The Teen Age Of Old Europe

Born and educated in France, I moved to the United States in early 1969 for what was to be a training stint of a couple of years, but actually turned into a thirty-four year career.

In 1980, I became an American citizen, for two reasons. One was that, a critic by nature, I would have felt like a leach criticizing a country where I was merely a guest taking advantage of local opportunities. Becoming a citizen, with the attached responsibilities, would free me to speak my mind. The other reason was my strong sentiment that, to earn the right to criticize, one must exercise one’s responsibility to vote.

Over the ensuing years, I have enjoyed that new right without second thought, since my misgivings about various aspects of American political life, societal habits, economic policies or foreign policy were overwhelmed by my admiration for the American system, spirit and ideals. As for France, I somehow have felt that a birthright allowed me to criticize it, even though I am not voting there. But my cultural ties to it can never be severed.

Until recently, mine had been a relatively comfortable position. I could be critical at once of the sometimes two-dimensional, shoot-from-the-hip American approach to complex issues, and of the French’s ability to laboriously dissect and conceptualize multidimensional problems without ever taking action. But, by and large, being a critic everywhere has been an enjoyable situation.

Today, the tensions between America and France have reached a level where, even though it hasn’t happened yet, friends may ask me to choose sides. I am likely to hurt them in both countries.

In America, I still have to be convinced. Let us leave Saddam Hussein aside for a moment: everyone, including his Arab neighbors, would like him gone; everyone in democratic nations believes he is a bloody tyrant; and I have no problem in principle with the use of force to get him out. Furthermore, as several of the less-biased recent documentaries about Saddam and Iraq have amply demonstrated, every major western government (including France and the United States) has supplied military equipment – conventional, nuclear and chemical -- to Iraq in recent years.

My questions are: Why is disarmament so urgent now, when it was clearly on the back burner of the diplomatic agenda only months ago? Also, what will happen after the war, since many other instances have proven that, short of re-colonizing, military intervention in complex, tribal regions is prone to leave behind unstable powder kegs, if not plainly hostile regimes?

In France, where the media and some (most) politicians have long irritated my American side, I am distraught by the total lack of debate about Iraq – especially in a nation that prides itself in its ability to debate and endlessly indulges in it. With the exception of two or three sympathetic but rather obscure politicians, no one has dared articulate the case for supporting the United States and Britain in their threat of military action. In the Press, from the left-leaning Le Monde (I will ignore the communist organ L’Humanitéi>), to the caviar left Libétion and Nouvel Observateur, and even the traditionally pro-American Le Figaro, everyone is “against the war”. And, in spite of widespread individual gratitude and affection for Americans, the public at large seems to agree with their country’s official position -- and even to derive pride from it.

This is, of course, ignoring the fact that the initial intent was not to go to war. It was to use the threat of multilateral military action to force Iraq to destroy its arms of mass destruction – and possibly, hopefully for some, to incite an ouster of Saddam Hussein. France helped crush that hope from the very beginning. Why has it done so, in view of its professed disgust with today’s Baghdad regime?

There are both obvious and hidden motives of self-interest in every major power’s position on the Iraq situation. Mostly, they relate to economics: oil, a stake in the reconstruction of Iraq and the future trade with a potentially rich country. But, there are also political considerations, including relations with Arab populations both outside and inside each western country’s borders. (I still believe that terrorism and related recent troubles are more of an Arab problem than a Muslim one, even though the two sometimes overlap).

France’s foreign policy has been a thorn in the side of America since General de Gaulle. Partly, this has reflected the stubborn and desperate attempts by France, a declining economic and political power on the world scene, to cling to the vestiges of the influence it enjoyed in colonial times. During the bi-polar days of the Cold War, it even attempted to erect itself as the leader of the so-called non-aligned countries.

The occasional posturing of France’s leaders served as an irritant for America, but little else. Indeed, there was a tacit understanding that the French could brass political air under the military and economic umbrella provided by the United States, but that it would always turn out as a reliable ally when the chips were down. This allowed a British political analyst to comment, just before the recent turn of events, that France stood, as usual, “firmly on the fence”. Things seem to have changed.

One may think what one wishes of Jacques Chirac, France’s president, but he is a true political animal. He has survived innumerable setbacks and always bounced by seizing the opportunities of the time. And he has clung to power in spite of the many alleged improprieties, spanning most of his political career, that have come to light in recent years. I believe that Chirac has sensed that the end of the post-cold war period is finally at hand. He envisions a world of multilateral institutions (where France hopes to have an important role to play) replacing the perceived, de facto American hegemony of the past decade or so. I do not think he is trying to force that transition, which he could not. But, seeing it shaping up anyway, he wants to make sure that France plays an important role in it and in whatever order (or disorder) follows.

The final question, and perhaps the one that irritates Americans the most, is: “Why are the French people themselves so unanimously supportive of its President’s efforts to frustrate America’s policies?”

Here, we face a paradox. France prides itself in a long and rich history, an aristocratic past, a once pre-eminent culture and the natural refinement that derives from them. Americans have long had an inferiority complex toward that heritage and the way the French tend to “throw it in your face”, either explicitly or more subtly. Since the end of World War II, and particularly after the loss of its colonies in the 1950s and 1960s, France has developed a different sort of complex. American culture, epitomized by fast food, pop music, TV series and Hollywood movies, has swamped the world and, with the advent of the Internet, English has all but become the world’s universal language. With America additionally controlling global politics and economics (partly through its innate dynamism and partly through institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, The World Bank and NATO), the roles have been reversed. France has moved from the illusion of independence to the reality of dependency. I see it all the time in economic and financial commentaries, where no forecast seems to be possible without, first, guessing what will happen to the American economy or Wall Street.

Paradoxically, while we tend to view America as a young country and France as an old one, their relations have become tantamount to those between a parent and a rebellious teenager. Teenagers naturally tend to define themselves by opposition to their parents, who symbolize the established order and the absolute, asphyxiating rule that derives from it. The most common way teen-agers have to shed that yoke and to transform themselves into independent adults is through words and acts of rebellion. Of course, this period is particularly frustrating to parents because, initially, the teenagers still benefit from free bed and board, financial security and, often even pocket money. And they believe this is a natural right of theirs, not realizing that they demand freedom without accepting the responsibilities that go with it.

"Teen-age" passes, and new relationships progressively evolve between parents and their children, with efforts and understanding on both sides. Similarly, a new world order has begun to take shape and new relationships will evolve between the United States and its former allies and vassals. “Old” France, the child with the most affinities with its parent, as is often the case, frustrates it the most. But it will mature. The United States, for its part, will rediscover France’s qualities, forget its escapades and settle into a new global role.

Meanwhile, however, we are entering a period of uncertainty and the risks, both political and economic, are rising. But I refuse to be pessimistic, either about the future of the world’s economy or about Franco-American relations.

March 10, 2003
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