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PARTISAN REVIEW
their autonomy. Morally discredited by the wartime German occupation
of the continent from Brest to the Caucasus, militarily enfeebled, bewil–
dered by the rapidity and profundity of change, petrified by the hostil–
ity of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain dividing the continent, they
were in no position to resist Americanization; they could only go in for
delaying or blocking tactics, for Ozymandias's "wrinkled lip, and sneer
of cold command." Talk began to be heard about the Europeans in the
role of civilized and sophisticated Greeks to the crudely simple Ameri–
can Romans. "The British way of life," the German
Sonderweg,
the
exception franfaise,
the
via italiana,
acquired nostalgia, that powerful
stranglehold on the emotions .
France has replaced the defunct Soviet Union as the main source of
anti-Americanism in the world, more dramatic in its scope and conse–
quences even than Islamism. A mixture of rational and irrational
motives are in play, as first embodied by General de Gaulle, and then
thriving as his legacy. From his relationship with President Roosevelt
during the last war, he retained suspicions that the United States viewed
France as a great power well past its prime, and he never forgot or for–
gave what he took to be a slight to national honor. Hitler's Germany
destroyed France's former status as a power, but the blame for this had
to be shifted onto the United States as France came to terms with post–
war Germany. Displacing the old imperial powers of Britain and France,
the United States indeed made mistakes which could be easily exploited,
for instance over the I956 Suez crisis or in South East Asia, once the
source of French colonial pride. By I963 de Gaulle was saying to Alain
Peyrefitte, one of his ministers and a most faithful echo, "The truth is
that the Americans will end up getting themselves hated by the whole
world." De Gaulle's successors, whether nominally on the left or the
right, have done what they could to make that prediction come true.
"U.S. Go Home" was the popular slogan at the foundation of this
mindset. Political anti-Americanism among the French is nowadays
expressed in slightly more sophisticated but essentially similar terms, for
instance condemning the United States as a
hyper-puissance,
as "unilat–
eralist" or "unipolar" or "simplistic," all pejorative adjectives to cover
the pursuit of its own interest. Envy of the American presence and
power motivates the spiting of American policies globally, for instance
in large matters such as the departure of France from NATO or its back–
ing of the Arabs against Israel, and its defense of Iraq, down to small
incidents such as a French officer leaking NATO plans to Serbia at the
time of the Kosovo campaign. The adversarial climate of opinion has
long been set firm. The United States has a navigation satellite system
