Written by: Beck

Most Americans have an instinctive disdain for the French. We engage in French bashing with reckless abandon. Even as PC as our culture has become, it seems France bashing has remained an island of allowable discrimination. And I love it. It's one of the last truly bipartisan pastimes Americans can enjoy together. Take the phrase "Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys." It was the Simpson's, whose creator/writer Matt Groening is a Democrat (he donated $2000 to the John Kerry campaign), that coined the famous meme to describe the French, while arch-conservative Jonah Goldberg has adopted it as one of his favorite phrases.

While no one really needs an explanation for this cross-Atlantic antipathy (especially not after French refusal to back the Iraq invasion, followed by the emergence of evidence of just how much French intermediaries, many of them closely connected to the French government, profited off of the oil-for-food program), still, if you ask the average American for an explanation of the origins of this animosity, the best most of them can come up with is that the French are generally disdainful, have rude waiters, and smell funny.

Well Gabriel Gonzales over at Winds of Change has written an extensive article explaining just why in hell it is Americans can't stand the French. Turns out, it's for some pretty good reasons. In his article Gonzales argues that France isn't just an ordinary nation pursuing its self interest, but rather, structural and cultural aspects of France lead to a systemicly confrontational stance with the United States, and frankly, the entire Anglosphere.

For starters, a bit that nicely summarizes French foreign policy:

Timmerman points out France's irresponsible dealings with Iraq, which included conditional oil contracts, huge infrastructure deals (construction, roads, utilities, etc.), as well as illegal weapons sales and perhaps even bribes under the UN oil-for-food regime. This was a major part of French policy to undermine the sanctions regime, which was an aspect of its broader policy of triangulating against the U.S. to promote its commercial and strategic interests, especially with corrupt regimes abandoned by the U.S. (Saddam, Iran, Sudan, Cuba...).

Gonzales goes on to argue that protecting these lucrative Iraq deals wasn't even the root cause of French interference in the UN Security Council against an Iraq invasion. Rather, it was part of a broader strategy of courting dictatorial regimes across the world in an attempt to build a bloc in opposition to America's sphere of influence.

He also points out that an American government could never get away with such overtly nefarious behavior. His explanation for why France's government has carte blanche from its citizens to pursue such goals was, in my opinion, the most telling point in the entire article.

What allows France to engage in such conduct much more freely than the U.S. is:

1. A thoroughly corrupt business culture and state bureaucracy (that has a paranoid view of itself as being in a fierce Machiavellian competition with a U.S. business establishment presumed to be equally or more ruthless),


2. The demonization of an imperialist United States as a distraction, and


3. The passive support of its citizenry.

This last point - the passive support of the citizenry - is very important to understand: unlike the U.S., France has effectively no political or citizen control over its foreign policy, which is a purely executive function. This stems from the relationship of the citizen to the State: whereas state power is perceived as inherently dangerous by Americans in our historical tradition of skepticism towards official power, the French centralized state is glorified by its citizenry as the ultimate protector of citizen interests, rather than as a danger to them. As a result, the citizenry has little interest in the details, substance or moral dimension of foreign policy, which are fully delegated and blindly entrusted to this Collective Protector.

Essentially, the French have neither a concept of nor a concern for the frank and unashamed corrupt behavior of their government.

In the frigate bribes scandal, there is no public or media curiosity to speak of about which government officials were using bribes to procure these contracts and what they might of done. Who cares? The sole preoccupation is how much the state and thus the citizenry stands to lose in the lawsuit brought by Taiwan (currently the subject of French military intimidation, as mentioned). In the Executive Life matter, it took 6 months for the opposition even to raise any question about the propriety of the government using the public treasury to negotiate protection from criminal prosecution for Chirac's personal friend, the billionaire Francois Pinault.

Anyway, I highly recommend reading the article in its entire. It's lucid and well reasoned points make a strong case for why the US should not consider France an ally in any way, shape, or form. And now I leave you with a money quote:

I am not sure that "evil" is the right word, but France is, among Western powers, the closest one can get to a "rogue" state.