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U.S. sparks mistrust, envy in Europe

PARIS -- Herve Gainche, a paint salesman enjoying a quiet dinner during a business trip to the capital, recalled that in his childhood his father wanted to open a bicycle shop near their home in the Brittany region of northwestern France.

One by one, the local banks turned down his father's request for a loan to start the bike store. Finally, one bank came through, but it was not in Brittany.

"Citibank in New York City made the loan," Gainche said as he sipped a glass of wine at Le Petit Nicois, a small bistro near the Eiffel Tower. "I learned an important lesson. I learned that Americans are willing to take risks."

It is a lesson that some French, and many people across Europe, are having trouble grasping.

More than two months after U.S. and British troops invaded Iraq, Europeans are still struggling to understand the war and the U.S. president who launched it. Nowhere is the soul-searching deeper than in France, whose futile bid to block the war sparked a diplomatic crisis that divided Europe and damaged the transatlantic alliance.

"Even though we are friends with the United States, one friend should be able to criticize another friend," said Denis Lacorne, an analyst of U.S.-French ties at the Center for International Studies in Paris. "There's nothing monstrous about it. I don't think [French President Jacques] Chirac's goal is to resist U.S. power or betray the United States. The idea is simply that there need to be checks and balances in the modern world."

President Bush and the heads of seven other leading industrialized nations will try to mend the rift next week at the annual G-8 summit, which will be held in Evian, France. It will be Bush's first meeting in nearly seven months with Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the chief opponents of his Iraq policy.

"After some difficult months, Evian is the chance to show that nations are able and willing to move on, to cooperate in the service of mankind," Chirac said Wednesday in a speech at the Elysee Palace. He called Bush on Thursday, initiating a 10-minute talk that aides of the two men described as cordial but far from friendly.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, who met Friday with other G-8 foreign ministers in Paris, praised France's support for lifting U.N. sanctions against Iraq in the Security Council vote Thursday, but he said it doesn't entirely make up for the nasty prewar quarrel.

"That was not a very pleasant time for any of us, and we have to work our way through that," Powell said.

On the way to Evian, Bush will stop in St. Petersburg, Russia, helping to celebrate that seaside city's 300th birthday and meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, another war opponent who will also attend the G-8 summit.

The war opposition

In Paris, the French recoil at the anti-France anger that has swept the United States and the notion that their country's opposition to the war was itself an expression of anti-Americanism.

"I don't think there is one view of the United States in France," said Serge Halimi, an international affairs columnist for Le Monde Diplomatique in Paris. "You have people who are very critical of Bush's foreign policy but who love American jazz and American movies. So, the notion of French anti-Americanism seems to me very shallow and wrong. This is a term that tries to shame the opposition by suggesting that it is xenophobic or nationalistic or racist -- when, in fact, there is just an honest divergence of opinion."

Echoing sentiments heard repeatedly in Paris, Halimi accused Bush of lying about his real reasons for attacking Iraq and hiding his true desire to extend U.S. hegemony in a crucial area of the Middle East.

"His policy was based on a number of premises, none of which are holding fire," Halimi said. "It was to seek weapons of mass destruction, but none have been found. It was to stabilize the country, but it's not stable. It was to stop terrorism, but what we have just seen with the bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco indicates that objective was not reached. You cannot allow one country to wage war on another just because it has decided to do so unless you want to shred the U.N. charter and adopt the law of the jungle."

Eric Fassin, a French sociologist at Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, said dispute over Iraq exacerbated a long-standing rivalry between France and the United States.

"Both France and the United States claim to embody universal principles such as human rights, democracy, freedom -- all the big, nice, noble things," he said. "Many Frenchmen are irritated today that America embodies imperialism. Well, that's the history of France and French colonialism. Imperialism in both countries is presented in a very noble, civilizing way. The rhetoric is similar on both sides, which may explain why there is mutual attraction and repulsion."

The G-8 summit June 1-3 will bring together the heads of four governments that supported the war -- the United States, Britain, Italy and Japan -- and four that opposed it: France, Germany, Russia and Canada. But even in some countries whose leaders backed Bush, the war was unpopular, with polls showing three-quarters or more of those surveyed against it.

"A world dominated by a unique superpower has to be run in a more flexible and comprehensible way," said Alessandro Banfi, a TV news editor in Rome. "We have to avoid a holy war between Christianity and Islam, or between the West and the Arab world. What do we want from the United States? Less fundamentalism, less God in every speech, more pragmatism, more attention to international institutions like the United Nations and to potential future allies. And more help to the poorest countries."

The impact of 9/11

Many French say that Bush has squandered a deep well of goodwill toward Americans spawned by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

French children drew pictures of U.S. flags. An oak tree with a plaque commemorating the Sept. 11 victims was planted in Luxembourg Gardens. Last July, on Bastille Day, the holiday procession in Paris featured a New York City fire truck in honor of the firefighters who died in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.

Parisians say they supported the U.S. attack on Afghanistan and the overthrow of its Taliban regime because they saw the military strike as an act of self-defense. Few French believe that Saddam Hussein, despite his ruthless regime, threatened the United States or Europe.

But some experts on U.S-French relations say the current mistrust of Bush runs deeper than his Iraq policy.

"What is a little disconcerting for the French is an American president who seems to be principled," said Jean Duchesne, an English literature professor at Condorcet College in Paris. "The idea that politics should be based on principles is unimaginable because principles lead to ideology, and ideology is dangerous."

Lacorne, the international-relations analyst, said many French are acutely uncomfortable with Bush's frequent references to God, which they take to mean -- mistakenly, in his view -- that Christian fundamentalism dictates his policies.

And Lacorne believes that a large share of his countrymen were surprised by Americans' widespread displays of patriotism after the Sept. 11 attacks because they tend to see the United States as a multicultural country with little national unity.

"We never realized the trauma of 9/11," Lacorne said. "Nor did we realize how strong American patriotism was. Perhaps the great error of Al-Qaeda was it destroyed a kind of town within a town at the World Trade Center, which represented everyone from the cleaner to the trader and all nationalities, all races, all classes. It was really a microcosm of the United States, and therefore most Americans felt as if they had been attacked as well. That complexity was never understood in France. And French politicians didn't realize that 9/11 had transformed a rather weak president with low ratings into a kind of superhero."

Bush as Bonaparte?

Lacorne sees an ironic role reversal now occurring across the centuries: Bush, with his notions of preemptive war and benevolent hegemony, is acting like a modern Napoleon Bonaparte, the early 19th-century French emperor who sent his army across Europe; Chirac, meanwhile, has adopted the role of a James Madison or John Adams as he tries to cement France's leadership of a newly formed European Union, one based partly on the early U.S. model.

At Le Petit Nicois, the French paint salesman pondered the notion of Bush as Bonaparte.

"A leader has to act," Herve Gainche said. "It's not a question of arrogance. The Americans are doing what they have the means to do. Some French people think the Americans are imperialist, but I don't think that's the right word. If a person is rich or a country is powerful, it's always going to engender some jealousy. But you can't blame a rich person for being rich. As far as Iraq is concerned, we won't know for two or three years who was right and who was wrong."

James Rosen, Star Tribune Washington Bureau Correspondent
Published May 27, 2003 FRAN27
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I wouldn't say I'm concerned but I am curious what US relations with Europe will be like from now on and how the world will view us in the future. Thoughts?

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La Disciplina È La Mia Spada,
La Fede È Il Mio Schermo,
Non salti Ciecamente In Incertezza,
E Potete Raccogliere Le Ricompense.

MacGnG

the french gave us the statue of liberty; they cant take it back!, they cant become our enemy!

once we have a *better* president i think things will be ok

Macheath

Just out of interest, how many people in the US do you think would assume that Chirac must be some liberal leftie type politician?

Maybe the same number who think the S11 hijackers all came from Iraq?

Liquor Dealer

I think your sig might explain the quote better than anything else. They can't take it back but that might not want to bend over in front of it - they might get it back! Can't became our enemy? They may have a problem with ever being our friend. France has never been anything other than a "fair weather" friend and then only if it has been to their advantage.

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Life isn't always a bowl of cherries, sometimes it's more like a jar of Jalapenos --- what you say or do today might burn your ass tomorrow!!!

Kadath

Your last sentence is a trifle redundant. My only question would be whether we have ever been an enduring friend to another nation. Perhaps we have, I don't honestly know. I just wonder.

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it's quiet in here

seretogis

I question whether France/Germany/Russia's open opposition to the war on Iraq was entirely "difference of opinion" or just them protecting their economic interests with a ruthless dictator. Generally when "friends" have "differences of opinion" they are able to talk about it, they don't just proclaim that they will vote no, regardless. France, specifically, broke down the process in the UN and they did it, in my opinion, for their own benefit. I can't imagine that they seriously expected the US to just back down and say "oh, ok, sorry." so I don't understand why they would put themselves in that position. Perhaps the French ambassador's ego got in the way.

As for our friendship with France post-Iraq, whatever the result it will be their doing. More power to US cheese and wine producers. :P

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seretogis - sieg heil
perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most, forgot how it feels well almost
no one to blame always the same, open my eyes wake up in flames

Liquor Dealer

Enduring? Perhaps not - there when they have needed us - always. We don't need enduring friends - we definitely don't need any fair weather friends. Enemies are better than fair weather friends.

Your avatar disturbs me - are you in distress? That is the international signal for a ship in distress - kinda' makes one wonder where you are coming from! Oh yeah! I don't do "truffles" - redundant or any otherwise.

__________________
Life isn't always a bowl of cherries, sometimes it's more like a jar of Jalapenos --- what you say or do today might burn your ass tomorrow!!!

Kadath

I guess I missed this before. I'm not bringing it back to fight, but rather to discuss. Your statement "We don't need enduring friends" is very telling. Perhaps you would be happier if we returned to the policy of isolationism? Every nation needs enduring friends. No nation can stand alone.
Yes, I am in distress, and I am and was well aware of its meaning. I doubt it is the international signal for distress -- that's a trifle(there's that word again) arrogant. I am coming from the place my sig puts me at: a patriot concerned for his nation. I choose to display the flag this way to protest the actions of my government. If this disturbs you, imagine what a still picture of a burning flag might do. And your oblique reference to France is clever, if stilted.

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it's quiet in here

Liquor Dealer

We don't need enduring friends. We need allies we can trust. There is a great distance between "friend" and ally - France has chosen to be neither.

If you'll check your history you will find that the national ensign - flown upside down, is, at least in maritime situation is an international signal of distress - many national ensigns are the same - rightside up - or upside down.

__________________
Life isn't always a bowl of cherries, sometimes it's more like a jar of Jalapenos --- what you say or do today might burn your ass tomorrow!!!

Pacifier

what you want are blind followers not allies.

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"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death
— Albert Einstein

Liquor Dealer

We aren't asking anyone to follow us anywhere. In the Middle-East and everywhere else we are only asking for people to treat others as they want to be treated. I don't think there is any spin you can put on anything we've thried to do to improve the relations between Israel and the Palestinians that is to anyones advantage but theirs. I don't think you can spin Afghanistan of Iraq in that direction either. Peace is to everyones advantage - economic and otherwise. If one looks at the costs of the Cold War and the economy of Russia and other ex-soviet states it is quite obvious that no nation can afford those types of escalating expenditures. The United States, like most other nations, treat other nations the way that nation treats them. This morning, according to the news, France is now crying over the fact that the amount of time the President is spending in France is much less that what he has spent and intends to spend in other countries. Thet say that this is an indication that he considers them less important than other nations - Perhaps they are not as dumb as they first appear to be if they figured this out on their own.

__________________
Life isn't always a bowl of cherries, sometimes it's more like a jar of Jalapenos --- what you say or do today might burn your ass tomorrow!!!