The French Position.

• Author: Gordon, Philip H.

IN AN UNGUARDED moment during last year's primary season, Senator John McCain referred to a minor diplomatic incident as "one of the many reasons I hate the French." McCain probably does not hate the French, but his comment does give some indication of France's place in the American imagination. For more than fifty years, France has been tweaking America's nose, refusing to tow the U.S. line on subjects as diverse as NATO, Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, and what Americans until very recently were encouraged to think of as "rogue states" --the very concept of which, of course, the French do not accept.

The latest example of French obstreperousness has been the growing tendency of France's leaders to criticize American unilateralism and call for a more multipolar world, in which a strong Europe provides a counterweight to the United States. Statements such as the recent one of Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, that France "cannot accept a politically unipolar world, nor a culturally uniform world, nor the unilateralism of a single hyperpower", led Michael Gonzales to warn, in a Wall Street Journal article of November 23, 1999, of "a serious split in the North Atlantic Alliance" caused by France's "increasingly petulant attacks on the U.S." The article, entitled "Can America Trust the French?", suggested that France's aim was to "contain U.S. might in all areas." Former Reagan administration official and George W. Bush adviser Richard Perle provided the answer: "To be perfectly blunt about it, we don't trust the French."

Clinton administration officials are obviously more circumspect, but a similar sentiment extends to a wide variety of subjects. France is invariably seen in Washington as the ally most likely to challenge U.S. positions and oppose American leadership, and most determined to obstruct and dilute American power. In June 2000 U.S. officials were stunned by France's refusal to sign the Warsaw Declaration on the strengthening of democracy, a U.S. initiative and a high priority of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. One senior U.S. official tersely commented that "107 countries had come to support democracy, but only 106 actually did so." Similarly, after a series of speeches late last year by French leaders calling for a more "multipolar world", State Department spokesman James Rubin was moved to comment that it was "passing strange that France would spend so much energy and focus so much attention on the danger to them of a strong United States rather than the dangers that we and France together face from coun tries like Iraq." French critiques of American policy are often seen not merely as alternative approaches to a difficult issue (as, for example, when similar critiques come from the British or Germans), but rather as attacks on America itself.

One could, of course, argue that it matters little whether the French and the Americans disagree. Both countries have quarreled periodically over the past sixty years, but they tend to stand together on the vital issues of the day, as in Kosovo last year. As difficult as France can be, it is one of only two allies (along with Britain) that share basic American values and interests and that have the resources, the military means and the will to take substantial risks in the name of international security. Particularly as the European Union seeks to develop its own foreign and security policy, France remains the linchpin to friendly relations with America's most vital, democratic and prosperous allies, and the single most important factor in determining whether the EU will cooperate or compete with the United States. Like it or not, Americans are going to have to live with a France that is as proud, assertive and--most infuriatingly--as fundamental to world order in the twenty-first century as it was in the tw entieth.

Historical Ups and Downs

ANY suggestion that France and the United States always disagree would be inaccurate. From Lafayette's contribution to American independence to the extremely close U.S.-French military cooperation in Kosovo last year, there have been countless examples of the two countries standing together on important, contentious issues: the Berlin and Cuban missile crises in the 195 Os and 1960s, the Euromissile debate of the early 1980s, and Bosnia after 1994-95, to name just a few. Still, the more constant themes of the past half century have been resentment and frustration.

In the 1940s, the driving force in Franco-American relations was General de Gaulle's deep resentment of Washington's recognition of the Vichy regime and its refusal during wartime to recognize the Free French as the legitimate government of France. Roosevelt's numerous snubs of France in general and de Gaulle in particular--excluding France from the Yalta Summit, summoning de Gaulle to meet in Casablanca (i.e., on French soil), or planning to introduce a new French currency without French consent-intensified the estrangement. The common threads in all these incidents were a refusal by America to take the French seriously or treat them with respect, and American exasperation at France's stubborn and prickly insistence on having its positions and interests taken fully into account.

In the 1950s, bilateral frictions revolved around America's refusal to support France's efforts to protect its colonial interests, despite French claims--very similar to American claims in subsequent decades--that their global policies provided a foundation of world order and Western security. In Indochina, the United States provided significant military aid to the French for several years, but in 1954 it allowed the final French garrison at Dien Bien Phu to fall, refusing to risk American troops or even air power to save it. Two years later at Suez, the American position went further. Eisenhower opposed the French and British...