Airstrip One

L'ennemi américaine

It is galling, when one argues for a rational analysis of the current international crises, to see that some European columnists are willing to live down to the stereotypes conjured up by the dhimmi brigade and the Eurabians.

What unsettles me even more is the crop of books studying or promoting anti-Americanism that have recently sold well in France: L’obsession anti-américaine by Jean-François Revel; Après l’empire by Emmanuel Todd and L’ennemi américaine by Philippe Roger.

Revel is a well-known conservative who has publicised many of the concerns about the fallacies of the left. A conversation between Revel and Todd revealed that the latter sociologist saw American actions as a sign of weakness rather than strength and that the "real strategic threat [to America], ...is that a nuclear Russia would ally itself with the two most important real power centers outside the United States, which are Europe and Japan".

Even an Arab writer noticed that Todd was the most enthusiastic of all the anti-American authors quoted, (along with the irrelevant and predictable aside on how well-represented the Jews are in France).

The US has sat up and noticed this surge of movement amongst French intellectuals. A forthcoming article by David Pryce-Jones in the National Review will review the books by Revel and Roger and has concluded

that anti-Americanism is not related to whatever the United States might actually be or do, but reflects murky depths of the French psyche. Persistent divisiveness and repeated social failure, general loss of influence in the world and injured pride, have solidified into an inferiority complex. Taking it for granted that France ought to be the world's leading power, French intellectuals have long been accustomed to seeing America as a standing reproach. As Philippe Roger puts it, hatred of America is nourished on a "violent contempt of oneself."

Some of the French intellectuals say that the United States acts out of weakness rather than strength due to fiscal and societal weaknesses. Others state that their own anti-Americanism is a sign of weakness rather than strength, a symptom of jealousy as they can no longer aspire to be top dog.

What I find unsettling is how France and, by extension, Europe are drowning in their own irrelevance and sleepwalking to possible disaster without getting a grip on the strategic realities that confront them. All of their skills in co-operation, mediation and negotiation will not save them from blackmail by missile toting states along their borders in the next decade. Do they dream of decadence?