The French Way (53 page)

One begins an explanation of the 1990s by recalling these perennial sources of transatlantic friction. But they are insufficient because anti-American attitudes were complex and they evolved: this requires paying attention to the contingencies that brought these latent causes into the open. Perceptions of America in the 1990s drew from sources other than stereotypes, historical rivalries, and self-images of mission and identity.

The essential perception that structured the French view of America was that of Uncle Sam as a domineering ally. The reputation of the United States lost luster because it appeared increasingly to act as a hegemonic superpower concerned with its own national interests, forcing itself on others, and unabashedly celebrating its triumphs. America became unbearable.

Does anxiety about the United States as a hegemonic friend simply confirm then what is called a realist's approach to international affairs? Is there little more to add after pointing out that once the Soviet danger passed, transatlantic differences—which had been dampened during the Cold War—reemerged? A realist stance in international relations, which stresses the preeminence of national interest and
power, would have expected as much. But the data suggest that a more complicated account is necessary. Confidence in U.S. leadership actually rose after 1989; it peaked in 1991 at the time of the first war in the Persian Gulf and it did not ebb until the middle years of the Clinton administration. There was a lag rather than an abrupt about-face. The republic's leaders may have detected trouble early on, but it took years of growing friction between Washington and Paris over a wide range of issues, some of which were not political, before the public's trust in the United States eroded and they came to recognize that the post-Cold War, unipolar world posed a problem.

If there was a lag, it was not long after the end of the Cold War that the image of the New World began to turn threatening and transatlantic relations became testy. By the early 1990s there was squabbling over reform of NATO, a European defense capacity, the United Nations, trade, environmental policy, the Balkan states, the Middle East, and Africa. Such disputes were hardly new, but the post-Cold War context was. The United States seemed to be acting more and more as an unrestrained superpower. It was halfway through the Clinton presidency that the United States became more openly assertive, recognizing its growing military power and its unique global responsibilities. Whatever the issue, during the mid-to late 1990s, Washington always seemed to impose its will on Paris.

France was not passive and did more than respond to its ally's policies: under Presidents Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac it sought European parity within NATO, worked to strengthen the EU as a counterweight to the United States, raised the goal of multipolarity, and tried to contain the superpower through international bodies and rules. Yet whatever initiatives France took, it seemed to encounter formidable resistance from the United States. Meanwhile, fighting alongside the Americans proved to be an embarrassment. First the Gulf War and then the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo underlined the shortcomings of the French military in comparison with how the Pentagon had remodeled its armed forces.

The “hyperpower” had arrived. In 1997, the French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, introduced this term to describe the United States, alluding to its vast range of powers. Along with concern about the new imperious America came mistrust of its policies. U.S. intervention in the Balkans, for example, made the French suspicious of Washington's goals. The Senate's rejection of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban treaty suggested to many, including President Chirac, that the United States preferred a unilateral course. Paris and Washington were also at odds over Iraq. By 1998 the two allies were in public disagreement over U.S. commitment to regime change in Baghdad as well as a strategy to control Saddam Hussein. The reach of American power seemed to extend to within the Hexagon itself. When the Michelin company laid off workers, Chirac blamed the decision, at least in part, on California retiree stakeholders who, supposedly, were insisting on higher returns from their investments.
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By the end of the decade the hyperpower seemed omnipotent in world affairs and possibly within the Hexagon.

Trade disputes deepened the French people's distrust of their American partners: the two allies went head-to-head over many commercial issues, topped by wrangling over agriculture and culture. U.S. officials openly stated that they used trade negotiations to “open up” other societies.
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This was precisely the strategy pursued by Hollywood and Washington in the GATT negotiations that tried to force open the French audiovisual market and prompted Paris to retaliate with the defense of “the cultural exception.” French determination to defend its audiovisual industries as well as its program of agricultural subsidies almost scuttled the talks in 1993.

The GATT debacle ushered in a rancorous decade as the two countries continued to bicker over agricultural subsidies, civilian aircraft, and armaments sales. Even food caused trouble. The dispute began with EU restrictions on imports from the United States of hormonetreated beef; escalated with U.S. retaliation on import duties; and erupted when Jose Bove trashed a McDonald's site in 1999. The most flagrant use of political power may have been the U.S. government's
willingness to interfere with others doing business with countries like Iran and Cuba.

This transatlantic trade rivalry fed the perception that the two countries were at odds and that in this competition France was usually the loser. The aspect of American behavior that most infuriated French elites was their alleged unscrupulousness in the conduct of trade and business. This feature of the American image, based in part on a persistent French stereotype of the ruthless Yankee businessman, emerged because American trade officials were rough competitors who wielded their economic and political advantages at the expense of French interests and because of the behavior of American multinationals. Coca-Cola's hard-nosed merchandising practices in France confirmed Gallic suspicions about the cold-blooded ways of Americans. Paris even publicly indicted its ally of economic espionage; American officials were, it seems, using sex and money to discover the French negotiating position in global trade talks. To be sure, the French engaged in similar stratagems, but that seems beside the point. This transatlantic rancor over business accounts for much of the deteriorating image of the United States in the 1990s.

Perceptions of Social Difference

Perceptions of growing social difference, like international rivalry, contributed to anti-Americanism. Polling data, as we have seen, recorded rising Gallic concern about violence, inequality, and callousness in America in the 1990s. It seems unlikely, however, that French and American societies actually grew farther apart in a single decade or so. More likely the change in attitudes was caused by shifts in policy as presented to the public by officials and the media.

An inherited anti-American discourse formed the basis of such views. Stereotypes about Americans and American ways, including tropes about racism and obsession with work, provided a fertile field
for opponents to harvest. Stereotypes aside, there were real contrasts between these societies—such as the ubiquity of the homeless, visible to even the casual observer. More important, in addressing domestic problems the New World seemed to move on a tangent away from Europe. Awareness of difference was most likely caused by the direction of U.S. socioeconomic policy under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. The United States embraced market solutions to problems like providing for the needy that ran counter to French notions of social solidarity. Reagan fired recalcitrant federal employees (e.g. air traffic controllers) and called government “the problem”; Bush hollowed out regulatory rules; and Clinton toughened the federal welfare program. In contrast, Mitterrand increased the minimum wage, reduced the number of hours in the workweek, banned the death penalty, raised taxes on the wealthy, and in general made aid to the poorest members of society a priority. Under his successor, Jacques Chirac, the government adopted the thirty-five-hour workweek to help distribute jobs and enhance leisure. While Washington, especially under Republican administrations, trimmed federal programs including funds for agencies like the National Endowment for the Arts, Paris continued to tax and spend at a far higher pace and tried to raise spending on culture to 1 percent of the national budget. If France followed the United States in some respects (e.g., toward deregulation), it combined such measures with high outlays especially on social programs.

The source of French dismay at their hard-hearted Yankee cousins derived from a historical commitment to, and pride in, social solidarity as embodied in the second and third values of the republican triad: liberty, equality and fraternity. It prompted most to believe that they adhered to a more advanced conception of the social contract. Both the Left and the Right, both Mitterrand and Chirac, paraded their devotion to solidarity and cited it as a way to distinguish the two societies. Despite the shortcomings of their policies—for example, in the
blight around French cities or the decaying educational structure—the French could legitimately claim they tried to honor these priorities.

Given these transatlantic divergences America became more of a target than it was a model for the French. Most insisted that American and French values were different with respect to the family, morality, law and order, work, and lifestyle. The French charged Americans with lacking a sense of social solidarity—pointing, as we have seen, to how Americans shredded their safety net or failed, from their perspective, to integrate immigrants. They reproached American business for its ruthlessness, for its indifference to the unemployed, and for wrecking the environment. They complained about political correctness, multi-culturalism, income inequality, crime, the gun culture, the homeless population, and capital punishment—
especially
capital punishment. The U.S. embassy in Paris received a petition against the death penalty signed by 500,000 people.
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And American multiculturalism seemed like the pursuit of individual rights gone mad.
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The French also chided Americans for their excessive religiosity. Some of this America-bashing was a stretch. In his polemic Noel Mamere, a prominent leader of the Green Party, warned that the Religious Right in the United States was poised to take the offensive against French secularism
(laicite).
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What intensified these complaints was the perception that the American model, flawed as it was, put an idealized formulation of France at risk. The French, according to this self-image, unlike Americans, prized solidarity over self-interest; promoted toleration rather than political correctness; refused to commercialize culture; assimilated immigrants rather than accepting ethnic fragmentation. They were, in short, civilized—and Americans, as always, were less civilized.

French politicians ranging from left to right opportunistically exploited these perceptions. Baiting America was a consensual rather than a divisive political strategy. And intellectuals and the media brought the message to the person in the street. This gambit of arousing public concern can be illustrated by an example from Texas.

Violence
was the word the French most commonly associated with American society in the 1990s and this was, in a comparative sense, a reasonable attribution. Homicide rates were at least four times higher in the United States than in France. Americans also owned far more guns and incarcerated far more of their population in prison. Whereas France had banned the death penalty, some states, like Texas, continued to practice it, allowing the French to seize what they believed was the moral high ground. High-profile criminal mayhem made headlines and French politicians and the media publicized these social troubles. Television paraded images of random U.S. school shootings and urban drug wars and it relentlessly reported executions. Media intellectuals discussed the stories of death-row inmates and, the former minister Jack Lang flew to Texas in an attempt to influence the Board of Pardons to stay a pending execution. Lang failed, but Bernard Pivot, the prominent television host, responded to Lang's mission by saying “I'm proud to be French.”
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Is it any wonder that the French believed American society was violent ?

In general the French at the fin de siecle distanced themselves from what they believed was the harsh way Americans approached social security and the callousness of their economic practices. The two nations seemed pointed in opposite directions.

Americanization and French Identity