[The Montana Professor 15.2, Spring 2005 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
John J. Miller and Mark Molesky
New York: Doubleday, 2004
294 pp., $24.95 hc
Linda Frey
History
UM-Missoula
John J. Miller and Mark Molesky's book adds to a veritable recent flood of works, such as Paul Hollander's Understanding Anti-Americanism (2004), Jean-François Revel's Anti-Americanism (2003), and Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin's Hating America: A History (2004), that examine France's troubling and troublesome relationship with the United States and the virulent (and Pavlovian) hostility of a number of French intellectuals to this country. The authors, John J. Miller, a reporter for National Review, and Mark Molesky, an assistant professor of History at Seton Hall, have written for a general audience. This book is a devastating and biting critique of the anti-Americanism of French officialdom and of the French left (including those Paul Hollander labeled Political Pilgrims) with some memorable turns of phrase. Despite so much hostility from French intellectuals and officials, many Americans value the links with Europe and would echo the sentiment of President Adams who concluded that France "is at war with us, but we are not at war with her" (83).
In the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq war, this book could not be more timely. Recent events have triggered a lively and provocative discussion of the United States's relationship with France. Even comedians have joined the fray. Jay Leno quipped: "I don't know why people are surprised that France won't help us get Saddam out of Iraq. After all, France wouldn't help us get the Germans out of France." Miller and Molesky have taken their title from an editorial by Thomas L. Friedman "Our War with France" that appeared in the New York Times of 18 September 2003 in which Friedman argued that "it's time that we Americans came to terms with something: France is not just our annoying ally. It is not just our jealous rival. France is becoming our enemy" (257). The oft cited headline in Le Monde of September 12, "Nous Sommes Tous Américains," has too often been interpreted as a sign of solidarity. That headline belied the contents, "an anti-American diatribe of extraordinary virulence and rage" (3). The publisher Jean-Marie Colombiana argued that after the Oklahoma City bombing the United States had "succumbed to an 'anti-Islamic reflex' consisting of 'ridiculous, if not downright odious' behavior" (3). He then went on to opine (3) that Osama bin Laden was an invention of the CIA and that "might it not then have been America itself that created this demon?"
Jean Baudrillard could write of 9/11: "How we have dreamt of this event.... How all the world without exception dreamt of this event, for no one can avoid dreaming of the destruction of a power that has become hegemonic.... It is they who acted, but we who wanted the deed" (4). Such Schadenfreude at the loss of so many innocent lives angers many Americans. One wonders if Baudrillard would have leveled the same critique about the pretensions to hegemony (however brief) of Louis XIV, who invaded a neutral Palatinate in a time of peace and devastated and depopulated the countryside, or about the imperial aspirations of the French Revolutionaries, who launched wars that lasted almost a quarter of a century in which five million men died. Miller and Molesky underscore that this hostility and the simplistic stereotypes that undergird it are not limited to a few so-called intellectuals on the French left.
As the authors repeatedly point out, the history of US/French relations has been bedeviled from the outset. "The tale of Franco-American harmony is a long-standing and pernicious myth" (6). The authors begin with the atrocities of the French and Indian wars and the infamous Deerfield massacre. A Franco-Indian force of approximately 250 under the command of Captain Hertel de Rouville surprised the villagers early in the morning of 29 February 1704, burning the town, killing 49, and capturing 111. Twenty were killed en route, but most of the others were ultimately ransomed. The authors do not set the massacre within the larger context of Anglo-French rivalry nor do they tell us that Reverend Williams's captivity narrative made the massacre one of the most famous incidents of the war.
Commonly held myths are examined. For example: the aid offered to the rebellious colonists was part of a larger French strategy to undercut the British after several disastrous encounters earlier in the eighteenth century. France had been defeated on sea and on land, in the colonies and worst of all on the Continent. France was trying to weaken the British, regain land ceded, and recover trade lost. Many Americans looked suspiciously on French aid, but concluded that "when our house is burning, we do not inquire too curiously into the moral antecedents of those who hand the water-buckets." (43).
Nor did France's own rebellion in the name of liberté, egalité, fraternité further a harmony established by France's support of the American Revolution. On the contrary, relations between the so-called "sister republics" during the French Revolutionary era soon deteriorated. The appointment of Edmond Genet as representative to the fledgling American republic only exacerbated the tensions between the two allies. Genet, who had been expelled from Russia, did not fare much better in the United States. Genet issued French military commissions to American citizens, re-provisioned French privateers in American ports, authorized the capture of British ships in American, that is, neutral waters, and launched schemes to invade Spanish Florida and Louisiana and to incite an uprising in Canada. He even publicly attacked the authority of the president. Genet disavowed international law and argued that governments should follow natural law. He boasted that he would "throw Vattel and Grotius into the sea whenever their principles interfere with my notion of the rights of nations." (William Cobbett, The Parliamentary History of England (1817) 20:1251.) He offended many Americans, even the Francophilic Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State who, in remarking upon the minister's conduct, observed astutely that Genet was " absolutely incorrigible." He went on to stress the necessity of " quitting a wreck which could not but sink all who should cling to it." (Alexander De Conde, Entangling Alliance: Politics and Diplomacy under George Washington (1958), 289.) Such actions prompted President Washington to request his recall. When his successor arrived to arrest him and send him back to France for trial and certain death, Washington, a man he had consistently defamed, refused to allow his extradition and permitted him to remain in the United States, where he married twice and very well, and was finally buried.
The next representative did little better. Adet condemned Washington's Farewell Address: "You will have noticed," he wrote home, "the lies it contains, the insolent tone that governs it, the immorality that characterizes it" (76-77). His letters exuded contempt for Americans who could be so misled as to admire Washington, an incomprehension all too reminiscent of the European attitude toward George W. Bush. Adet was even instructed to manipulate the US elections. Upon learning of Adet's instructions, Washington was moved to protest that "the conduct of France toward the United States is, according to my ideas of it, outrageous beyond conception" (83). John Adams's greatest fear during his Presidency (1798-1802) was that France would attack the weak new country. It was this fear which produced the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts. Thus, the Quasi-War of 1798-1800 "earned France the dubious distinction of becoming the first military enemy of the United States" (8).
Relations did not improve under subsequent administrations. The diplomatic correspondence further reveals how close the United States came to fighting France (not Britain) in 1812. The authors recount incident after incident of US/French strife, the XYZ affair, Napoleon III's support of the Southern States, Napoleon's expedition to Mexico, etc. The American contribution to World War I is briefly mentioned. Recent scholarship has revealed how close the French armies came to collapse and the extent of the 1917 French mutinies, underscoring the importance of the US army to the French victory. A warm welcome for American troops did not mean a warm welcome for Wilson, who was warned that "diplomatic Europe is enemy soil" (151). And so it proved. The authors chart the strained relations between Wilson and Clemenceau and the disastrous Versailles Diktat.
In World War II Eisenhower's difficulties with de Gaulle were legendary and Roosevelt's even more so. He confided to Churchill that "I am fed up with de Gaulle,...he is a very dangerous threat to us.... He would double-cross both of us at the first opportunity" (180). De Gaulle's public posturing is extensively quoted, as are various representatives of the virulent anti-Americanism that emerged so shortly after World War II. De Gaulle's policy toward NATO and the French support of the Arabs in the Six Day War among other divisive issues triggered a boycott of French goods. Then it was Johnny Carson who uttered the disparaging quips. As de Gaulle remarked "War is against our enemies, peace against our friends" (204). This telling phrase reflects De Gaulle's consternation at the disparity in military power between France and its ally. It may be that assertions of superiority rise in direct proportion to loss of real power. It may be easier to forgive an enemy than an ally who came to your rescue. As Mark Twain once remarked, "if you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man." The role of the United States in the liberation and reconstruction of France only intensified De Gaulle's bitterness for it underscored France's military decline. The only option to a man like De Gaulle was a multipolar world in which France would play a significant role.
France could, however, only "punch above her strength" through dominance within the European Community. That vision or illusion, depending on your perspective, was threatened by what the French foreign minister Vedrine called the "hyperpower" status of the United States (242). Rumsfeld's reference to "old Europe" and Chirac's attack on many of the Eastern European countries who supported the United States reflect that struggle. As George Bush remarked, " The Brits are strong and the French are French" ( 234). After September 11 relations deteriorated to the point that Thierry Meyssan could write L'Effroyable Imposture (The Big Lie) in which he argued that "The attacks of September 11 were masterminded from inside the American state apparatus" (244). Such lunatic claims reflect a divorce from reality and a visceral anti-Americanism. Anthony Daniels has argued that "only in contradistinction to America can France retain what it believes to be its rightful place in the world, that is to say the capital of civilization itself.... the particularity of French culture must resist the universal solvent of Americanization" (Anthony Daniels, "Sense of Superiority and Inferiority in French Anti-Americanism," in Understanding Anti-Americanism, edited by Paul Hollander (2004), 64). Given the disparity in demographic, economic, technological, and military power between the United States and France, French gloire by necessity came to be defined in cultural rather than political-military terms. The threat to French cultural dominance is particularly felt in the arena of language as English has overtaken French as the lingua franca of diplomacy and of commerce.
Recent difficulties can be traced to French hopes of carrying out their "mission civilisatrice," of counterbalancing the American colossus, of adopting a strategy of self-interest, and of addressing the difficulties raised by the growing number of French Muslims, currently between 8 and 10 percent of France's population. French attempts to create a "French Islam" and to integrate their Muslims into a French republican state are reflected in the ban on girls' wearing headscarves to school, in the imposition of a state curriculum designed to teach imams about French language, history, and culture, and in the creation of a state foundation to control donations from Muslims overseas. France's interior minister Dominique de Villepin finds it "unacceptable" that "75% of French imams are not French citizens and 33% do not speak French" (Wall Street Journal, 9 December 2004, A15). France ultimately expelled an Algerian cleric in Lyons who had advocated the stoning of women (The Economist, 18 December 2004, 73). The question of the alienation of Muslims from the larger European society and the subversion of European values by anti-Western sentiment was also raised by the recent murder in the Netherlands of Theo Van Gogh. One can only hope that the strained relations between the United States and France do not undermine what should be a common struggle against Islamic radicalism. De Gaulle's policy of "peace against our friends" may have too high a cost.
Despite shared concerns about the threat to western values, too many Americans have concluded that (to paraphrase Douglas Jerrold, d. 1857) "the best thing I know between France and America is--the sea."
[The Montana Professor 15.2, Spring 2005 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]