A New Dawn: America's New Friends, the French

Nicolas Sarkozy has been elected President of the French Republic. One of the remarkable things he did was to send a victory message to the United States. "You can count on France as a friend."

France as a friend? I'm not sure I know how to act.

Mind France has not always been an aggravation for the United States, at once snotty, arrogant, and hypocritical. Not to mention not in any position to criticize anyone. There is the small matter of French troops fighting side by side the Americans during the Revolution. Very much appreciated. And the Statue of Liberty was a cool gift. And let's not forget the wine, Jules Verne, Francois Truffaut, and Alexandre Dumas.

But it seems to me that since the dawn of the twentieth century, the relationship between France and the United States, begun so well at Yorktown, has gotten a little bit sour. Thrice in the last century American blood and American treasure has saved La Belle France from destruction, from the Kaiser, from Hitler, and from the Soviets, What America got in return, instead of gratitude, was instead a puzzling kind of resentment. Americans were all cowboys (a curious insult which can only come from a people who never met any real cowboys), unsophisticated, uncultured, too reckless, too prone to shoot bad people instead of dealing with them in the French way.

My view is this is because the French have never really gotten over Napoleon. Imagine. At one time La Belle France held sway over almost all of Europe. Paris was the center of the universe, culturally, as well as politically. But then Napoleon over reached by invading Russia. A little while later he met his Waterloo and France's days as a super power were over.