook.
The Franco-American relationship is
one of the most fascinating and complicated
between any two countries in the
world, and debate on it is both endless
and often highly subjective. Others who
have followed the vicissitudes of the two
proud nations' mutual obsession will
find plenty to disagree with in the positions
of both journalists.
That is not a bad thing. The main
merit of these exchanges is that they are
thought provoking. They offer a wide
array of explanations - some conventional,
some original, some positively
offbeat - for the constant, prickly competition
between the two nations as they
each strive to impose their values on the
world. We are provided with ample examples of the nonsense that the two nations
often believe about each other. But
after a thorough airing of French and
American pride and prejudices, both
participants eventually arrive at the correct
conclusion that the Atlantic alliance
has to make a big effort to heal its divisions.
"Obviously, the old Western alliance
has to come together again, and it has to
expand to every nation that might get
targeted by terrorism, says Wells. Perhaps
more surprising is Colombani's
view that "once the Iraqi crisis is over, we
will have to recreate a long-term joining
of both sides of the Atlantic.
Nevertheless, as veteran publisher,
editor and author Luc Jacob-Duvernet
writes in the foreword, "Over the course
of our discussions, it became apparent
that the French-American crisis is
deeper than anyone would like to think.
And neither the strategic changes in the
Bush administration since September
2003, nor the difficulties encountered by
the American Army in Iraq, have modified
the givens. The accumulated resentment
remains.
The clearly true implication is that
many of the problems would have remained
just as intractable if the French
favorite, John Kerry, had won the U.S.
presidential election in November. As is
stated later in the book, the disagreement
over Iraq "is not merely a misunderstanding
among individual men.
Wells rightly explains that "distrust
of the French is almost in the American
DNA.He adds, more debatably, that this
is particularly true of George Bush, but
then makes a fundamental point that is
often ignored by students of Franco-
American relations.
"There's basically no French element
in the American melting pot, no votes to
solicit, no Bastille Day parade down Fifth Avenue for him [Bush] to lead,
Wells says. In short, there are very few
French-Americans, at least compared to
Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans,
German-Americans, Polish-Americans
or even, although they never claim the
title, British-Americans.
Despite its many perceptive insights,
the book has two weaknesses, one small,
one more important. The first is that it
seems to have been rushed into print in
order to ride the crest of anger and vituperation
between the two countries that
erupted over the Iraq War in 2003. The
services of a fact-checker appear to have
been dispensed with, leading to some
unfortunate errors and omissions.
Thus there is a reference at one point
to the United States when the speaker
means the European Union. Hubert
Vedrine, the former French Foreign
Minister, is credited with having invented
the term "superpower to describe
the United States, when of course
the word he coined was the much more
provocative "hyperpower. The participants
tend to say things like "I believe it
was so-and-so who said . . . causing the
reader to wonder if it really was.
None of this matters too much in a
book that is by definition "journalistic.
The more important weakness is that the
two participants are unevenly matched.
The American Wells, who has lived in
France for nearly a quarter of a century,
knows much about more France than
the French Colombani knows about
America.
Colombani's frequent misunderstandings
of the United States are
enough to dismay the relatively objective
reader (this reviewer being a francophile
Englishman currently living in America).
Colombani odiously compares the
current U.S. conservative leadership to
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the extreme right-
wing French nationalist and apologist
for Nazi Germany. And he gives credence
to left-wing propagandist claims that
Vice President Dick Cheney decided to
invade Iraq to make money for Halliburton
- or, alternatively, that America went
to war "to carry out the will of God.
Even more incredibly, Colombani
sums up the program of the late President
Ronald Reagan as "deregulation,
obliteration of the State and capital punishment.
It is true of course that Reagan
favored deregulation, although it started
under his predecessor, Jimmy Carter. On
the other hand, while Reagan argued
that government was often "the problem,
not the solution, he certainly did not
advocate "obliteration of the State,
whatever that might mean in a modern
democracy.
And if one had to choose a third
point to summarize Reagan's program, it
is beyond ludicrous to choose "capital
punishment, which was never even an
issue during his presidency. How about
"winning the Cold War or "restoring
America's self-confidence as a world
power? Or, if you want to stay with domestic
policy, "cutting taxes to spur economic
growth?
Colombani, like so many Europeans,
seems unaware that support for capital
punishment is not a monopoly of rightwing
American politicians, nor an issue
on which they need to campaign. Nearly
every single Republican or Democratic
candidate for president has been in favor
of capital punishment - including Bill
Clinton, who rushed back to Arkansas to
sign the death warrant of a retarded man
during his first presidential election
campaign.
The death penalty, of course, plays
only a minor role in this discourse. But
Colombani's misunderstanding of the
issue exemplifies a broader tendency to trot out the worst kinds of caricatures of
America that run rampant among
French intellectuals. In the end, this
serves a useful purpose. It gives the
reader a glimpse into the depths of
incomprehension and ignorance that
underlie so many European characterizations
of the United States. To be fair to
Colombani, it is not always clear
whether he is citing examples of anti-
American propaganda, or whether he actually
believes them.
On his home territory, Colombani is
much more impressive. He presents a
particularly incisive thumbnail portrait
of President Jacques Chirac, who, he
says, "has constructed his public persona
on the image of the nice guy, simple and
absolutely not cultivated. The reality,
however, is just opposite: he is very cultivated,
very complex and, in politics, a
killer.
Á¡Chirac is always wearing a mask,Á± Colombani continues. Á¡And
he didn't appreciate the fact that someone mirrored the public
image of the simple man which he created for himself.Á± The basic
paradox is that Bush (like Reagan before him) is victim of the
same stereotypes as Chirac, he says. Á¡With Bush, Chirac has fallen
into his own trap- presumably by underestimating him. Bush, of
course, who never wears a mask, also has an expert political killer
instinct. And the leadership styles of both countries can be remarkably
similar. Both believe they have a monopoly of universal values
and tend to boss their allies around.Wells says some European
Ambassadors Á¡talk about France in the same tones that are implicit
when France talks about the United States.Á± As a psychologist
might confirm, you need something in common to have a proper love-hate
relationship.
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